Prostitution & feminism

[Luna]

I was a phone sex girl, and even that ate at me. Perhaps worse, it instilled in me a contempt of and pity for men that was difficult to outgrow.

"Contempt and pity" is something of an understatement for me.  After nine months on the phones (and, for the record, this was the only job, in my life, I voluntarily walked away from without having another job lined up already), I flat out HATED men. This pretty well poisoned the relationship with the guy I was seeing at the time.  I'd be talking with male friends, and catch something... a turn of phrase, or just something in their voice, and I'd wonder if he'd been one of the guys who'd called the night before.

Was it all hell?  No, and I came out of it with some pretty funny stories.  (Best line ever?  At the END of the call, "wait a second, I have to pull over."  What the HELL?)  But, after nine months of 40 hour weeks...  Average 40-50 calls a night...  I think I can honestly say there was ONE regular who I didn't mind talking with.  Perv?  Yes, and his kink wasn't one I'd be into, however, he wrapped up his business quickly, and we'd sit and chat for five or ten minutes...  He treated me like a person.  He is, after all these years, the only one whose name I remember.

People are people...  And when people are given the opportunity to think of something as an object, as a thing they own, they will treat that thing as an object.  Look at what happens in pretty damn near any household where a man thinks of his wife and kids as HIS personal belongings...  Usually, it involves bruises, broken bones, and hospital trips.

I hear, "well if it's REGULATED, if it's SAFE" a lot about it...

Tell me...  How do you make it safe?  Medical testing?  Who does that protect?

By the time the test comes back positive, well, then, it's a little late, isn't it?  Medical testing for prostitutes isn't to protect the prostitutes...  It's to protect the johns from picking up something nasty and taking it home to the wife and having to explain to her where he managed to catch it.  How do you make it safe?  Make a law that says men MUST wear condoms?  (If I'm the only woman on this board who's spent a couple weeks staring at a calendar and praying because one of the damn things broke, I'll eat Twid's flat cap, without salt.)  You may be able to regulate it...  But you can't make it safe.

[hirley0]

5:35 OK lemme see if i can prior to news at 6
make any offline ¢ents of this?
2000 population of Greece was estimated at 10601527.
Prostitution is legal and regulated in Greece
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Europe
nexpensive, about 60 EU a tri
TR2
5:45 Listen i do not think 60 is "nexpensive, abou"
Li46 Just call us | ok try3
50 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulated_prostitution
51 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Laws_regarding_prostitution&action=edit
52 history
pain's 'low cost' prostitutes - YouTube
2006
56 time to recon
6AM.


5:10-25 i was going to "#195:" (oh well)
itis My fficiaal Math Hour so i will try to compute the Economic inpact to
Greek economy of this DRAFT | Just a min 5:15 already | slow start

Reply #166: Yesterday at 01:36:47 AM  yeah?YEAH
Just trying to find my po ... yche.

5:19 that is not a true Quote thats a captured quote that was aborted
assume there is a relationship to population find Greek population
I do not have time in the time remaining  | ok check current prices
There? check vurrent economic conditions anywhere? OH i c there
aint any actuall economic data anywhere? is hat the situation? i doono
I guess there are individual checking & savings #'s & house car & boat #'s
maybe even soup & nuts prices here and there (oh never mind time elapsed
5:25 +5 to get ?00

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I was a phone sex girl, and even that ate at me. Perhaps worse, it instilled in me a contempt of and pity for men that was difficult to outgrow.

"Contempt and pity" is something of an understatement for me.  After nine months on the phones (and, for the record, this was the only job, in my life, I voluntarily walked away from without having another job lined up already), I flat out HATED men. This pretty well poisoned the relationship with the guy I was seeing at the time.  I'd be talking with male friends, and catch something... a turn of phrase, or just something in their voice, and I'd wonder if he'd been one of the guys who'd called the night before.

Was it all hell?  No, and I came out of it with some pretty funny stories.  (Best line ever?  At the END of the call, "wait a second, I have to pull over."  What the HELL?)  But, after nine months of 40 hour weeks...  Average 40-50 calls a night...  I think I can honestly say there was ONE regular who I didn't mind talking with.  Perv?  Yes, and his kink wasn't one I'd be into, however, he wrapped up his business quickly, and we'd sit and chat for five or ten minutes...  He treated me like a person.  He is, after all these years, the only one whose name I remember.

People are people...  And when people are given the opportunity to think of something as an object, as a thing they own, they will treat that thing as an object.  Look at what happens in pretty damn near any household where a man thinks of his wife and kids as HIS personal belongings...  Usually, it involves bruises, broken bones, and hospital trips.

I hear, "well if it's REGULATED, if it's SAFE" a lot about it...

Tell me...  How do you make it safe?  Medical testing?  Who does that protect?

By the time the test comes back positive, well, then, it's a little late, isn't it?  Medical testing for prostitutes isn't to protect the prostitutes...  It's to protect the johns from picking up something nasty and taking it home to the wife and having to explain to her where he managed to catch it.  How do you make it safe?  Make a law that says men MUST wear condoms?  (If I'm the only woman on this board who's spent a couple weeks staring at a calendar and praying because one of the damn things broke, I'll eat Twid's flat cap, without salt.)  You may be able to regulate it...  But you can't make it safe.

I think I was able to mitigate a lot of the psychological impact by being a dom... I also worked at home and set my own hours, and had a very strict (if short) blacklist of topics I wouldn't touch. It was very lucrative and I didn't have to work a lot of hours, but working at home also had the drawback of feeling invaded and intruded on in my own home. I started out with a bit of telephone-related anxiety (after a series of harassing calls when I was a teenager, I've never really had a positive relationship with the phone- during the time the harassment was going on, I would have a panic attack and actually have to leave the house when the phone rang), and by the end of the year I was a 900-girl, I couldn't answer the phone anymore at all.

I also wonder how much the existence of phone sex lines led to the harassment that instilled my phone anxiety in the first place?

And what you say about commodification, ownership, and safety are all very true.

[hirley0]

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read down read up sequencing of posts: | end of ATTempts to chat at 'Em
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As for the Male fraction ?/? words continue to be ESCalate Nerve Endings
face it donno WHAT 1/2 (.5) means ToDay!-!
Prior post #7 > Social Sciences/Modern Man P1 9 CIMI
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Listen my point here today was ? on windy days like to day
by all means HaTe away get something off you chest | = no top day
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11{never mind ProP'$ | IMF ECB 15 BiLLion 15e9 12%
12 Twelve Months | 13 Student shot Hi School |

[Telarus]

This is a very good conversation. This is not directly related to prostitution, but does show another 'peak' into the 'sex industry', and has me re-thinking the non-prostitution side of things......

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/304610/20120225/stephen-hawking-sex-club-california-physicist-strippers.htm

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

The fact that a woman can choose to be a prostitute is empowering, just like any other job for uneducated women with few options would be.

About as empowering as the fact that a woman can choose to run out in the freeway in front of a speeding semi, "just like any other option for uneducated women with few options would be." 

Really, we're talking about having to find more dicks to suck every time you (or your kids) need something. Pimp or no pimp. I wouldn't wish that on anybody, with the possible exception of the nazis.

(Then again, yeah, definitely on the nazis.  )

And while I admire the pragmatic commonsense and tolerance in the Netherlands, as opposed to the puritanical vindictiveness you see in the US, the right thing to do is fix things so people don't HAVE to do this shit.

[Juana]

Yeah, and not treat them like criminals, which we do here, too.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

That, and social pariahs.
For trying to live.

[Lenin McCarthy]

Following this thread has been very enlightening. I used to think legalization and regulation would solve most of the problems surrounding prostitution, but I'm not so sure now.

It is possible that men and women from relatively well-off backgrounds can go into small-scale prostitution as a side business and feel empowered by and enjoy that. But, when prostitution is something you have to do to make ends meet, to feed yourself, feed your child, to get your daily shot of heroin etc.  it is no doubt very destructive. I think our sexuality is the most intimate, private aspect of who we are, and if we don't have a real choice when it comes to who we share that aspect of ourselves with, it will do fucked-up things to us.

Thanks, PD.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

I imagine it can be about the same as rape, except the knifepoint is being dopesick or watching your kid starve.

[Roly Poly Oly-Garch]

i wonder if i am missing something here.
it seems to me that there is a clear parallel between the unfortunate link between prostitution and violence, and that of the drug trade and violence.
in discussions of drugs the majority view seems to be that we should separate the two issues because the link is mostly caused by the illegality of the act.  why not the same with prostitution?

i'd rather not inject myself as taking a side in this issue, because i have no dog in the fight.  my curiosity was just piqued by the apparent disconnect...

Mainly because drugs are not people--they have no will. It's not that complicated to figure out if 2 tons of pot has a history of psychological/sexual/physical abuse that its vendor exploited in a predatory fashion before putting it on the market.

In the sex trade, violence is a means of breaking people's will. I don't even have a guess whether legalization would reduce human trafficking. It would definitely increase the number of pimps, though. Pimps are scum. Whether they raise a hand or not, turning a person out is NEVER a non-violent act. Hell, even if there is no pimp, it's circumstance that turned the person out. Still violent.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

i wonder if i am missing something here.
it seems to me that there is a clear parallel between the unfortunate link between prostitution and violence, and that of the drug trade and violence.
in discussions of drugs the majority view seems to be that we should separate the two issues because the link is mostly caused by the illegality of the act.  why not the same with prostitution?

i'd rather not inject myself as taking a side in this issue, because i have no dog in the fight.  my curiosity was just piqued by the apparent disconnect...

Mainly because drugs are not people--they have no will. It's not that complicated to figure out if 2 tons of pot has a history of psychological/sexual/physical abuse that its vendor exploited in a predatory fashion before putting it on the market.

In the sex trade, violence is a means of breaking people's will. I don't even have a guess whether legalization would reduce human trafficking. It would definitely increase the number of pimps, though. Pimps are scum. Whether they raise a hand or not, turning a person out is NEVER a non-violent act. Hell, even if there is no pimp, it's circumstance that turned the person out. Still violent.

Yes, this.

In prostitution, the merchandise is people.

[Placid Dingo]

Following this thread has been very enlightening. I used to think legalization and regulation would solve most of the problems surrounding prostitution, but I'm not so sure now.

It is possible that men and women from relatively well-off backgrounds can go into small-scale prostitution as a side business and feel empowered by and enjoy that. But, when prostitution is something you have to do to make ends meet, to feed yourself, feed your child, to get your daily shot of heroin etc.  it is no doubt very destructive. I think our sexuality is the most intimate, private aspect of who we are, and if we don't have a real choice when it comes to who we share that aspect of ourselves with, it will do fucked-up things to us.

Thanks, PD.

I guess I'd say though, that regulation isn't meant to solve all the problems related to prostitution. It's meant to guarantee at least a fundamental level of safety for all involved, and prevent the profits going towards traffickers/smugglers etc. So it's missing a point to say that it doesn't fix things; it's just meant to make a bad situation a better situation.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Following this thread has been very enlightening. I used to think legalization and regulation would solve most of the problems surrounding prostitution, but I'm not so sure now.

It is possible that men and women from relatively well-off backgrounds can go into small-scale prostitution as a side business and feel empowered by and enjoy that. But, when prostitution is something you have to do to make ends meet, to feed yourself, feed your child, to get your daily shot of heroin etc.  it is no doubt very destructive. I think our sexuality is the most intimate, private aspect of who we are, and if we don't have a real choice when it comes to who we share that aspect of ourselves with, it will do fucked-up things to us.

Thanks, PD.

I guess I'd say though, that regulation isn't meant to solve all the problems related to prostitution. It's meant to guarantee at least a fundamental level of safety for all involved, and prevent the profits going towards traffickers/smugglers etc. So it's missing a point to say that it doesn't fix things; it's just meant to make a bad situation a better situation.

This is valid.

Harm mitigation is, IMO, acceptable when harm elimination isn't possible.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

That is a good point about the difference between "working for extra income" and "working to keep food on the table." For someone who is relatively financially stable, or at least very close to that point, you can say no to potential clients without hurting yourself too badly. If the choice is "fuck this guy or starve" that's not really a choice at all.

Position shifted.