Prostitution & feminism

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I never did. 

Then you weren't in a worse spot than her.

I think you are over-rating the awfulness of sucking dick in exchange for drugs and/or cash. 

Not saying it's a good space to be in, but I do think it's better than being a homeless suicidal self-absorbed, emo druggie WHO THINKS TEENAGE GIRLS WHO HAVE TO SUCK DICK FOR MONEY HAVE IT BETTER THAN HE DOES.

KIDS IN AFRICA DON'T HAVE IT AS BAD AS BABYLON DID.   

MY HEART PUMPS PEANUT BUTTER FOR HIS PLIGHT

MINE IS PUMPING PURPLE PISS FOR HIS TRAGIC LIFE, AT ABOUT 1000 GPM.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I think you are over-rating the awfulness of sucking dick in exchange for drugs and/or cash. 

This is just as vomitmirthy as the snuff thing.

[Elder Iptuous]

I think you are over-rating the awfulness of sucking dick in exchange for drugs and/or cash. 

This is just as vomitmirthy as the snuff thing.

agreed!

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

If the awfulness is so overrated to him, he needs to consider it as a career option.

[BabylonHoruv]

I never did.  I did once in a situation that involved having a place to sleep for a while, but it wasn't an explicit trade.  I imagine she did, I never asked, but she didn't have to.  She lived with her parents still and had enough spending money just from them to support what little drug use she did.

I'm fairly sure the main reason she hooked was because she enjoyed it, because she didn't charge much.

No 16 year old girl enjoys sucking off old perverts, you fucking moron.

There was something wrong at that house. Rape, abuse, something.

Probably true.  Like I said, she definitely had issues.

re Roger, my point isn't that I had it so bad, it's that at that point I was in a worse spot than she was and wouldn't have been able to guide her to a better place.  I know that African kids had it worse, from the sound of it your own experience in the military was far worse than my time on the streets.

[BabylonHoruv]

If the awfulness is so overrated to him, he needs to consider it as a career option.

If the other option is spanging and squatting I might.  Compared to my current career (piercer at a tattoo shop) it sucks dick.

Not as bad as other possibilities is not the same as not bad at all.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

KEEP DIGGING! YOU'LL BE OUT OF THAT HOLE IN NO TIME!
\

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Nigel, I'm interested in your opinion of prostitution versus pornography, and if the latter can be "empowering".

Pornography is a tricky thing, because in many ways it's the same thing as prostitution... but I watch porn sometimes. I think that professional pornography is probably not a particularly empowering job, for all the same reasons that prostitution isn't. However, I think it COULD be empowering to make amateur porn.

The empowerment that sex workers of all kinds SHOULD have is the power to direct their lives and careers as they see fit. Being empowered within the job is very different from being empowered by the job, though.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

it's a touchy subject

   

Sex can be commodified. I don't think it's healthy to commodify sex, but it's certainly possible.

I think that some of the reaction I got was that people assumed I was placing a moral value on prostitution. One person asked me if I would think less of someone who hired a gigolo. People thought I was passing judgement.

I am. I am judging people who pay for sex as unfit to be my partner. As a former sex worker, and a woman who has had relationships with men who have paid for sex, I am also judging people who pay for sex as being probably a little broken, a little off, and a little disconnected, because in my experience that was always the case.

I've seriously considered hiring someone to scratch my itch dozens of times over the years, simply because I've had this fantasy idea that a person wouldn't expect pancakes and marriage in the morning if money changed hands.  And that's all about broken-off-disconnected stuff.  I don't blame you for judging.  What's really stopped me is the same as His Mighty Kittenish Beard's point.


Were your friends students? Just asking because I attended a course last year or the one before where "sex worker rights" came up in a class focusing on trafficking.  We know that when young, often white, or otherwise heavily monied people start holding forth on The Disempowered for grades or job opportunities, things get sad-weird.*  In this case, the rights of people fucking for rent to have some measures of safety or say over their work conditions got turned into safely sheltered people accusing the rest of the room of thinking sex was bad.  No shades of grey, no actual work conditions, much less "conditions of their labour"  (marxism isn't safely radical enough yet/again   ).



* for example - I read too many resumes.  This morning, under "relevant volunteer experience" (as opposed to irrelevant... I'd love to see that... please put it on your CV...) a young man listed his participation in "the day the world said no to war."  I shit you not.

Nah, they're all mid-30's to early-40's educated professionals.

I thought it was an interesting reaction simply because I was saying that *I* wanted a partner who had never been with a prostitute, (and given my personal history, it seems like it would be psychologically healthier for me to have such a partner) and wasn't anticipating anyone challenging my reasons for that, let alone my women friends.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Prostitution pretty much cant be empowering in the world we live in.

Some of the stories of the women of the temple of Aphrodite and the like from way back do sound empowering but they weren't just selling their bodies, they were selling communion with their god which they could deny to any man they didn't like, and that's an incredible level of power, to be able to deny someone the worship of their god.

Its impossible to see that level of respect placed on it in the western world.

I agree completely.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I was in a worse space than her at that point. 

No, you weren't.

Maybe not.  Not having walked in her shoes I'm not qualified to judge.  However she wasn't a heavy drug user and I was.  She was hooking by choice and had a place to sleep, food to eat, and clean clothes to wear.  I was squatting and eating at soup kitchens and wearing the same clothes for weeks at a time.

How many times did you suck dick for drugs?

I never did.  I did once in a situation that involved having a place to sleep for a while, but it wasn't an explicit trade.  I imagine she did, I never asked, but she didn't have to.  She lived with her parents still and had enough spending money just from them to support what little drug use she did.

I'm fairly sure the main reason she hooked was because she enjoyed it, because she didn't charge much.

LOL, no. I would bet my house that the reason she hooked and the reason she dissociated sex from bonding is because she was molested. She didn't hook because she "enjoyed it", she "enjoyed it" because someone fucked her head up. 16-year-old girls just don't willingly start prostituting themselves for fun unless there is something very very wrong at home.

[Cain]

So, yesterday I made an offhand comment to some friends that I would really like my next boyfriend to be someone who has never visited a prostitute, but that I didn't know if that's an unreasonable hope. I observed that of all the men I've been in relationships with, all but one share the curious commonality of having told me they have been with prostitutes, usually while traveling abroad, with frequency ranging from a one-time experiment to a semi-regular habit.

Space Cowboy, who is easily the awesomest person I have ever been in a relationship with, is the only one who has never paid for sex.

Curiously, my male friends, for the most part, reacted as if I had said the most reasonable thing in the world, and several commented that they didn't even know anyone who had been to a prostitute. Two of my female friends, however, challenged my reasoning, so I said that while I don't think prostitution is wrong, I think that there is a lot wrong with prostitution, and that other than, say, a youthful one-time visit out of curiosity, I don't think paying women for sex as a commodity is consistent with a feminist worldview or with my expectations of a partner.

SHIT STORM. They are acting like I am being TOTALLY unreasonable, discriminatory, and (bizarrely enough) anti-feminist.

What sayeth the peedee on this matter?

Women not getting paid for sex is clearly anti-feminist.  Why are you trying to deny the worth of a woman based on her sexual skill and no other factor, Nigel?  Why do you hate women?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

So, yesterday I made an offhand comment to some friends that I would really like my next boyfriend to be someone who has never visited a prostitute, but that I didn't know if that's an unreasonable hope. I observed that of all the men I've been in relationships with, all but one share the curious commonality of having told me they have been with prostitutes, usually while traveling abroad, with frequency ranging from a one-time experiment to a semi-regular habit.

Space Cowboy, who is easily the awesomest person I have ever been in a relationship with, is the only one who has never paid for sex.

Curiously, my male friends, for the most part, reacted as if I had said the most reasonable thing in the world, and several commented that they didn't even know anyone who had been to a prostitute. Two of my female friends, however, challenged my reasoning, so I said that while I don't think prostitution is wrong, I think that there is a lot wrong with prostitution, and that other than, say, a youthful one-time visit out of curiosity, I don't think paying women for sex as a commodity is consistent with a feminist worldview or with my expectations of a partner.

SHIT STORM. They are acting like I am being TOTALLY unreasonable, discriminatory, and (bizarrely enough) anti-feminist.

What sayeth the peedee on this matter?

Women not getting paid for sex is clearly anti-feminist.  Why are you trying to deny the worth of a woman based on her sexual skill and no other factor, Nigel?  Why do you hate women?

[LMNO]

Being empowered within the job is very different from being empowered by the job, though.

I think that says everything I wanted to say.

[Kai]

Nigel, I'm interested in your opinion of prostitution versus pornography, and if the latter can be "empowering".

Pornography is a tricky thing, because in many ways it's the same thing as prostitution... but I watch porn sometimes. I think that professional pornography is probably not a particularly empowering job, for all the same reasons that prostitution isn't. However, I think it COULD be empowering to make amateur porn.

The empowerment that sex workers of all kinds SHOULD have is the power to direct their lives and careers as they see fit. Being empowered within the job is very different from being empowered by the job, though.

Interesting.