The Morality of Prostitution

[Rubber Nursey]

Of course, the counter-argument that feminist rescuers will make is that the working women do not understand the nature and extent of their victimhood.

This is routinely thrown at me and my fellow unrepentant wh*res... we're too fucked up to realise just how fucked up we are. It's an incredibly effective way of silencing sex workers who dare to deviate from the party line.

I can't tell you how upsetting it is to try and share positive sex work experiences with these people. It's like being trapped in a mental institution, trying to convince the doctors that you're sane! Enjoy the sex? Obviously abused as a child. Don't feel used by clients? Obviously have low self-esteem ....blah, blah, blah. There's always some tidy excuse for your aberrant (and unacceptable) positive attitude. You can't win.

Interestingly, there invariably comes a point in the conversation where you stop being the victim and become the perpetrator. Suddenly you're just "one of the lucky ones", who doesn't understand what REAL sex workers go through. You had more options, more education, you're the right colour, the right nationality, you just don't get what it's like for everyone else in the sex industry and your happy hooker propaganda is detrimental to all those poor prostituted women. Hell, we even make things hard for NON-sex working women, by encouraging men to see women as sex objects!

I find that second angle (the idea that we're somehow different from other sex workers) fascinating. Their ideas about sex work are so absolute, so entrenched, that a hooker who doesn't fit the mould is not even considered to be a hooker. And that goes doubly for male hookers.

[Goga Fung]

I'd like to put forth an idea of the morality, the value, of prostitution. ISG just might be an empathetic forum for this idea.

Prostitutes fulfill a desire to "feel loved," in the intimate ways, a desire felt by people who believe their needs are a great imposition on others. Prostitutes offer a simulacrum of "loving" for people who've given up on "finding love" in purely "social" terms. By renting access to their bodies, they get something they value (money) in exchange for something their clients value (sex). And they offer it with no strings attached ... play for pay ... on a cash basis. They give their clients something the clients can no longer find without paying for their play.

How many of us punters feel that way about sex and "love"? How many of us are mongering because we've given up "looking for love"? How many of us have come to the end of that road, and reached the conclusion that pay-for-play is the only way left for us to find the sweetness we've been dying for?
......

Basically, the prostitute gives us at least a taste of "the sweetness." And I hold that to be moral.

Any comments?

I can't agree more. I have had similar thoughts.

When a man cannot get what he needs from "regular" women for whatever reasons, often the only solution for him is going to SWs. Many others call him a "loser", which I believe is very wrong. Everybody has their own right to get their things the way they want or can.

Another case when SWs are needed is when you do not want to have any relationship with women on purpose, in order not to get emotionally into it, and also not to hurt them too. For example now I have several GFs, and know that I would not be with them anymore soon because have in mind another girl who is younger, innocent but not to be played with. But also know that the current GFs really hope to get serious, get married etc. They are trying hard. Some guys would not give a shit, but I would hate to get them hurt, upset, pissed when they realize I was just fucking around.

It is much simpler to have fun with girls who work for money. They can also be very nice persons, but than the relationship is much simpler and no extra expectations and broken hearts.

I believe this is much more moral than deceiving and upsetting "regular" girls.

[Param Ahmad]

With her permission, I'm reproducing here the response I received from Rubber Nursey after I wrote to her asking if she'd ever met a woman who was trafficked and/or forced to work as a prostitute:

Hi Param

No, I have NEVER met a sex worker who was kidnapped and forced into an Australian brothel. (I have met, and was close friends with, a sex worker from Bulgaria who went through that ordeal in her home country, but she came to Australia by choice). I have met a few migrant workers who were tricked into thinking they would be doing waitressing, etc in Australia and when they got here, they were told they had to work in a brothel. HOWEVER...they were not FORCED to work in the brothels, with violence. They were just told that if they didn't agree to the work, they would be sent back home. Sure, it was a tough choice for those women, but it WAS a choice.

What I do meet, all the time, is migrant sex workers who came to Australia on contract (or "debt bondage"). This happens because our Govt treats all international sex workers as 'sex slaves' and makes it hard for them to come here independently, even though it is lawful for them to work in our sex industry. Instead of finding their own work and applying for their own visas, they are forced to employ agents (traffickers) to do it, who charge them thousands of dollars for the service, which they have to work off. People often confuse these contracts with people 'buying and selling' kidnapped and abused women. That is not the case. These contracts, while horrible, are freely entered into by sex workers...usually they are already working as sex workers in their own countries, and contracts are the only way they can get into my country to work.

I am NOT saying that forced prostitution doesn't exist. I'm just saying it isn't as common as people think it is. As you may know from my posts, I am part of an Australian sex worker association that runs large-scale projects in the Asia/Pacific region, working closely with international sex worker groups. We also run a trafficking prevention project in Australia. All our migration projects are staffed by international sex workers with personal experience and I have met thousands of sex workers in the twelve years I've been involved with this stuff.

RN

So gentlemen, while we should, of course, take appropriate action in defense of women by reporting the facts to appropriate authorities if it appears to us a woman has been kidnapped and forced into prostitution, we should at the same time not be made to feel guilty by misleading news reporting suggesting any man who spends money on prostitution is supporting violence against women, because that is rarely the case.

[Westy]

I would cut the debate a little shorter...
We all have intense PRACTICAL experience with commercial sex, albeit from the user's side. And we all know that many/most of the providers (at least in the western world) have made free, informed and on-going choices to perform this work. So the idea that prostitution must necessarily be violence against women (which is a very common argument) is, in fact, a theoretical construct.

Ahhh, I'm getting a headache...

So am I, GT. Yes, I did get a little prolix with that post. But I'm still stuck on that "women as victims / men as the villains" dichotomy.

I can't say as my practical experience with commercial sex is all that "intense", but in the past 25 years it's all the sex I've known. (And that damn seldom!) I've had a lot more "intense" experience getting browbeaten with "rescuer rhetoric," hearing my sex blamed for "all that's wrong with the world," and having to choose between tongue-biting silence and getting in trouble with Authority.

I fear that American women regard the notion of sex with the likes of me as "degrading," right from the start. I try to salve my conscience with the notion that DR$1500, or PY$100K, is worth a lot more to the chica than it is to me, and that it might leave her feeling well-enough compensated for taking a shot of my leche. But I haven't felt "up" to booking the next sex vacation, because ... ya know ....

[Gentleman Travel]

I proposed a theoretical framework for the cultural study of commercial sex

I would cut the debate a little shorter, Westy.
She talks about a "theoretical framework" as a good sociologist does.
But we all have intense PRACTICAL experience with commercial sex, albeit from the user's side, as opposed to the provider's side of things.

And we all know that many/most of the providers (at least in the western world) have made free, informed and on-going choices to perform this work.

So the idea that prostitution must necessarily be violence against women (which is a very common argument) is, in fact, a theoretical construct.

Of course, the counter-argument that feminist rescuers will make is that the working women do not understand the nature and extent of their victimhood.
Thus it is like trying to disprove a conspiracy theory - all the evidence to the contrary is dismissed as cover-up, thus becoming evidence of the conspiracy itself. Ahhh, I'm getting a headache...

[Westy]

I'd like to put forth an idea of the morality, the value, of prostitution. ISG just might be an empathetic forum for this idea.

Prostitutes fulfill a desire to "feel loved," in the intimate ways, a desire felt by people who believe their needs are a great imposition on others. Prostitutes offer a simulacrum of "loving" for people who've given up on "finding love" in purely "social" terms. By renting access to their bodies, they get something they value (money) in exchange for something their clients value (sex). And they offer it with no strings attached ... play for pay ... on a cash basis. They give their clients something the clients can no longer find without paying for their play.

How many of us punters feel that way about sex and "love"? How many of us are mongering because we've given up "looking for love"? How many of us have come to the end of that road, and reached the conclusion that pay-for-play is the only way left for us to find the sweetness we've been dying for?

I woke up this morning with an insight that seems very fundamental, but it IS very uncomfortable: There's love that is giving, and love that is grasping. There's love that's expressed by fulfilling the other's needs, and there's love that's needy and grasping for one's needs to be fulfilled.

Wouldn't the ideal of love be one of trading? One of balance? One of filling the other's needs while the other fills your needs?

Seems to me that, in Western civilization, love has fallen into an imbalance. Too many women have reached the level of grasping all the guy has got, but scorning his needs - and tossing him aside when he has no more to give. To be fair, I have to acknowledge there are guys who grab all the "loving" (i.e. sexual favors) they can get, and discard their "used lovers" when they get attracted to a fresh target; and I also see the "rescuers" of both sexes, attracted by "fixing another's fatal flaws," the co-dependents of the world ... who get "taken," and then discarded, again and again and again.

Is it surprising when a man who has "given all he has to give," who has been bled dry and discarded, again and again, comes to a point where he won't do that any more? But who can he turn to when "Love" turns away?

AND YET: Prostitution is looked on with contempt - it's looked upon as "degrading." Paying for sex is looked on with special contempt, at the level of "How dare a man...?!" And the "paid player" is looked on, at best, as "the victim." (Cf: sexköpslagen, the Swedish "sex-buying" law.) What about the poor bastard who has been victimized, again and again, by the women to whom he's offered his love; who has reached the point where he'd rather pay cash for an hour's sweaty bed-bouncing companionship, than look for someone who's offering it "free" (but as bait)?

I ran into a very interesting phrase, about the sociology of sex work, on the "Border Thinking" web page of sociological maverick Laura Agustin:

I proposed a theoretical framework for the cultural study of commercial sex that would liberate researchers from the restrictions of a debate intensely meaningful to some but highly repressive to many others, centring on whether prostitution can ever be work or must be considered violence against women.
(Sexualities 2007: 10: 403)

Notice the implication of that last phrase - "{prostitution} must be considered violence against women."

It leaves us with "woman the eternal victim," and man "the eternal villain." And it leaves as helpless, not worthy of help, those poor souls who are left emotionally with "nothing left to give."

Basically, the prostitute gives us at least a taste of "the sweetness." And I hold that to be moral.

Any comments?

[Westy]

Didn't Craigslist in the US just have to shut down its "Adult Services" section recently? Previously they had to delist "Erotic Services" or whatever category they used. Then they migrated to something more vague. Now they are being driven out again. This is so silly! Do they want to drive hookers back onto street corners?

The story is ... yes, they have. Under the "services" section, where there used to be a subsection "adult services," there is now a black-box label "CENSORED". At least, that's the way it is in my local Craigslist.

This goes back to the same place as the British "Channel 4" flap. There are a fair number of bluenoses who believe that "sex is only for making children in holy matrimony; sex should not be for fun; sex out of wedlock is sinful and just flat wrong; sex-for-sale is UNCONSCIONABLE, HORRIBLE, and Society should spare no effort to shut it down!!!" Unfortunately, enough of those bluenoses are vocal and self-righteous enough to make these demands stick.

Add in the feminazi viewpoint that "men are insufferable and masculinity should be violently suppressed," throw in a bit of "Help I am a White Slave" bodice-ripping titillation, and you've got a story that should shock the church ladies and shame any man who has two testicles to rub against each other.

(By the way, Rubber Nursey's link led me to an interesting reference to Laura Agustin, and a neat phrase about these do-gooders: "The Rescue Industry.")

[Gentleman Travel]

Didn't Craigslist in the US just have to shut down its "Adult Services" section recently? Previously they had to delist "Erotic Services" or whatever category they used. Then they migrated to something more vague. Now they are being driven out again. This is so silly! Do they want to drive hookers back onto street corners?

[Gentleman Travel]

An article about the UK trafficking documentary. http://www.spiked-online.com/index.p.../article/9496/

By the way, the same docos are being made in every nation around the world at the moment. And I mean *exactly* the same docos...only the destination and country of origin changes. It's nothing but scaremongering.

Does trafficking and sexual abuse exist? Yes, it does (and it's a horrific crime that should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law). But is every migrant sex worker a kidnapped, tortured sex slave? Of course not. That is racist, patronising bullshit.

Absolutely! I saw a similar article about prostitution in Canada just this weekend.
Of course if you go looking for a particular story (entrapped sex workers) you can probably find it.

But if you visit 20 girls working off Craigslist or escort services from the phone book, you will probably find 20 freelancers who chose to work in this field for a variety of reasons - few of them related to lack of choice.

It is outrageous that anyone is forced into prostitution - yet it happens all the time, through various immigration schemes and scams and ethnic criminal gangs. Still, I expect those women are just a small fraction of the "working girls" in my country. If the government was really serious about fighting sex slavery, they could target these immigration scams easily. But governments and "save the hookers" women's groups choose to lump all sex-for-sale into the same pot. Treating a real problem and a non-problem with the same blunt, ineffective instruments.

[Rubber Nursey]

The recent channel 4 documentary on UK television was about sex trafficking in England with a worldwide theme. Girl are 'purchased ' in China and other parts of SE Asia and set to work in brothels under trebbible conditions. Once in the UK the girl was little more than a slave and keep behind closed doors sometime seeing 15 men a day. Of course the girl did not see any of the money and had to work until she paid off the 'debt' that she owed to the traffickers. A really sordid and sorry tail of cruelty and expoltation.

An article about the UK trafficking documentary. http://www.spiked-online.com/index.p.../article/9496/

By the way, the same docos are being made in every nation around the world at the moment. And I mean *exactly* the same docos...only the destination and country of origin changes. It's nothing but scaremongering.

Does trafficking and sexual abuse exist? Yes, it does (and it's a horrific crime that should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law). But is every migrant sex worker a kidnapped, tortured sex slave? Of course not. That is racist, patronising bullshit.

As for contract work (or "debt bondage" as it's often called)...that wouldn't exist if prostitution laws and immigration policies allowed sex workers to travel for work INDEPENDENTLY, rather than forcing them to rely on agents and middle men to get them into other countries. Imagine if a Thai woman could organise her own visa, ring a Sydney brothel about employment, and have the brothel pay her airfare - which she could pay off in less than a day's work. Why would she go to a trafficker if it was that easy to do it herself? Government policies are to blame for trafficking and these global 'crackdowns' are only making things worse.

[Bango Cheito]

That article is actually quite balanced.

It writes some feminist drivel ("no women is born a *****", my reply "no woman is born a toilet cleaning lady", so what),

but writes some pretty open-minded things like

=====================================

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I know very very well a few people who have worked for extended periods of time in BsAs and I've never heard of a police shakedown. Maybe that happens to girls on the streets perhaps I don't know....

[Angus Magee]

Moved over from the Berlin thread as it takes us a bit off the topic of Berlin bordellos.

http://www.internationalsexguide.inf...35#post1064435

This is probably true. However, as long as it is their own decision to earn more from selling sex in Germany than working in a factory in Romania, then it is really not our problem. Not being their customers would actually make their situation worse.

In the bigger picture, of course, we should work for a world where such economic problems don't exist. I think it is possible to do this and at the same time enjoy the cheap sex.

One can avoid this entirely by going to Mettmann, which features only German girls (some might have some non-German ancestry, but then many folks do; the point is that they were born and grew up in Germany, speak fluent German and are German citizens-nothing to do with racism etc). I think it is definitely not a coincidence that the quality of sex (if not the looks of all the girls, at least according to some punters) at Mettmann is much higher than anywhere else. Even if I get comparable quality elsewhere, I know that in Mettmann the girl enjoys it at least as well as I do.

I am in agreement of course. How could I not be as a customer of bordellos and such clubs as the KG. However, I do note that when speaking of personal choice, which boils down to personal responsibility for one’s situation (what is happening in your life), the economically favored among us are the first ones to lawyer up when things go south. Of course they do. It is largely their system of law courts in which the wrongs are addressed. Please do not tell me that the courts also wrk for the common man. Of course they do, after a fashion. They most certainly though favor those who can afford the better lawyer who walks the same halls as the judges, and the politicians who put the judges there to try the cases. I am no lefty, well, maybe a bit. But I have taken a hard look at self responsibility where income is concerned. And believe me it was not in any theoretical sense. I was down in the trenches living my life with no money coming in (I lived for a time as a street person) all the time shaking my fist at “the system”, my parents, God, for putting me there. Until I decided, I put me there. I could take myself out. With a little help from my friends.

At its’ most basic I see that the decision to sell, or buy, sexual favors is largely an unwritten contract. As humans in relationship with other humans we make many such contracts through out lives. Some are more recognized and explicit (I promise to love. honor & obey), some more unspoken. To the extent that you can look deeply at the contract you make with any working girl and honor your side, you will stand a better chance of her honoring hers. Like any contract, there are no guarantees. The more unspoken stuff, the shakier becomes the contract.

I do realize that to speak of all this stuff sort of ruins the fun. So my attitude is to go into the contract, eyes as open as they can be, and take my chances. I am no fool. I look for clues all the time that tell me that the provider will not honor her side. But mistakes are made. When they are made I practice damage control, honor my side as much as I am able (pay the agreed price) and make an exit. I have in the past been horribly ripped off. Now, with 30 some years experience I see the clues and being horribly ripped off has not happened in a good while.

To bring it to the morality question, which is why I moved it here in the first place-at its’ most basic I do not really see that morality has much of a place in contracting a hooker. At least not with regard to the sex. The most important aspect is, I believe, the aspect of up holding your side of the agreement. This involves seeing what it is. What she does, is her business at this level. When we get into the place where a girl is working at a flat rate club and is obligated by the management (her contract with them) to go off to the room with a customer, your contract with her becomes even more complex and hard to unravel. The question remains should you even try?

At this point I say, don’t try too hard. Go have your fun. But be a gentleman. Don’t force things. Watch the place that thinks it has rights, for with those rights come responsibility. This is what we tell the economically depressed among us who want to sit there collecting state money is it not? The girls are doing a difficult, and I believe essential, job in our sex starved society. In some utopia of the future perhaps we will not need such professions. I do not know. For now though, and with respect to the flat rates clubs of Germany, take a look at the contract you make with yourself (very much unspoken) and see if it is really all right with you that you be there. If it is, go for it, but keep an eye out for the hidden clauses, the fine print. It gets you every time, does it not?

AM

[Brazil Specialist]

This article started a lively discussion on one of Jackson's other boards, this morning ... I hope I can get away with posting the URL here:

http://www.argentinaindependent.com/...buenos-aires-/

Reading articles like this one get me to questioning my own morality as a P4P participant. Or am I falling victim to the misandric propaganda again?

That article is actually quite balanced.

It writes some feminist drivel ("no women is born a *****", my reply "no woman is born a toilet cleaning lady", so what),

but writes some pretty open-minded things like

=====================================

According to two specialists in the field, University of Buenos Aires sociologist Santiago Morcillo and Carolina Justo von Lurzer, his doctoral research partner at CONICET (the National Council for Scientific and Natural Research): “What is clear is that these legislations neither offer any protection for people who carry out sexual work nor do they contribute to a safer environment. Instead it’s the opposite: they generate conditions of increased vulnerability.”

Furthermore: “…The police forces themselves often are complicit and active participants in the violence against people who carry out sexual work.”

When asked whether she has experienced violence on the streets, Margarita replies, “When I was working, I didn’t have any problems [from clients]. Only violence from the police.”

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[Param Ahmad]

The recent channel 4 documentary on UK television was about sex trafficking in England with a worldwide theme. Girl are 'purchased ' in China and other parts of SE Asia and set to work in brothels under trebbible conditions. Once in the UK the girl was little more than a slave and keep behind closed doors sometime seeing 15 men a day. Of course the girl did not see any of the money and had to work until she paid off the 'debt' that she owed to the traffickers. A really sordid and sorry tail of cruelty and expoltation.

Does anyone know if this kind of thing goes on in Spain. I thinking of the Chinese brothels in Barcelona more than anything. Are they licensed like the other Brothels in the city centre or are they something else?

What kind of payment do the girls get from the 70euros handed over for the hour?

Alan

Having seen such reports in the news media, I've carefully asked girls working in clubs in Barcelona and elsewhere (Whiskeria Estark/Hotel Diana Plus, New Girls Cabaret & Chelsea I & II in Madrid, Estark 92 in Fuengirola, Estark 95 in Algeciras, etc.) why they are working there. Their responses have left no doubt in my mind they are "damas de compañera" (prostitutes) only because other girls, typically in their home country, have told them how much money they can make and that they are accepting money for sex entirely of their own free will. Sometimes I've seen girls from Estark 92 in Fuengirola sunbathing on the beach nearby the following afternoon where there appeared to be no doubt nobody was restricting their freedom to come and go. On a few occasions I've persuaded a girl from one of Madrid's or Barcelona's clubs to come to my hotel room, and they show up alone, again leaving no doubt they are acting freely. A Romanian girl at a club in downtown Barcelona told me she comes to Spain because there are no similar clubs in Romania. Sometimes girls working at Riviera Club or Saratoga Club in Castelldefels have told me they are going to be going home to Romania or Bulgaria for a few months but after that will be returning to the same club in Spain. One girl at Estark 95 in Algeciras told me she was earning more in one night at Estark 95 than she did in two or three months at her regular job in Romania. I've gotten similar replies from girls working in "all girl staff" shops in West Palm Beach, Florida, who told me after working there (in the sex business) "its hard to go back to a regular paycheck," since regular jobs pay so much less. Conversation with a Korean girl who I met at a "spa" in Rhode Island and later, entirely coincidentally, at another "spa" in Georgia, who told me she lived in Tampa, Florida, left no doubt she was there because it was her best opportunity to make money to support herself and her child. The girl I saw at Garden of Eden in Kelowna, B.C. (Canada) told me she was there because she's a sexual sort of person and decided she may as well get paid for it.

My conclusion after hearing the girls' comments about why they're in the business and asking them questions about it, because of the same ethical concern you have, is that the television, radio, magazine, and newspaper reports about women being kidnapped and forced into prostitution are, usually if not always, false propaganda to justify suppressing prostitution. This propaganda is probably perpetrated by people who dislike prostitution and are in denial about the fact that women work as prostitutes of their own free will primarily because they have found it enables them to make the most money in the shortest period of time.

As for your other question, it varies: As best I can remember, the least they've ever said they get to keep is about half of what you pay.

[Bango Cheito]

This article started a lively discussion on one of Jackson's other boards, this morning ... I hope I can get away with posting the URL here:

http://www.argentinaindependent.com/...buenos-aires-/

Reading articles like this one get me to questioning my own morality as a P4P participant. Or am I falling victim to the misandric propaganda again?

Let's just say I have a lot of inside info on this subject, and the article is complete and utter BULLSHIT... #1 complaint of WG in BsAs these days... WHERE ARE ALL THE FUCKING CLIENTS???