Is a prostitute a "sex worker" and is "sex work" an industry?
Per Wikipedia: The term "sex worker" was coined in 1978 by sex worker [sic] activist Carol Leigh. Its use became popularized after publication of the anthology, Sex Work: Writings By Women In The Sex Industry in 1987, edited by Frédérique Delacoste and Priscilla Alexander. Using the term "sex worker" rather than "prostitute" also allows more members of the sex industry to be represented and helps ensure that individuals who are actually prostitutes are not singled out and associated with the negative connotations of "prostitute".
Granted, "sex worker" sounds better than "prostitute", "whore", and several other terms but there is no difference between them. "sex workers" is a euphemism for those who sell limited access to their bodies for the customer's sexual gratification. The transactions are arranged individually or may be carried out in a commercial facility, aka, house of prositution, whorehouse, bordello, etc.
Most prostitutes are women, but men also prostitute themselves.
Questions:
- Is it a good thing that "prostitution" (under any name) is stigmatized?
- Do you feel obligated to use the euphemism "sex worker" rather than prostitute or whore?
- Is sex "work"?
- Is sex "an industry"?
- Is selling or buying sexual access a legitimate commercial activity?
- If selling sexual access is a legitimate commercial activity, should it be officially recognized, regulated, and commercially encouraged, like any other trade?
- Is buying sex a legitimate, normal, moral act?
- Do you think "sex workers" (as opposed to "prostitutes") freely choose to sell sex?
- Do you think adverse circumstances is the likely cause of people becoming prostitutes?
- Does promiscuous sexual activity reduce the need for people to buy sex?
- Is "unable to obtain sex any other way" a legitimate reason to use pr
Comments (63)
"Legitimate" is a loaded word.
"Conforming to the law or to rules" is the first meaning of legitimate. "Socially acceptable" often matches the first meaning of "legitimate". The laws and rules are often clear enough, but what is socially acceptable is variable from group to group. Sometimes what is socially acceptable is contrary to the law or rules (a major problem of Prohibition). Many gay men consider various kinds of public sex (tea rooms, cruising parks, etc.) as socially acceptable, even though it is prohibited by law and rules.
According to a YOUGOV [not a government operation] poll, Women judge prostitution more harshly than men and are more likely to think it should be legal. 51% of men and 30% of women think it should be legal, and 36% of men and 50% of women think it should be illegal.
Hypothesize your reaction to a son or daughter coming to you and declaring their intention to begin a career as a sex worker vs. a sports professional. Wherein there is a difference lies the answer to your question. The open minded liberal tends to be open minded and liberal about prostitution as long as it's "them" that's doing it.
I think it should be legal, but would love to see a society where women arent essentially forced to do this kind of work.
Quoting BC
No.
No. I prefer "hoe".
When its transactional, hell yeah.
No. Porn is an industry. Escorting is an industry. Brothels are an industry (e.g. Nevada, Amsterdam, Bangkok, Cologne). Massage Parlors are an industry. Marriage is an industry. "Sex" itself, however, is just an (often consensual) activity.
I've heard it's the "oldest" ...
Yes, everywhere. (This may eliminate or substantially reduce sex trafficking.)
It is when buying from an unpimped hoe.
Unfortunately, all most do not.
Some, female and male, sure.
Different kinks.
Hell yes "unattractive" chronic masturbators need to get-off too!
Quoting Baden
Ah yeah, another reason to feel fortunate that I've remained childless.
Like with drugs, these activities are inherently dangerous, and criminalising them compounds the issue. It is crucial to incorporate a reliable legal framework that facilitates good conduct by providers and consumers of sex work. There's a huge difference between a legal brothel and someone selling themselves on the streets.
I'm of the view that there's nothing inherently wrong with the practice, provided the conditions aren't exploitative or shady. It can be treated like any other trade when conditions are under a safe legal framework.
I'm not always polite--sometimes I'm just plain rude--but there is a reason for those instances. I might call Senate majority leader, Republican Mitch McConnell, an old whore for example. Ditto Donald Trump--maybe crazy old whore for him. I don't expect to get the chance in either case.
I don't object to sex work in principle, with several provisos attached--like it being uncoerced. The 'sex business' isn't subject to any regulation in the United States (just suppression except for some counties in Nevada). The chances of any given person in the sex business getting a raw deal are pretty high.
That's a good point, but the particular sport matters. MMA fighter? Boxer? I'd rather my kid be a sex worker. Ditto for any sports where doping is rampant.
They do, indeed. One of the features of gay bath houses (with which I'm pretty familiar) is that an appropriately sleazy operation provides dim to dark venues where the least attractive can find pleasure. Charles Shively at Harvard theorized that "mandatory promiscuity" would insure that everyone had the opportunity to experience pleasurable sex. (Hey, I did my part back in the day.). James Nelson at United Theological Seminary in his book Embodiment discusses the importance of persons with deformities, immobility, movement disorders, mental illness, etc. being able to experience the sexuality they are embodied with, (He didn't get into methods. It was a theology book, after all.) Sex workers are the obvious solution for both men an women, gay and straight. (Good luck getting funding through the legislature.).
No question about that.
Quoting BC
It's never a "good thing" to stigmatize a classification of people, whether the definition is limited or broad. In this case, it's so broad as to include - at least potentially - whole lot of people are are actually victims. Being powerless is quite bad enough without the moral brand on their foreheads.
Quoting BC
No. I prefer to name each occupation accurately.
Quoting BC
Very often, yes - whether it's part of a job, a contract, an obligation or a coerced subjection.
Quoting BC
In the modern monetized world, every business is called an industry, whether it produces anything or not. If gambling on the stock market and usury are part of the "financial industry", then renting out human bodies as objects of pleasure is part of "the sex industry".
Quoting BC
All legal ways of making money are legitimate.
Quoting BC
Of course it should be recognized, regulated, policed and taxed.
As for commercially encouraged, it's one of many that shouldn't be.
Quoting BC
Legitimate where legal; normal - only since the dawn of civilization; moral is matter of opinion, belief, circumstance and collateral damage.
Quoting BC
How are prostitutes and sex workers opposed? Very few people in this world are really free to choose what they sell - so much depends on the accessible market and the marketability of their assets. I have no idea what percentage of prostitutes and/or sex workers made the choice freely. I suspect, a small minority.
Quoting BC
Sure. Adverse circumstances account for a good deal of what people do.
Quoting BC
Probably. For one thing, it cuts into their earning capacity. For another, they're either too tired or undergoing a course of treatments for an STD.
Quoting BC
What does "unable" mean? Physical disability? Lack of charm? People with all kinds of handicaps date and marry successfully - if they make the effort or accept charity. For those unwilling to compromise, there is always the monastic alternative.
Does it mean such extreme loathsomeness of character that no member of the appropriate gender would willingly touch them? In that case, they're the most likely suspects in the - all too frequent - beating and murder of prostitutes, and it's not 'legitimate' for them to be loose in the world.
Where it's legal to commercialize sex, nobody needs to justify why they buy or sell the commodity. Where it's illegal, no justification is sufficient.
But you haven't said what that difference is. Yes, humans are hypocrites. Perhaps we are all nimbys in our various ways[quote=Bob Dylan] I want ev'rybody to be free
But if you think that I'd let Barry Goldwater
Move in next door or marry my daughter
You must think I'm crazy [/quote]
And it is a dangerous and stigmatised profession, whereas sport is heroic, but the reason for that is I'm not even going to say the word, I'm starting to bore myself... you do the gender maths, as they say.
Quoting Jacques
What about male prostitutes?
We tend to see men as more capable of autonomous choice; less vulnerable. That is not invariably the case, and it certainly does not hold true for abused, addicted and homeless boys.
Quoting Baden
Whereas, many conservatives in 'liberal' cultures have no objection to sexual coercion under the guise of matrimony, and don't object to their children marrying "up" on the socio-economic scale, but do object to their children marrying "beneath" them. Entire conservative cultures have no problem selling their daughters and bullying their sons into arranged marriages. Isn't that part of the sex trade?
As for sports - professional athletes are bought and sold in a specialized international market and nobody thinks anything of it.
Quoting Baden
Better either one than smuggler or soldier, I guess... Next, I'd want to know which sport on the scale of brain damage or irreparable injury by age 30, vs what manner of sex worker on the scale of violent encounters and STD's.
On the whole, I'd prefer everyone's children a better range of choices available to them.
As far as I know this applies to all possible sexes and genders.
Quoting Jacques
I have plenty of acquaintances who worked as erotic masseurs or escorts. Most came from good backgrounds free of abuse, and there no coercion associated with their experience as sex workers. The gay male sex industry is different in this respect from female sex work.
I'm always on guard when a report says that something is very difficult to measurer or hard to track, that there is not nearly enough solid information available, etc. AND THEN come out with an estimate which, according to their earlier statements, is probably not very accurate.
Still, I'm sure boys and men are trapped into prostitution. trafficking happens to women far more often and that's probably as much as can be confidently said -- until someone traipses through the sewers of sex trafficking and nails down hard numbers.
Sexual behavior, in general, is challenging to track because most people tend to behave sexually in private, and don't publicize what, exactly, they did.
The core nature of sex work may not differ around the world, but the details certainly do, depending on the culture, the local economy, "the local" in general.
The urgency of AIDS prevention efforts has helped researchers get behind some of the privacy screens people maintain. But the success of AIDS prevention varies from place to place too.
*****
If one doesn't have police records, or the police enforce law differentially, then one has to rely on participant observers, outside observers, and surveys. In surveys or interviews, self-definition matters. A man might think of himself as a whore (low self-esteem), a prostitute (better self-esteem), a sex worker (better esteem yet) or an entrepreneur (very robust self-esteem). Or, he may cleanly separate the sex work he performs from what he thinks about himself.
In affluent countries, one can carry out stealth sex work. You have heard the phrase, "slept his or her way to the top". I know a guy who did exactly that in the wake of gay liberation (back in the 70s). He was not a man of means but he was young, ambitious, good looking, charming enough and reasonably talented. He chose his partners carefully on the basis of their ability to help him get ahead. (Stupid me never thought of that approach.). Within a few years he was running a new national gay organization in Washington, D.C.
However, all that is about a small group of men. For most men, sex work is just a means to an immediate income, the way a million other jobs are, whether that's in an affluent or poor country. There are advantages and disadvantages, upsides and downsides.
Which is probably lower than the actual figure. The UN doesn't usually exaggerate. For damn sure, even if the actual number is less than estimated, it's more than 0.
https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/press/releases/2021/February/share-of-children-among-trafficking-victims-increases--boys-five-times-covid-19-seen-worsening-overall-trend-in-human-trafficking--says-unodc-report.html nobody denies that the majority of sex trafficking victims is female; what they're saying is that the recent trend targets younger victims.
The important thing to understand in this regard is not knowing for sure what percent is intended for sexual exploitation, but that there is an active, growing, lucrative trade in captive human flesh, both male and female, adult and juvenile. A large - if unspecified - number of people are enslaved.
That's not about sex as a commodity or sex work as a free choice; it's about coercion.
Do you think the sex trade, as it functions today, is in the main, a product of patriarchy?
Do male owners profit most or do you think that there are as many nefarious, powerful 'madames' and female dominated organised crime groups, who control/own the majority of the organised sex trade?
Do you think the majority of the global sex trade is organised?
Do you think the majority of the global sex trade is controlled by organised crime?
As a socialist, would you attempt to bring the sex trade under state control and ownership and offer sex workers the exact same protections as any unionised workers receive?
To what end? They said the figure was an estimate. Whether men and boys constitute 10, 15 or 20% of an [estimated by the US state department] 6 million, 6.5 million or 7 million, it's a substantial number of male victims world-wide. I was attempting to refute the popular impression that coercion applies only to women.
No.
No.
It can be.
Oh yes.
It can be.
Yes. Taxed too.
It can be.
Don't know.
Don't know.
Don't know.
As legitimate as any other reason, I suppose.
An interesting an multifaceted question. I think the total acceptance and normalization isnt beneficial. Going to brothel shouldnt be as normal as going to the gym (where you pay for doing physical exercise that you could basically do without the charge).
Obviously sex is a natural part of human relationship. However making the sex trade totally illegal will have its negative consequences.
It seems that a permissive society where sex isnt confined to marriage is what really decreases prostitution. Which I think has been an improvement.
What do you think of criminalizing the buyer rather than the seller?
That's what the article is about.
It seems to me a more socially responsible way to deal with the issue than many other countries have chosen.
Sex necessarily involves work from at least one participant.
Why would sex be an industry? You mean sex for money? If so, how could it not be an industry?
Well sexual relations are in demand and thus can act as a commodity. Trading in that commodity can thus constitute a business. Referring to the business as a whole would make it an industry.
I think this gets at the "Treadmill Effect," for certain words, whereby if a world is used for a marginalized group, regardless of whether the group first applies the name to itself, it eventually gains derogatory connotations. Then the term must be replaced by a new one. Longer terms like "sex worker," fair better here because long, generic sounding terms don't make for good slurs when slinging invective around.
E.g., the NAACP, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, wasn't trying to be derogatory with the term "colored people," which only later became widely considered inappropriate. Of course, more recently, "people of color," became popular again, so now it seems more acceptable again.
I encountered this in my work with people with developmental disabilities and brain injuries. Some state departments still use the term "retarded," in their name, largely because no widely appropriate term has come to replace it. Retarded grew to have negative connotations, to the extent that it is even awkward to talk about "retarded economic growth," or "the Principle of Retarded Action," in physics. IMO, this grows out of childhood experiences of being told that certain words are wholly off limits, which then taints the word for all contexts, even if it has previously been used is contexts that no one finds offensive. "Oriental," is another such a term.
We also have some turns of phrase that sour even if they aren't derogatory. E.g., William Durant's Story of Civilization is a broadly liberal and open minded project, but the early works (from the 30s-40s) seem quite awkward when they refer to Europe as "the white man's world," or even "Christendom."
This sort of thing is different from out and out slurs, which never were proposed as acceptable terms.
Of course, if you think prostitution is wholly inappropriate, then arguably "sex worker," is also doing the same thing that a term like "collateral damage," is doing. It's trying to make something morally repugnant more abstract so that people don't think about what the term actually entails.
Personally, I'm on the fence. I get the argument that sex work shouldn't not be seen as necessarily different from therapy, which also involves close intimacy for pay, or massage therapy/physical therapy, etc., which also involves close physical contact for pay. I just don't think it totally works, precisely because how prostitution is normally preformed and because reproduction is necessarily more intimate than other forms of physical contact.
That said, if I was going to make one thing illegal, prostitution, where people interact with another living person in some regulated, controlled environment, versus pornography, which I'd argue objectifies people even more and often tends to gravitate towards less respectful depictions of sex, I'd make the pornography illegal first. Plus, it's not like the porn industry isn't known for being generally morally bankrupt either. Prostitution seems less alienating for both parties to me.
That's a very interesting observation. Having considered it for about five minutes, I'm very much inclined to agree. The client can actually have a conversation with a person hired to provide some form of sexual service. Those services vary greatly as to nature, purpose and quality. They certainly can't all be lumped into the same category of interaction. The client can even have some kind of relationship with an inflatable, virtual or robotic surrogate.
Some of these issues were explored in the television series Boston Legal
But watching dirty movies is entirely passive; that really is a commodity to buy, own, use up and throw away. And it doesn't engage the user on any but the most primal level .
There are ways of getting around laws.
Instead of buying sex you buy a very expensive carrot. And the buyer of a very expensive carrot is given the option of sex for free. You are purchasing a carrot, not sexual services.
Similar to getting a free muffin if you buy a cup of coffee. But you can't buy a muffin by itself.
Sounds a bit unwieldy for street prostitution. I mean, where would she keep all those carrots?
I'm not sure if that means sex is an institution or that sex can be viewed from the perspective of institutions.
Well since the majority of sexual relations are NOT a commodity, the latter.
It would be hard for some to recognise and respect a sexual worker. For this reason, it is more important to give them [the prostitutes] a legal status. This can defend them from people who don't understand that prostitution is actually a job. Furthermore, it would help the girls to be more independent from the "pimps" or club owners. So, in my humble opinion, legal status goes before abstract ethical actions.
I personally support the rights of sex workers and the autonomy that comes with engaging in it safely. That means I support the legal frameworks that protect and, at times, encourage sex work to occur.
That said, I am firmly in the camp that going to OnlyFans instead of getting a skilled job is absolutely a cop-out and not something we can sufficiently compare as "work". This seems evidenced by the lack of reasonable responses from OnlyFans models when questioned about their work.
And no. Being good at sex, or presentation of sex is not a 'skill' the way vocational skills are skills. Yes, one could learn carpentry to build only their own home. One can have sex purely in private circumstances. But doing carpentry for someone else is a massively different thing that selling your sexual content online. Particularly if it is essentially of your private sex life (couples who sell content, eg).
interesting opinion
Two spam bots in the same thread? Do you two know each other or is this just a wild coincidence?
I just read this thread. I remember how in rhetoric classes at the university we spent the whole semester chewing over 2 questions: 1. Should prostitution be legalized? 2. Should the death penalty be used/not used as a form of punishment?
At alumni meetings we always remember these questions with warmth and continue the discussions.
It is interesting that over the years, most of them have changed their minds more than once.
At the university we played out scenes of a trial. I was the "defense attorney" for prostitution. I managed to convince the jury then =)
The term also normalizes/de-stygamtizes it. Somewhat. That is both good and bad. It's good we're finally accepting that the sex trade will always be with us, that the sex workers are people too, and deserving of the respect every human deserves.
Quoting AmadeusD
Yes. This is the problem, and it does not seem like a long-term career. It would be good for sex-workers to recognize the relatively short term nature of the career and plan accordingly. I suspect that's rarely done, although I did read about a nursing student who was using sex-work to fund her education. Good for her!
I don't think this reply received the attention it deserves.
Then again, maybe not aye :roll:
I know a few of those examples, and the two i know personally have successfully (to their knowledge) remained anonymous. Absolutely boss shit getting through school like that and hten being a truly productive member of society without debt.
Love your sense of irony. Is professional sport that bad?
When you're older, you'll understand this a bit better.
If people can't stomach something, it seems mean to try and ram it down their throats. :nerd:
A prostitute is not a football player. Vice verse.
Really! Who knew?
Quoting Relativist
Quoting AmadeusD
I am tolerant of other people's sexual behavior. Part of this comes from liberal thinking about behavior, and part of it comes from my own sometimes shameless promiscuous sexual behavior (way in the past--I've aged out of the scene). Whores, hoes, prostitutes, sex workers: is that an ascending scale of value? Or is it all the same?
I am tolerant of commercial sexual behavior, but I don't think it is in the same category as 'normal work'. And I don't see the ardent advocates for the dignity of prostitution as a job ever being tempted to take one of those dignified sex worker jobs.
There is sometimes no dignity whatsoever for the terms of labor for a w, h, p, or sw who has aged out of the better terms of work. Having to solicit blow jobs for $20 is more like whoring--most of us would find it a severe humiliation; it is not dignified, but it is work for certain. Performing sex from an expensive out-call service with much higher pay and more comfort on the job is better sex work, much better whoring, or classier prostitution. But no matter how well paid...
There is a scene in Butterfield 8 where Elizabeth Taylor's character declares, "Mother, I am a WHORE." This is not low self-esteem talking. This is a high class prostitute recognizing the reality of her life.
Would people who think that "sex work" is dignified labor be willing to consider it as a temp, short term, or career job? Well look - you can run your own business (maybe); maintain your own hours of work (usually at night, but not always); be free of income tax; meet interesting people. You have the option of refusing tasks that you don't like (which might be bad for business, at least). Special outfits are not necessary. Wear what you like.
If W, h, p, and sw were like any other job, one wouldn't expect to age out of it quickly. Ballet dancers don't last long--their feet fail them first. But then they can teach, direct, or shift into some other area of performing arts. Lateral mobility is difficult in the sex business. Vertical mobility is mostly downward. It doesn't look good on a resume and recommendations are hard to get. Tired sex workers are just done. Singers and actors, on the other hand -- and truck drivers, programmers, tax accountants, or nurses, can work in their fields and advance until normal retirement.
The terms of work for w, h, p, and sw are not dignified. It generally involves the insertion of a stranger's penis into one's orifices in a range of ways that might very well be unpleasant. Is there some other job that is similar?
Having sex that you want might involve the same act that obtains between a whore and his or her customer, but does anyone value the two acts the same?
I don't see anything that debars sex workers from playing football, should they so choose. The question seems more to be as to whether doing so constitutes a change in profession, or not.
I appreciated Unenlightened's comment about professional sports being a variety of prostitution. It also seems unnatural to pay men (or women) many millions of dollars to play children's games as if it mattered who last had the ball.
There is an element of subservience in many jobs. Your perform as much work as they can get out of you for the least possible amount of pay. The worker is usually not a free agent on the job but is subject to numerous restrictions, a few of which may make sense. If the boss doesn't like you (for any reason) you can be fired without cause (the legal term is "employment at will").
So prostitution sucks (literally) and so does the typical job.
I wouldn't know. There are other more obvious parallels - an enthusiastic amateur league, for one. And I am given to understand that there is a ready market for watching sex workers doing what it is they do, even as for cricket and athletics and swimming. Perhaps the missing ingredient is nothing more than finding suitable sponsorship deals.
Yes, good point.
Quoting Banno
Now you're cooking.
No, I don't think so. Because not all jobs commodify the body for entertainment.
That is also an extremely reductive way to describe most jobs that aren't having sex for money. A football player is commodifying their skills, not their body. Body is required, sure, but you could have hte exact same body, no skill, and no job. I don't personally care, it just seems patently wrong.
Nowhere was I suggesting we start calling everything "prostitution".