absolutely. its not like prostitution is going away any time soon, so better that its legal and more controlled than illegal and more violent/corrupt etc. and besides if a woman, or a man for that matter, wants to make money by being a sex worker then, at the end of the day, it should be their choice not someone else’s.

eloise-xxx:

evolvingmatter:

taegancharisse:

enslaved:

Yeah I definitely see this side to, it’s the opinion I held before I started reading it but now I’m thinking:

– at least 90% of prostitutes are women, surely this is just another type of gender inequality, allowing men unlimited access to a woman’s body if they have the money for it. Maybe it reinforces the sense of entitlement men have?

– Some studies have shown that sexual assault increases when prostitution becomes more socially acceptable

– Amsterdam didn’t end sex trafficking, at least two thirds of prostitutes there are immigrants and if anything the criminal gangs behind brothels are stronger are wealthier

– A non-trafficked prostitute may CONSENT to sex in exchange for payment, but consent does not indicate an actual desire to have sex. Is it a type of sexual assault to have sex with someone who doesn’t actually want it, but who is vulnerable in some way and who is doing so due to financial circumstances? Consent, in legal terms, is more like a ‘not a no’ rather than a ‘yes.’ I don’t think you would have half as many (female) prostitutes if women were not more susceptible to poverty.

But yeah, lots of other studies have shown that sex workers themselves are in favour of legalisation so really I don’t know.

You should read some stuff evolvingmatter and clarawebbwillcutoffyourhead and misscherrylikesitdirty have written. They’ve written about this and have linked to content that explains how the decriminalization of sex work is 100% necessary in order for sex workers to be safe (as far as I understand).

Basically, whether or not full-service sex workers are happy with their jobs, they absolutely deserve the right to be able to report crimes against them without the fear of being sexually assaulted, stolen from, ignored, or arrested by the police or other people.

Thanks!

Firstly, sex workers are not generally in favour of legalisation: we’re generally in favour of decriminalisation, which is a critical difference. Plenty of legalised jurisdictions still suck to work under and still have shitty laws that detrimentally affects us.

Whether or not 90% of sex workers are women, abstract moral notions about gender equality should not just trump real women’s safety and lives. Civilians love to blabber on about sex work in the abstract without ever having to really think about what the laws that come with that do to real women.

Explicitly associating migrant sex worker numbers with sex trafficking, as you just did, is fucked. It is hardly surprising that sex workers from countries that are poorer and have worse laws on sex work are likely to go to countries that are both wealthier and persecute them less. Again, this is a statistic that only holds the value you’re taking from it if you haven’t thought it through very much. The allegations about “criminal gangs” are eye-rolling material in the absence of sources.

As for the last bit, if you have never done sex work for economic survival, you have no right to have feelings on whether or not that equates to consent. EVER. And you doing it is rape culture in action. The ubiquitousness of societal bullshit about how sex workers can’t be raped is not helped when so-called feminists spout shit about how we can’t consent, and so us being actually raped is just a regular day at work.

Conflating consent with desire is not only dangerous for sex workers, it threatens to unravel the basis of the entire labor economy. (Not that I’m necessarily saying that’s inherently a bad thing, but it’s for a different post.) Like, if people were only expected to consent to engage in activities they were *as enthusiastic about* as recreational sex with chosen partner(s), the fabric of our society would literally unravel. NOBODY is consenting to clean public toilets or shovel shit or mass assemble electronics or work the graveyard shift with the enthusiasm they are consenting to their orgasms. Nobody. That doesn’t mean the people who do those jobs are being coerced into doing them. It doesn’t mean they should have their personal agency usurped by some all-knowing moralistic savior. It just means they are trading their labor – the use of their bodies and skills – for compensation in order to provide for their basic needs. That’s all work, not just sex work.

#tfwyoutrytotrashonsexworkandenduptrashingoncapitalism