An opinion piece on Prostitution and injustice-- discuss

[Fountain_Of_All_Knowledge]

Do you work for/with Ruhuma mate?

Hi all.

Was just reading an article on the British Independent online, titled "Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Like Generations before us We make excuses for the clear Injustices of our Age." A lot of it touches on a range of moral and ethical issues stretching across the spectrum of social injustices that exist in the world, but there was one paragraph in it that struck me, as it was about prostitution. Here's the paragraph copy/pasted in full:


But the idea that there is no problem as long as there is consent is flawed for several reasons. First, people sometimes have to choose terrible things because in practical terms they have no choice. Prostitution is a good example. There are some, maybe many, Belle de Jours for whom sex work is not a last resort but a deliberate career move, but in many cases women are driven to prostitution out of desperation. Any man who thinks prostitution is never exploitative just as long as the woman isn't being physically forced into the job is surely deluded.

Here's the link to the full article for those who might want to read the whole thing:

Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Like Generations Before Us, We Make Excuses for the Clear Injustices of Our Age | CommonDreams.org


Any thoughts on this folks? Would like to see the ladies weigh-in on this (and of course the gents as well).

[Cable87]

Do you work for/with Ruhuma mate?

That answer to that is no.

As I said, I was reading this article, and there was this paragraph about prostitution stuff right in the middle of it. The rest of the article makes no other mention of it. I have to assume that it was put there as an easy and emotive example to get people noddig an agreement with the argguments put forth in the article as a whole.

I agree with Doozer's take on it, that it's another example of the dominant discourse on prostition among the general public, and that seems to be the "woman as victim" argument against prostitution/escorting. The quote from the article seems to give at least a nod to the possibility that people could, at least hypothetically, enter the job of their own free will, but the last line of the quote where the author claims that men are "deluded" to think that prostitution is not an exploitative activity, even if there's no one (or perhaps also nothing, such as economic desperation) 'forcing' them into the industry, really strikes me as something which raises some interesting points. It is along these lines which I'd like to see a discussion form.

Are we punters exploiting the ladies we visit, even if there's no type of force or coersion, direct or indirect, which has functioned to guide them into the industry?

[nicegirlsarenice]

Like Generations before us We make excuses for the clear Injustices of our Age"

And like generations before us, it's usually the ones who stand up the highest with their moral outrage, and are most self-righteous and indigant who have been full of shit the whole time and overlooking the real travesties and injustices.

[Cable87]

And like generations before us, it's usually the ones who stand up the highest with their moral outrage, and are most self-righteous and indigant who have been full of shit the whole time and overlooking the real travesties and injustices.

Well said, Nicegirls!