I am interested in our society's reaction to the idea of prostitution. In particular, why do prostitutes have such a terrible reputation?

Seems to me that selling sex for money is not essentially different from providing other personal services like manicures or hairdressing. But our society looks down on prostitutes and all the other names for them are very negative. Why, for Goodness Sake? It's just another job. I can think of other professionals that I respect FAR less - starting with politics.

I suppose that it's not a valued profession - it doesn't require much training and every woman has the appropriate equipment. It's also essential to intimately touch people you might not like - but nurses etc know all about that too. So it might be that the ill-educated and desperate gravitate into it. But I think that what is keeping better educated women out of it is the social disapproval - particularly the disapproval of other women.

I can sit down for tea with a prostitute without degrading her or trying to get a freebie. But it's a rare woman who could do the same.

Why not, ladies? Tell us how you feel......

There are a couple of sweeping generalizations there - I don't see how men or women are any different in views towards prostitutes.

SOCIAL DISAPPROVAL is keeping me from prostitution?!? There's a murder trial going on in Vancouver right now for a serial killer who is accused of murdering 48 prostitutes.

Cold streets, violence . . . those keep me from prostitution MUCH more than social disapproval.

There are prostitutes everywhere in my neighbourhood. I chat with them all the time because they love my big, friendly dog.

They're so street smart and it makes me sad to think that an addiction or a shitty home life sometimes causes your life to go in the gutter.

One prostitute was yelling at a john the other night because he didn't have a license plate on his car - how smart was she to realize that? I wouldn't have noticed. Who knows what he might have had in mind for her?

Another one was pulling my dog out of a bush because "there are a lot of junkies here and who knows what he'll find", she said. I had just left him there for a minute near a popular spot for junkies while I ran into the store.

She chatted with me for a while and casually mentioned she left home when she was 13. How fucking bad must her life have been to leave her home at 13?

You're a good person, Steph. But I have to say that the hatred revealed by many women when prostitutes are mentioned shocks me. Like they feel personally threatened by a rising tide of sewage. I guess that most men either don't care or have an attitude like yours.

And don't forget that the street girls probably represent the bottom end of the business - that's not a criticism of the prostitutes, more of the society that prevents them working in a sensible, safe and comfortable environment. In Sydney they're experimenting with a city-run house where street girls can take their tricks, no questions asked. That's a start.

The other end of the market is the escort agencies and independent call-girls. No cold streets for them.

Sounds like you wouldn't have any trouble inviting your friends for a tea (or coffee). Good for you!

The idealism of the pretty life of an escort is not the typical lifestyle of women in the sex business. Steph is right on in her description!

Whether or not I would have tea with someone has nothing to do with what they do for a living it has more to do with who I come in contact with on a daily basis. I do not find myself in the places where the hookers hang out in my town. It's unsafe. I wish they did not have to hang out their either but drugs= $$ and $$ = sex for them.

Very few women are high paid call girls and to think that is the norm is to glorify a business filled with danger.

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You can chalk it all up to socieity's repression of good clean healthy view of sex.

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Sex is one of nine reasons for reincarnation.The other eight are unimportant...Henry Miller

Yes, Lakritze, but it seems to me that a lot of the repression comes from women. (Not Pixies ladies, of course, they tend to think before talking.)

Take a family friend - cheerful, outgoing, intellgient I suppose - she walked into my home office and saw my screen saver. (Need I say that my screen saver is slides of women showing their best.) "Just tarts!" she snorted and went off in a huff. Just tarts? Where does she get off looking down on other folk?

I have used the services of prostitutes at times.

I have never picked one off the streets but used agencies. There were some very decent persons amongst them and I consider their occupation to be honest and necessary.

One embarrassing time was when I went to a brothel and found that the lady who lived directly opposite to me was a working girl.

We both never spoke of it but I did withdraw (if that is an appropriate word in the circumstance, LOL) from the appoint ment.

I would never hold the fact that a woman (or man) was a sex worker as something detrimental to them.

grumbleguts!
Why? Wasn't she good looking? Sounds like a perfect arrangement if you ask me. You could have made your own special appointments with a discount I would think.

You sound hypocritical in your post, not going through with an appointment because she was your neightbor, then saying that you would never hold the fact that she was a sex worker as something detrimental to her.

What am I missing here? Please explain.

Hve you heard the expression shitting in your own nest?

This lady was a friend of my ex's so I thought it innapropriate and embarrassing to proceed. She was not very comfortabale with it either.

I believe it was sensible not hypocritical. I certainly did not treat her any different when I spoke to her later at home and did not have any guilt problem because I did not have sex with her.

Ok, you've elaborated with information left out of the previous post. I would have done the same in those circumstances.

to be very frank i had a tea and even dinner with a sex worker, and i never knew she was a sex worker, and i sold the insurance to her... and i treated her as my valuable customer too.
later i found she is a sex worker.. but you must understand that i am talking some facts...
she behaved with me far better and far decent than any other women customer i have met...

let us treat them with respect... thats all i have to say...

ericthered,

I suspect that your image of a prostitute is coloured by the so-called

noble geisha.

In another life I worked in Aussie Customs Investigation Section,

and dealt with a number of prostitutes as informants.

None were there by choice, but merely as the most lucrative of

the shitty choices available. A couple of them had the option taken away

from them by pimps who fed them drugs, but all were trapped

in the spiral.

Tea with a prostitute? Why?

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Calm, quiet, smooth, devastating

Oldfart - you're right of course. BUT that's not what I was saying. I don't have a rosy view of the street girls' lives. (although don't forget that you were looking at the ones who are most exploited).

Point is not 'most prostitutes are wonderful people' but 'why do so many people hate them so much, when they don't know anything about them'? And especially, why are are women commonly so negative about them? 'Sex workers' are beginning to be more socially acceptable - the New Zealand parliament has an ex-sex worker, but still....... Women in particular tend to hate the idea of them.

Why?

Some women feel that prostitutes drive a wedge in the cohesion

of the family. Where a woman is THE sex partner, all is well, but

a prostitute gives the partner a potential avenue of pleasure/

satisfaction/sexual fulfillment the woman may not wish or be

able to match.

Enthusiastic amateurs are equally frowned apon.

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Calm, quiet, smooth, devastating

oh a great topic by george carlin

"i don't understand why prostitution isn't legal, selling is legal and fucking is legal, why isn't 'selling fucking' legal"

giving someone an orgasm isn't a bad thing

"in the army you get a medal for spraying naplalm on people, in the US you go to jail for giving someone an orgasm, maybe i'm not suppose to understand it"

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