Buying money

[Desiremakesmeweak]

with sex.

There are too many people who go around with this two-dimensional idea and supposed 'moral' belief about people 'paying for sex.'

Nobody pays for sex.

People buy money WITH sex.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

with sex.

There are too many people who go around with this two-dimensional idea and supposed 'moral' belief about people 'paying for sex.'

Nobody pays for sex.

People buy money WITH sex.

Uh...

1) your last two statements are completely equivalent. It's fee for service.

2) what's a 2 dimensional idea? Does it have depth and breadth but no width?

3) Virtually every culture has come up with the idea that paying for sex is a bad idea. Generally it's not a great deal for the women, it's a disease vector, and it's thought to weaken other relationships. I'm always amused when someone suddenly announces that a common belief across a number of cultures and a few thousand years of history is "wrong". It can happen but it's not the way to bet.

4) why on earth is this in the Author's Hangout? It sounds sociopolitical. Take it to the general board.

 

[TxRad]

Actually, everyone pays for sex one way or another.

 

[Nezhul]

It's not actually trading sex for money that is frowned upon. It is trading ANYTHING for sex that is.

I do not support the ban on sexual services, BTW. I think everyone would have been more happy if prostitution was legal and brothels were regulated. Both the clients and the workers are more protected that way.

 

[Carnevil9]

You don't pay the hooker for sex. You pay her to GO AWAY afterwards.

 

[TxRad]

You don't pay the hooker for sex. You pay her to GO AWAY afterwards.

A very interesting spin.

 

[Paul_Chance]

It's always the hidden fees that get you.

 

[TamLin01]

Does this call for a "Cool story, bro"?

 

[hylas_]

I can get behind what I think you're trying to say here, but this is a pretty confusing way to say it :/

 

[Handley_Page]

with sex.

There are too many people who go around with this two-dimensional idea and supposed 'moral' belief about people 'paying for sex.'

Nobody pays for sex.

People buy money WITH sex.

The prostitute (sorry - "sex worker") might acquire money with sex, but her [?] client won't.

It's been going on a long time, then.
Practically every army that's trawled about the world had a load of 'camp followers' which group included ladies who hired out their bodies so a soldier could have his way and she'd earn a few coins.

 

[Hypoxia]

One of my fave truisms: Even female butterflies prostitute themselves for nectar.

That's just another exchange of valuta for goods and services to satisfy our drives. Our terms 'buy' and 'sell' assume viewpoints from different sides of an exchange. 'Swap' is just as valid -- swapping something we value for something we want.

 

[Bramblethorn]

3) Virtually every culture has come up with the idea that paying for sex is a bad idea. Generally it's not a great deal for the women, it's a disease vector, and it's thought to weaken other relationships.

...but the relationship between those things isn't what one might assume. Prohibition and stigma do more to cause those negative aspects of sex work than to cure them.

http://www.scarletalliance.org.au/library/saunders99

In general, sexual health terms Australian sex workers also perform well often reporting lower rates of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) than the general population. For example, a 1989 study at the Brisbane Special Clinic in Queensland concluded that relative risk for female sex workers of developing acute bacterial STDs was half that of other female clinic attendees (Harcourt, 1994: 217). During the 1995 and 1996, the period that I was director of the Sex Industry Network program, Clinic 275, Adelaide's primary STD treatment clinic, reported that sex workers tested lower on all STDs
than the general South Australian population...

While peer education strategies have been incredibly successful [for STI prevention] in and of themselves, these results probably could not have been achieved without liberal attitudes towards 'harm reduction' and changes to the enforcement of prostitution law in many Australian States. For example, Christine Harcourt, Senior Researcher at Sydney Sexual Health Centre and the Deputy Mayor of South Sydney, commented recently that "scientific literature on the public health outcomes of prostitution indicates that the best results are achieved within a non-coercive environment in which sex workers have a large measure of control over their own work conditions... from a public health perspective the decriminalisation of brothel prostitution was an essential step in the process of harm minimisation and the maintenance of health improvements within the sex industry (Harcourt, 1997)."
Whatever one's opinions about the sex industry, the Australian experience indicates that the repealing
of anti-prostitution laws creates a climate in which the overwhelming majority of sex workers access health and welfare services, network about health concerns, and create safer working environments for themselves in consultation with business owners and managers.

 

[NotWise]

A few years ago an old friend of mine stood at a national professional convention and commented, "To compare our work to prostitution is an insult to all honest sex workers." He got a reaction.

If you work with "professionalism" as your highest standard then prostitution should seem very familiar. We normally do what our client pay us for, regardless of whether it fits our personal ethics and often regardless of whether we believe it to be true. We simply offer a service for hire.

In my experience, prostitution is common among attorneys and engineers and several related fields; contemplate the ethical standards of a professional witness. We differ from prostitutes in that we need fewer trips to the doctor, we get paid more, and (in most social circles) we got a lot more respect.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

...but the relationship between those things isn't what one might assume.

I was talking about a historical belief spanning hundreds to thousands of years. Yes, today a prostitute can stay relatively clean. Cf. Syphilis among prostitutes in victorian London.

Frankly, I'm not especially interested in a couple of precious, first-world places like Australia or Nevada which have managed to make prostitution tolerable (and how tolerable is under debate in both places). Before I hear nice essays on buying dollars with sex, I'd like to hear the plan for Haiti, much of Africa, Thailand, most of China, most of the middle east, or even the surprisingly large underground sex trade in the US.

And last I knew Australia still had a problem with underaged sex workers. At least it did in 2008, and when I google sex trade and Australia I get a lot of talk about a lack of exit strategies, moves by the sex industry to change laws to get more access to poor communities (rich sources of exploitable labor)... are you sure you want to hold it up as a model? Apparently other Australians don't.

Anyway, if anyone wants to convince me the sex industry is a good idea... if your aged 7-16 year old daughter approached you and said "Dad, I want to be a sex worker when I grow up!", how would you react? It's a corny test but the couple of times I've pulled it on my more liberal American friends, their expression said it all.

 

[LIVINRFANTASIES]

Dollie

I have never been paid money for sex or sex acts but I've gotten lots of cheap jewelry, T-shirts, and food. I also have a husband that still pays me in many ways.


if your aged 7-16 year old daughter approached you and said "Dad, I want to be a sex worker

In my teens my mother said she was training me to be a whore. I married instead but this was after much pre training but no intercourse.

I know it was true because mom and my older sister were nymphos and had many men.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Frankly, I'm not especially interested in a couple of precious, first-world places like Australia or Nevada which have managed to make prostitution tolerable (and how tolerable is under debate in both places). Before I hear nice essays on buying dollars with sex, I'd like to hear the plan for Haiti, much of Africa, Thailand, most of China, most of the middle east, or even the surprisingly large underground sex trade in the US.

Yeah, working in the sex industry is pretty grim in many of those places.

Likewise agriculture, fishing, mining, textiles manufacturing, military service, waste services, chemical manufacturing, ship-breaking... and sexual abuse is rife in quite a few of those too. (Not to mention prisons, which are often used as sources of cut-price labour, also with plenty of sexual abuse.) But people find it easier to focus on the evils of the sex trade.

I expect some of that is just the human tendency to obsess about sex. And I'd guess that a big part is because most of us have never paid for sex, but most of us HAVE bought a cheap T-shirt made in a fire-trap in Bangladesh, munched on chocolate harvested by children in Ghana, and opined about it on a device made by overworked labourers on a production line somewhere in Asia, using rare metals sourced from child labour in the Congo. It's easier not to think about how many slaves it takes to support our own livestyles.

Every so often Thai police have a big raid on some brothel where they "rescue" dozens of women from sex work. Great publicity. What doesn't get so widely publicised is that many of those women end up back in sex work shortly afterwards, because it's no good to say "this job is bad and we will free you from it!" if you don't have a better career to offer them.

Sex work is tough, and it certainly can be dangerous. But (grossly generalising) it tends to pay better for shorter hours than most of the alternatives that are available for somebody with no specific career skills. If you're a single mother trying to support a young child, sex work for five hours a day is more viable than sewing clothes for sixteen.

And last I knew Australia still had a problem with underaged sex workers. At least it did in 2008, and when I google sex trade and Australia I get a lot of talk about a lack of exit strategies, moves by the sex industry to change laws to get more access to poor communities (rich sources of exploitable labor)...

I'm not familiar with that particular issue (would be interested in reading about specifics, if you have a link?), but... that's the point of capitalism. People do things they might not want to do, so they can afford stuff they want or need, and poor people especially. You don't see a lot of rich folk signing up to go down the mines or work in slaughterhouses.

I'm not wild about that - and as we discussed a while back, it's starting to run into problems with automation - so I'm interested in hearing about alternate ideas like universal income. But it's an economy-wide issue, not particular to sex work.

are you sure you want to hold it up as a model? Apparently some other Australians don't.

Fixed that for you.

There are twenty million of us in this country. If I let "somebody in Australia disagrees with you" dissuade me from opinions, I wouldn't have any opinions at all.

My rule of thumb is, I listen to people who know the most about the issue being discussed, and when it's about people's well-being I listen to the people whose well-being is most directly affected. I have never heard any sex worker say "gosh things would be better if my job was illegal".

Anyway, if anyone wants to convince me the sex industry is a good idea... if your aged 7-16 year old daughter approached you and said "Dad, I want to be a sex worker when I grow up!", how would you react?

Same way I'd react if my kid wanted to be a cop or a prison guard or a soldier or a merchant banker: "Oh, okay, why is that?" *

Then I'd listen to their reasons. If I felt they were missing important information, I'd supply that information. Depending on the kid and their age, I might put them in touch with somebody who's worked in the industry and can give them a better picture of what it's like.

And when they're eighteen... at that point, my role is not to dictate their choices, but to improve their options. If I think sex work would be dangerous and harmful to my kid, it's pointless to tell them "no". I need to understand why they've decided that's their best option, and focus my efforts on giving them better options.

*This approach can also save a lot of embarrassment in the event that the kid doesn't know what they're saying. I recently attended a parenting talk by the lovely Kaz Cooke, who told us about the time her daughter asked "Mummy, what's a streetwalker?" So she launched into an age-appropriate discussion of sex work, why people do it, why it's important not to judge, etc. etc. Daughter listened and then said "okay, but why do they wear stilts?"

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

There are so many aspects about this that might be considered.

I think the 'pay for sex' phrase comes from having to see things constantly from a relatively 'traditional' or at least traditional style of, male point of view.

Most of the time people (except in rather recent years where there is this hype about LGBTYUGSADCVBDFVHNJHBGMG + Muslims...) assume males are 'paying for sex' (with females).

In my own mind, having come from an economics and banking/corporate law and finance background - I have to look at the idea that money is fungible but really, sex is not (well it's not to me because I have had at least sufficient relationships and involvements to know that some people are WA-A-A-AY better at sex than others!).

My outlook definitely affects the way I would approach any story that has to do with 'pay to play' stuff.

I'm a little surprised at many of those here (on an erotic writing site) who are expressing what I would not say are conservative views, but low-level of knowledge views masquerading as prurient or conservative.

EVERYBODY ALREADY KNOWS that people with drug problems or who are from disadvantaged backgrounds or have various actual 'problems' pose health and other risks to people - and they do that anyway, whether you want to talk about sex or driving cars.

My honest opinion on this question: 'is sex a natural act and does more or less every normal person have a realistic grasp, by instinct, of performing it...' - is 'no.' They do not. Sure, they can 'do' it - and they can have babies. And that's as far as it goes for most people who perhaps convince themselves they even know what sex is. That is to say, what sexual expression and sexual pleasure and satisfaction, are.

'Pay for sex.'

Don't be ridiculous.

The commodity is always the fungible thing. Sex is not fully fungible. Everything that requires the application of human intelligence and mind and control and structure and style - has a hierarchy of quality.

In one sense there is no such thing as 'paying for sex with money.' In most cases you will be paying for parody with money.

You might be able to 'pay for sex with price.' The question of value in the trade, or swap, or exchange - as some have suggested - is very significant.

 

[sr71plt]

All of this convoluted discussion is amusing. I've been paid for sex (as in "money exchanged hands") but I've never paid for it in that sense. I don't have any high faluten' thought that I wasn't being paid for services rendered or that I'd be with the guy otherwise.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

In light of a few recent comments by the senior elite of New York journalists (I'm not going to mention names) who talked about Kanye West attempting to 'leave the Illuminati' (that was what was said, not what I necessarily 'believe') and that he had 'too much knowledge of the sex parties of the New York upper crust,' it cause me to go back and look at some books on Sydney Biddle Barrows and even look up a book she had written about herself.

She describes what was going on back then, how she had gotten into the particular business itself that was construed in the courts as potentially 'prostitution' and there was considerable discussion in the books and in the court case about what the Law 'technically' thought prostitution was.

Barrows herself suggested the matter is the reverse of the way it is usually depicted in the popular mind - and I'm inclined to agree with her. Certainly, she had an agenda saying what she did say but I still think she was more 'right' than 'wrong.'

I wasn't thinking in terms of how any private individual approaches the matter, more the way it is exploited by corporate animals... And I have certainly seen that side of things.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

There are so many aspects about this that might be considered.

I think the 'pay for sex' phrase comes from having to see things constantly from a relatively 'traditional' or at least traditional style of, male point of view.

Most of the time people (except in rather recent years where there is this hype about LGBTYUGSADCVBDFVHNJHBGMG + Muslims...) assume males are 'paying for sex' (with females).

In my own mind, having come from an economics and banking/corporate law and finance background - I have to look at the idea that money is fungible but really, sex is not (well it's not to me because I have had at least sufficient relationships and involvements to know that some people are WA-A-A-AY better at sex than others!).

My outlook definitely affects the way I would approach any story that has to do with 'pay to play' stuff.

I'm a little surprised at many of those here (on an erotic writing site) who are expressing what I would not say are conservative views, but low-level of knowledge views masquerading as prurient or conservative.

EVERYBODY ALREADY KNOWS that people with drug problems or who are from disadvantaged backgrounds or have various actual 'problems' pose health and other risks to people - and they do that anyway, whether you want to talk about sex or driving cars.

My honest opinion on this question: 'is sex a natural act and does more or less every normal person have a realistic grasp, by instinct, of performing it...' - is 'no.' They do not. Sure, they can 'do' it - and they can have babies. And that's as far as it goes for most people who perhaps convince themselves they even know what sex is. That is to say, what sexual expression and sexual pleasure and satisfaction, are.

'Pay for sex.'

Don't be ridiculous.

The commodity is always the fungible thing. Sex is not fully fungible. Everything that requires the application of human intelligence and mind and control and structure and style - has a hierarchy of quality.

In one sense there is no such thing as 'paying for sex with money.' In most cases you will be paying for parody with money.

You might be able to 'pay for sex with price.' The question of value in the trade, or swap, or exchange - as some have suggested - is very significant.

Not one word of this makes sense.

When I go to a good restaurant, I'm paying extra because the cook there is a fungible commodity with a skill I value - he cooks steak better (and gets better steak), than Longhorn. I'm paying for a higher level of skill, better materials, and maybe presentation. But regardless of that, this is fee for service, nothing more, nothing less. I hand over dollars, I get back something of quality that took intelligence to create - but there's no fancy philosophy that changes it from "fee for service" to anything else. Case in point: if the quality doesn't match the price I'm going elsewhere next time. Others can provide this service;so the service is fungable, unless perhaps you know the best cook in the world.

Guys pay for sex when they can't get it for free. In other words they are market driven and seek the best price. Some guys end up in loving relationships and sex comes as part of the package; that's the happy outcome. When the others open their wallets, they are very aware that they are paying. What they are paying for is sexual service. The women is a service provider and I'm told there are guys who get off on the fundamentally dehumanizing aspects of the exchange. (Take the little dark thrill of tipping a waiter and thinking "I'm so glad I'm not a waiter" and multiply it a thousandfold, and that's what I'm talking about.)

Maybe you object to a male point of view, but as it's usually males laying down their hard-earned cash to participate in the activity, I think they are entitled to frame the exchange as "I paid a whore to suck my cock" if they like. The customer, after all, is always right.

I'm always entertained by folk who think that if they *redefine terms*, they can redefine reality. t doesn't work. You can't often solve real problems by using different noises. Word choice matters in fiction - inbut reality you only want the simplest definition that covers all the facts. Fact: spending money to get something is called paying. To pay: transitive v. To give money to in return for goods or services rendered: pay the cashier.

End of discussion.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

Ah na na na na nah.

It's not the 'end of the discussion;' it might be the end of the discussion FOR YOU. Because you're fixed in your thinking, maybe. You've gone ahead and told us 'reality is reality' more or less and presumed automatically that you know what reality therefore, is. Hoping that everyone else shares your opinion, I suppose.

Even so, there are a couple of points you make which are right to me: 'being a good cook is a fungible commodity.'

I kind of agree with that. You even went as far as I would in thinking about it that way - you added: 'unless you know the best cook in the world.'

Some people think Ferenc Adria is the best cook in the world - he might not be but when he was doing work for the public you would still have to book ONE YEAR IN ADVANCE!

Money though, is much more fungible than anything else, especially food - commercially available food is definitely not the equivalent metaphor for sex. There are people who don't like meat, some people don't eat meat. Some people are allergic to wine. Some people don't like heavy sauces. And so on.

On the other hand money is always just money.

Sex is never JUST sex - except when it is and that is already a pejorative statement when you say such a thing: 'the sex was just sex.'

To me you are trying to assert or insisting there is this 'reality' that men have some ultimate power to use money to get 'sex.' They don't. They can get bad sex, or mediocre sex, or very risky sex, MORE OFTEN than 'never,' using money.

But not 'always.' And NEVER GOOD OR GREAT SEX.

That's your 'The End' right there - you CANNOT BUY GREAT SEX just whenever or with WHOMever you want. CANnot. There's your 'reality.'

I think so.

You might be right if you qualified 'sex' to 'sex as a commodity/mediocre or bad sex or intentionally demeaning sex.' (The latter of which 'might' be, but not necessarily IS always great/good sex).