Yeah, Every Little Girl’s Dream is Being a Prostitute…
By: Jayde Bald
Tags: Prostitution, Economics, Gender, Sex Work, Women

Photo by Tong Nguyen van on Unsplash

If you asked a six year old girl what she planned to be when she was a grown up, you’d get a range of answers. Ballerina. Zookeeper. Author. Astronaut. I don’t think prostitution, or the politically correct word ‘sex work’ would come to mind.

If you asked a mother, an aunt, or a grandmother, what they thought their daughters, neices, and grand daughters would do when they grew up, they’d have a list as long as their arms. Lawyer. Professor. Scientist. Artist. Vet. I don’t think they would envision their daughter, neice, or grand daughter as a sex worker.

Ask a father, an uncle, or a grandfather what they think their daughter, neice, and grand daughter what they’ll do as grown ups and they’ll say zookeeper, journalist, chef, actor, and politician. I don’t think any of them would like their daughter, their neice or grand daughter to engage in sex work.

I’m sure there’d be outrage, if not an uprising of parents if high school career days featured sex workers…

Sex work is demeaning, not ‘empowering’. I mean, what woman in her right mind, would enjoy being beaten, peed on, squirted on, and choked-for MONEY? They’re lying if they said they’d do it for free. Besides the above, they’re at risk for STIs and unwanted pregnancies. Condoms and selecting johns with no external sign of disease isn’t a gaurantee they’re not incubating some virus or disease.

I know that there is more to it, that these sex ‘workers’ provide men with disabilities, or male anxiety, a sense that they are valid people. So is going to a psychologist. Or that sex ‘workers’ are performing a vital form of work that is valid to the economy. Sorry ladies, but your body is not a ‘place of work’. A store is. A fire hall is. A salon is. A lab is.

Do a majority of men treat their bodies as ‘places’ of work? no.

Do a majority of men offer their bodies for sexual means in return for money? no.

Why should women think, believe, that they have to do this, if men don’t do it themselves?

Only a small handful of men are gigolos and that’s another matter entirely.

Sex work is the result of childhood abuse, neglect, and lack of educational and skill acquisition. Women turn to prostitution, and all the forms it covers -stripping, escorting, cam sex, etc-because they have no other avenue to procure an income. Sex work is about vulnerability and power.

For example, the following exmaples confirm this imbalanced dynamic.There are millenials turning to being sugar babies and prostitutes to pay off post secondary tuition. In another instance, there are young women financially strapped and wanting to rent, and lacking any safer alternative, are forced to do sexual favours in return for a roof over their head. A third instance is women who are hooked on substances and engage in prostitution to fuel their next fix.

Sex slavery is another matter entirely. Making prositution legal would give traffickers, pimps, and johns a field day. It would mean victims of the slave trade would have a difficult time prosecuting the perps who lured, captured, tortured, and enslaved them.

The men who engage in the above instances know that there is a power imbalance, that had these women not be in dire circumstances, they would not be engaging in this type of work. When there is no choice and there’s vulnerability of some kind, there’s a power imbalance.

What’s even more ironic is that men-who use prostitutes-are often fathers, husbands, brothers, uncles, and grand fathers themselves. The very people who want to safeguard the women in their lives, put other women’s lives at risk of disease, physical harm, and unintended pregnancies, all in the name of a biological urge to have sex.

Now, I’m not anti-sex, however, I believe that sex should happen between two equal, consenting people out of love. Not for money, nor for lust. It should not be a business transcation in any way. Women are human beings, just as men are. I think it’s time men get this idea that they do not own the bodies of half the world’s population.