Here is an example of how the hobby is portrayed by the media and non-profit groups that fight and research it.
The research group reminds me of the Pink Cross, a group founded by a former porn actress that tries to convert porn girls to God. According to her, porn is all about drugs and the abuse of women. While that does happen, I have known many porn girls that walked into World Modeling (back in the day) on their own. Drove themselves to the set and cashed the checks.
Some snippets from the article but read it!
“Overall, the attitudes and habits of sex buyers reveal them as men who dehumanize and commodify women, view them with anger and contempt, lack empathy for their suffering, and relish their own ability to inflict pain and degradation.”
“Sex buyers in the study committed more crimes of every kind than nonbuyers, and all the crimes associated with violence against women were committed by the johns.”
“Prostitution has always been risky for women; the average age of death is 34, and the American Journal of Epidemiology reported that prostitutes suffer a “workplace homicide rate” 51 times higher than that of the next most dangerous occupation, working in a liquor store.”
“Research indicates that most prostitutes were sexually abused as girls, and they typically enter “the life” between the ages of 12 and 14. The majority have drug dependencies or mental illnesses, and one third have been threatened with death by pimps, who often use violence to keep them in line.”
The article goes on to cover the issue of trafficking (Adults and children) which does need to be abolished without a doubt.
One post below I mentioned I had a friend who is sex therapist. She published about 8 or 9 books and was always being called for quotes or comments. When magazine want to write an article like this, they do a "study" with a sympathetic group. Notice how this was done by a SF women's group- now, what do you suppose their agenda is?
They offer no description of how the study was conducted. That's because it wouldn't meet anybody's definition of rigorous, non-biased research. And those quotes? Does anybody talk like that on TER? Those quotes (without attribution) are from the people that made the "study." I guarantee it.
Anyway, my friend would frequently get calls from magazines to verify the conclusions of these sort of bogus studies. More often than not, she told them that they were 100% wrong and they shouldn't write the article. Guess what- they not only would write the article, they'd use her name to lend credibility! She finally quit talking to the press. And these were from magazines we all know, and typically considered credible.
This is what now passes for journalism. The editor wants to write a salacious article on sex in order to sell magazines. They commission some non-scientific study by a group with a sympathetic agenda to support their premise. Then they basically write whatever they want and use the "study" as justification.
Other than the fact that this article illustrates your point of how we're portrayed in the media, it's not worth two minutes of anybody's time to read.
The view they are supporting with the study is called the "Oppression Paradigm" and it says that all sex work is a form of oppression and exploitation of the sex worker.
One can find evidence to support that view, but much of the evidence tends to come from sex workers who do work in oppressive conditions (street walkers, for example, or low end, exploitative strip clubs). Higher end sex workers do not report the same type of oppression so maybe, just maybe, it is more an economic issue than something that is inherent to sex work.
I take this from a book the LG recommended a while back called Sex for Sale, Protitution. Pornography and the Sex Industry.
The opposing view is the Empowerment Paradigm, most often expressed by sex workers, and I would sum it up as, "It is my body and I can use it anyway I want. Making the decision to use it in a way that benefits me most is nothing but positive." The book suggests that neither paradigm is the whole truth.
Anyway, I recommend the book, and looking for other studies whose goal is to present a fair and balanced view of sex work. It will confirm some of what you know and think already, while challenging some of your ideas. The majority of what is reported in the mass media is there to either titillate, or confirm the views of most Americans that sex work is wrong and bad in every way - or, ideally, it does both. Most of the rest of the world seems to have a different view, more along the lines that there is nothing wrong with sex work, but I would not want any of my relatives to do it.
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