And why is everyone so convinced that prostitution is a route to drug addiction, it’s far more likely that drug addiction is a route to prostitution.

Unlike your own “tastefully done” photograph of the young woman in question.

Am I the old duffer? If so, I’d prefer the Aussie idea that I’m a a cattle rustler to your somewhat cack handed idea that it means whatever you think it means….

No doubt Laurrie Penny could excite us both. But it is frankly trivial sub-dom shit. An erection without a conclusion.

Anyway, do you prefer haddock or plaice in your fish supper? Now that is quite interesting…..

Like the old duffer should have said – sex makes fools of us all.

Only a greater fool profits from another fool.

Two years older and wiser, I don’t regret those choices, nor do I find anything morally wrong with sex work to merit the extreme prejudice sex workers receive as a labour force.

You are two years older, but no wiser. You ought to regret your choices. There is, at the very least, an exploitative theme to your ‘work’. Getting men to get a hard on about your naked body is perhaps empowering for you. It just makes men look stupid.

We are stupid, thanks for confirming that.

Being so old that I fancy a fish supper somewhat more than sex – it’s coming to you too – sometime., I’d have thought that amateur sex, was the best game in town.

Professional sex is exploitative, both on the part of the drug addict that is offerirng it, and on the part of the prick that is ready to receive it. What? You think the women that offer men their wildest sexual fantasies are cute?

You are yet another libertarian with their brain cross wired. Try liberalising drugs and then see how many women offer themselves to you. I’d expect you’d be forced back into the amateur scene….

you seem to confuse ‘being set fre from’ and ‘indulging’

also – street prostitution is very often a route to debt, destitution and drug taking. So again I fear you under-estimate the impact this tends to have on people when they come to realise what they have reduced their self worth too.

Au contraire, M Margin 4 Error. Commerical sex is certainly best left to professionals. It is certainly not for the likes of those ladies who spent far too much time with their noses stuck firmly between the sheets of a good Bronté, forever waiting for their mythical Heathcliff to appear. Whilst I can assure you there is often a good deal of human romance to be found in the boudoir of the local strumpet, it has to be said that commercial sex favours those that prefer their meat rather “raw”. That, however, has little to do with the sex one might find with a lover – unless one has the misfortune of falling in love with ones commerical sex partner. It has certainly happened to me on many an occassion.

Quite what the release of ones sexual frustrations woud mean to gaining a personal understanding of ones “greater worth as a human being” I am not sure, but it seems to me that such a commercial transaction benefits both sides. For the street prostitute the commercial success of running her own business is very possibly a gateway out of a life of debt, destitution and drug taking. For the call girl it is very likely an escape from the drudgery of 50 years x 37 hours of work. For the punter it is likely an escape from years of frustration at ones pent up sexual desire, perhaps due to social or physical impairment.

To find ones own personal potential as a human being I can assure one must first be set free of the demands of ones animal needs – whether they be monetary or sexual.

You’re exactly right on one point. My ex boyfriend is Brussels is a waiter. Being British, I guess I had lots of subconscious stereotypes about him being some cash-strapped loser. In fact, he was taking home 600 euros less a month than I did with my ‘government position’, for about half the hours I slaved in the office. He had a lovely life, enjoyed it thoroughly, and was saving his hard earned to become a resto owner himself.

That explains, I guess, why he always insisted on paying for dinner.

so sex for you is merely a financial concern? a body is a mere commodity akin to a big mac or dining room set to be sold to a person with the financial clout to enjoy it?

I tend to feel that people who see themselves in such callow terms need help to appreciate their own greater worth as a human being.

And thats before considering the emotional, mental and relationship anguish that many later suffer upon realising the greater worth they gave up.

Now nurses in care homes don’t get paid a lot for what some would call their perverse activities. Probably the hourly rate is less than a tenth of what a prostitute would earn. But the nurse has to think about what she’s doing – you wouldn’t want a suppository in your urethra I can assure you! So for ten hours the care home nurse devotes herself to thinking about suppositories. The prostitute devotes herself to the botty holes of strange men for just one hour a day – for the other 10 hours she is free! Free! free! FREE! Work for 5years as a prozzie and take the next 50 years OFF!

And you think the prozzie is exploited! WRONG! Its YOU and ME!

Maybe I’d had too much Scotch, failed to engage brain before hitting keyboard – apologies. Maybe also I got the impression Jennie referred to shop work as a genuine avenue for graduate employment, as opposed to a temporary expedient – which I certainly think would be silly. Yes, I’ve done it myself, and rose to the giddy heights of assistant manager in a biggish city for a national retail chain – ghastly! Crap pay, too – but some years after that I did a degree myself, and after that frankly I found even a taste of such jobs intolerable (managed 3 weeks working in a warehouse, end of my 2nd BA year) which is why I fail to understand how “clever girls” could end up in such occupations for more than a few weeks.

“You assume that it’s not ever stimulating and rewarding, and that there are an infinite number of graduate jobs available within the area someone wishes to work and/or live?”
Ah, “graduate jobs” – I’m afraid this raises the question of there being too many graduates, successive governments having plucked out of the air the arbitrary notion that, say, 50% of people should read for a degree. I suppose this means inevitably that many graduates will end up in menial jobs – though they’re the calibre of graduates who probably wouldn’t have been graduates anyway, if they hadn’t been force-fed into the higher-ed machine to read Media Studies or whatever.
Jennie is quite right about my denigrating shop workers, but I thought I’d made my opinion clear in the first place. It’s a vicious circle: retail is poorly valued here, and the beancounters who run our (very successful) retail chains can do zoomy marketing, merchandising etc (fairly well, at any rate) but lack the interest or imagination to create an interesting career structure in retail that rewards effort & attitude. So you get shops filled with bozos. Bit like catering: in Continental Europe, waiting at table can be a career! One gets a qualification, and it’s possible to earn decent money! The same does not apply in UK where it’s a crap job filled with surly temps. Just like retail.
Regards, Malcolm

My mum raised my sister and I in the 80s – she was often unemployed, always poor, but never a whore. And I’m talking about a woman who had to weigh up at times whether it would cost less to buy dinner for us at the end of the week, or to visit my nan who would undoubtedly cook something if we went.

Likewise students are loaned thousands of pounds a year to pay their way through uni – and the poorest (of which I was one) get a small but helpful grant. Yes student life is relatively poor for those without rich parents backing them – but its not destitution.

So why do girls really do this?

I fear it is because they enjoy the sense of fashionable pseudo-coercion that normal consensual sex doesn’t provide outside a loving S&M relationship. (Watch the original Belle de Jour for a good understanding of that.)

And if so what does that say about these girls for whom this form of exploitation and rape is just enjoyable sex? Even the BNP now kick members out for that attitude.

Nah, I’m with Malcolm on this one – I’ve always found US customer service waaayyy better.

“why would any half-way “clever girl” find herself working in a supermarket instead of doing something more stimulating& rewarding”

You assume that it’s not ever stimulating and rewarding, and that there are an infinite number of graduate jobs available within the area someone wishes to work and/or live?

Must be nice to be so lucky in life.

“UK retail staff might be as much as 40% as good as their US equivalents.”

Really? Strange, my experience in the States and over here found the complete opposite normally to be the case, guess we have completely opposed worldviews about what service is actually about.

“at my local ex-Safeway-gone-downmarket I doubt if as many as a third have GCSEs, let alone degrees… ”

I call troll.