Consent

[Swatopluk]

High class whores disapprove of the term prostitute and always have. Even in classical antiquity there was a huge class divide between the high class 'companions' that got hired for more than just their sexual talents and the poor women that had to sell their bodies to anyone willing to pay (no different in China or Japan).

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

That is an incredibly diverse profession, from the low end street walkers, the mid range escorts, and the high end companions, each with different backgrounds, working conditions and issues, plus the fact that what could be endemic in a country can be quite different crossing the border or boarding up a plane. Decriminalization, legalization and/or regulation make a difference, in the same way the economic conditions of the country and the availability of jobs also affect both sex and not sex jobs.

[Opsa]

I can't believe I looked this up, but according to Wiki Answers:
"Well depending on where they are located and how many clients they have they can gross anywhere from $30,000 to $200,000 a year. But take note that usually prostitutes have pimps so they would only get a percentage of what they make in a day, and also most of the prostitutes have drug addictions so half if not all will go to there drug habits."

On this website it says: (slightly edited for content)
"What I've heard is twenty to fifty for oral and fifty to a hundred for sex, maybe with extra money for w/o a condom, yeah. As for how much a night, how desperate is your character, and how long will s/he stay out? How busy is the area? If she's blowing another person every half an hour and staying out all night, she might be making five hundred dollars a night, more accounting for when she's (having sex) instead. Prostitution is not actually low-paying, but many street walkers are drug addicts due to environment and high rates of trafficking, and therefore spend a lot of their money on such things. Pimps or domesic abusers may take large amounts of a prostitute's income, and others are supporting their families."

You can also read Three Prostitutes Talk About Their Life on the Streets.

There may be exceptions, but none of these sound like anything I would call "consent". They sound horribly messed up.

I quoted myself because I believe you went off topic, slightly. Here the "classier" ones are called "Call Girls" because they are called on the phone rather than having to walk the streets, but they are in no way considered high class by other women. "High Class Hooker"is another term, but let's face it, we are not talking about high class.

I wonder how much men buy into the myth of the happy hooker. I don't think that most sex workers are all that happy. I believe that most women love to have sex, but with the person of their choice, and with love attached. Without these things it is less of a joyful thing and more of a chore, and a thing for which to be ashamed.

I can clean a toilet at home with love in my heart because I know I am making the world a little nicer for my loved ones, but if I have to clean it for money, it isn't a bit nice. It is just for money.

The subject is whether or not sex for pay is considered "consent". I want people to read what these women are saying.

[Swatopluk]

What I wanted to say is that a certain subgroup for which one has to assume consent tries to separate itself from the others where this is an important topic.

[Opsa]

I see. So the higher priced group attempts to remove itself from the stigma of the other.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Social stigma and risk are the things that bother the most the lucky few that have more of a choice going in the profession, and I would argue that every single sex worker, even those that don't have physical contact (phone sex, cam sex, strippers in certain locales) would love to avoid that stigma. I've read a couple of interviews with prostitutes and for a fair percentage it is just a job, and their bigger complaints are precisely the risks attached (violence, pimping, etc) and the heavy social stigma that goes with it.

[Griffin NoName]

(i.e. the prostitute....................Often they are on drugs,

I got pilloried for saying exactly that on HAF. Like I was told it was a generalisation and where was the proof. I am still hopping mad.

I wonder, particularly for street walkers, (who wants to walk around scantily dressed in the snow?) funding a drug haabit, - if the drug habit is "causing" the prostitution, is that consent? ie. is it the drug habit they are consenting to?   ---- they could steel and rob as an alternative, plenty of druggies do.

That is an incredibly diverse profession, from the low end street walkers, the mid range escorts, and the high end companions,

diverse, just like banking really

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Street walkers are overwhelmingly drug addicted, but the higher you go up the scale, drug use mimics the use of their patrons (more pot in the middle, more pills and coke in the high).

Again, my point is that the whole thing is not clear cut, plus the problem of getting hard data, specially in places where prostitution is illegal and/or discretion is part of the business.

[En_Route]

i wonder if this is at heart  a question about the scope of  free will ( assuming such exists) rather than consent  as  such.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

i wonder if this is at heart  a question about the scope of  free will ( assuming such exists) rather than consent  as  such.

I've been thinking about free will lately.

It's mostly an illusion-- who has the free will to do exactly as they please, without a single limit of any kind?

Nobody has that kind of freedom-- there are other people, always, which causes limits to come into existence, simply because these others exist.

Moreover, there are physical limits too-- gravity, energy, the limits of our own physical selves-- all come into play, restricting our brain's desires.

So in one sense, we have very little actual free will. 

And what little that we do have?  Is often even more restricted by the circumstances we find ourselves in.

So.

The "free will" to choose a vanilla chocolate coffee or one that is simply plain black? (both have their respective appeal) Should **not** be taken for granted.

That may be the only real free will we get to exercise for the day...

[En_Route]

i wonder if this is at heart  a question about the scope of  free will ( assuming such exists) rather than consent  as  such.

I've been thinking about free will lately.

It's mostly an illusion-- who has the free will to do exactly as they please, without a single limit of any kind?

Nobody has that kind of freedom-- there are other people, always, which causes limits to come into existence, simply because these others exist.

Moreover, there are physical limits too-- gravity, energy, the limits of our own physical selves-- all come into play, restricting our brain's desires.

So in one sense, we have very little actual free will. 

And what little that we do have?  Is often even more restricted by the circumstances we find ourselves in.

So.

The "free will" to choose a vanilla chocolate coffee or one that is simply plain black? (both have their respective appeal) Should **not** be taken for granted.

That may be the only real free will we get to exercise for the day...

The concept of free will in tne sense that we bear ultimate tesponsibility for the choices we make In my opinion is a complete illusion. This conclusion came to me as an epiphany epiphany which furnished me with the intellectual. foundation for rejecting Catholicism which I had instinctively revolted against from about age 13. in fact,as I later came to realise ,such philosophical byways  are not needed to justify a wholesale rejection of all strains of theism.

[pieces o nine]

The concept of free will in tne sense that we bear ultimate tesponsibility for the choices we make In my opinion is a complete illusion. This conclusion came to me as an epiphany epiphany which furnished me with the intellectual. foundation for rejecting Catholicism which I had instinctively revolted against from about age 13. in fact,as I later came to realise ,such philosophical byways  are not needed to justify a wholesale rejection of all strains of theism.

Something like that was where I realized I would not be completing the diaconate program. In a discussion/lecture on the 'nature of sin' and the resulting full culpability for all thoughts, words, and actions, I brought up my grandfather's last stage of illness. The combination of debilitating terminal illness, pain, and medication  changed his personality. Was he 'sinning' when he angrily snapped at my grandmother? A little hemming and hawing, which meant, "Yes, he is, but it sounds bad to come right out and say so."

The "free will" to choose a vanilla chocolate coffee or one that is simply plain black? (both have their respective appeal) Should **not** be taken for granted.

That may be the only real free will we get to exercise for the day...

Where then is my free will choice for no coffee at all? 

[Aggie]

The concept of free will in tne sense that we bear ultimate tesponsibility for the choices we make In my opinion is a complete illusion.

I've always said that if whether or not we have free will or not, it's most practical to act as if we do have free will. If we don't actually have free will, it's no loss. If we actually have free will but choose to let life make our decisions for us, we've given up the chance for free will.  Of course, it's your choice.

I think we do bear responsibility for the choices we make in this life, as experienced in this life.  How we behave has a very significant influence on how our lives play out. All that's judging you are other humans; if you have a close human connection with the people around you, they will understand when you act unacceptably under exceptional circumstances. Hence the value of making forgiving others a virtue.

I have no concerns of any judgement after this life. The story's too effective a tool for social control for it to have valid origins, IMHO. I used to interpret hell as separation from God after death (mid-teens, and listening to Jethro Tull's Aqualung a lot), but now I find that laughable. According to my personal understanding, we're inseparable from the whole shebang once we're gone. In the strictly physical sense, all the stuff that we are will eventually be dispersed and be recombined in other matter and in other life-forms. Think of how many other forms the matter in your body must have been in before it was you.  Most of our food is of vegetable origin (perhaps after one or two incarnations as animals), which means the nutrients were taken from the soil and the air.  These are largely substrates that contain well-dispersed old nutrients.  You can look further out if you want, too. As has been discussed here previously, we are literally made of exploded stars.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Without going that far, I'd say that -strictly speaking- free will is a commodity proportional to wealth, conditions and/or knowledge, say, the quality and flavors of ice cream you choose will depend on those available for you to purchase at any given time, so I can buy chocolate, vanilla, strawberry and down in FL I can get mango and mamey as flavors in the supermarket, but I can't get guava or (even more exotic) feijoa regardless of how much money I have in my pocket. If I really want to get feijoa I have to take a plane to Bogotá where I'll be more likely to find it (and a few years ago I would've had to drive 2-3 hours north to get it). Now if I can't afford a cheap vanilla ice cream or, I don't know that ice cream exists (or how to make it in it's absence) the whole discussion is moot, those choices aren't for me.

Then you have the psychological variables, technically, a battered wife may have the option to leave her abusive husband but she may not be psychologically able to make that choice.

[En_Route]

thete is a diffrence I think between the ability to make choices ( which are inevitably constrained to a greater or lesser extent) and free will , which for me is a philosophical construct on the basis of which individuals may be held as ultimately tesponsible for whatever choices they do make, assuming that the choicrs are  informed and not made underirrrsistible duress.
The  rebutall of that concept of free will is broadly as follows:
1. If the choices people make  are not random, their source must lie in the  nature or petsonality of the person making them, but it is impossible by definition for a person to be the origin or cause of themselves. everything can be traced back to genes an environment over which we have no control.
2. If choices are random and arbitrary, say quantum- like, then the notion of ultimate responsibility  for them would be self- contradictory.
Many philosophers have made this point; Galen Strawson is a modern exponent .
as I have already said, for me this insight debunked the idea of a God who consigned sinners to hell on the basis that they had free will and were thus fully accountable for their sins.