Sex Work: Some Australian Research

[mike carey]

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifematters/women-buying-sex/11486794

 

This is an item from a mainstream morning ABC radio program this week. It is a 14 minute segment on women buying sex. Before you all run screaming from the room, bear with me because it's relevant across a wider spectrum of sex work. It's reporting on some academic research, and as is stated in the audio it resulted from women contacting the researcher when she was looking for participants for a project she was running about male clients.

 

It features the researcher herself and a sex worker in conversation with the program's presenter. The thing, apart from the general interest, that prompted me to post it was a comment that US legislation, referring to SESTA/FOSTA, had had a chilling effect on the ability of sex workers in Australia to advertise on the internet. Another comment that will likely raise some interest in the forum is one that the sex worker makes about workers choosing not to accept female clients, or not accepting clients of any gender, which she says is their right.

 

(Some may recall that there was a knife attack in central Sydney a month or so back in which a sex worker was fatally stabbed. As well as the routine discussion of it as a crime, there was also mainstream media discussion that sex work is work and that like all workers, sex workers have a right to a safe workplace.)

[MrMattBig]

Thanks for sharing, always interesting to hear sex work issues, stories, and practices shared from the view point of other countries. I just wish they would have expanded more on the question about purchasing sex and the worry if it was basically taking the human experience and organic nature of sex away by making it a transaction.

I think great sex workers are the ones that provide the atmosphere to just have fun and enjoy. Some of my best experiences sexually have been with current or former sex workers. Not because they were hot or knew what they were doing necessarily, but because they somehow created and atmosphere that was just...frankly freeing. Everyone should have the opportunity to feel that, and if that comes with a price and transaction, so what?

That's what I wish the US would realize and consider.