It can be hard for friends to embrace the notion that you might need more than to "just get laid by the right person." They may try to relate, but simply cannot, and the idea of "more harm than good" may be lost on them as well.

I'm going to assume you have had some therapy, and think you stand a much better chance talking with your doc about what actions would benefit you most. Perhaps your doc can suggest a way to help steer your friends into a less frustrating way of being supportive?

And, as Boxspelunker, said - you can find someone with the patience and sensitivity that you need, don't give up hope!

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Add on top of that all the not high class sex workers who are there because of dire economic need or worst of all, trafficked. In the Netherlands and Germany, sex work is legal, but over 3/4 of the sex workers are foreign nationals. Local women by and large don't want that job because they can get better ones.

I think that the totally free sex worker is something of a myth. Not that s/he doesn't exist anywhere, but that it is so rare as to be moot.

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I am SO kidding. I agree that the exception is most certainly the minority -- but I know that there are a couple Jezebels who've had really positive sex work experience with zero sexual/physical violence in their pasts. Of course, this is the privelaged, upper-class Western experience that's entirely different than the worldwide average. I'm just sayin'.

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@annieo: Working in McDonald's really isn't the same as being a sex worker and I'm not saying that sexual abuse makes you unable to make decisions. I get really tired of the idea that prositution is just like sleeping around, it isn't the same thing at all.

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@annieo: Word. Excellent argument.

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I wasn't even calling you out; I just thought it was a poor assertion for anyone to make. Your attitude, frankly, is incredibly condescending. So when you talk down to people on the internet twice in a day, yeah, they MIGHT remember you.

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[hollywood2020.blogs.com]

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The problem with glorifying the healthy kind of sex work is that it's the minority, but it creates the impression that most prostitution is people's choice.

There are plenty of studies (and no, I don't have the time to post links but you're welcome to google it yourself) that show that the majority of prostitutes are victims of abuse, past and present. So by focusing the debate on the healthy side we're presenting a distorted picture.

No argument with the fact the fact that we have messed up attitudes towards healthy sex, towards women who like sex and would do it for a living, etc. But that should NEVER be used to deny abuse.

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Are the majority of sex workers marginalized and living in third-world conditions in developing countries? Absofreakin'lutely. But the article dealt with a certain upper-middle-class high-end type of sex work in the privileged Western world, and by implying that this particular type of sex work is solely abusive and degrading, we're quite frankly patronizing a certain group of men and women who have CHOSEN this line of employment. All I'm saying is you have to represent both sides of the issue.

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To me, who is buying and who is selling the services has a great deal to do with prostitution. There's a huge difference between a 9 yr. old trafficked into the biz to service grown men than a disabled adult serking sex services from a consenting sex worker. Neither is hardly adorable or desired, but damn, there's not enough paint in the world to brush over the vast difference.

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I knew I had missed a very special meeting.

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