Reddit, what is your opinion on buying escort services?[Serious]

1. Honestly my opinion is do what you want- but remember that buying sex isn't buying the human selling it. Whether people respect it or not escorts are professionals as well as human beings; as long as you don't treat them like shit and respect their boundaries in what they're willing to sell, I don't see a problem.
   — VeedleDee


2. I worked with a guy that would, once a month, rent a room at the casino and call an escort, always the same one. He was in his fifties, not attractive and divorced. She was in her twenties and a beautiful, small blond. I felt kind of bad for him because it seemed like that was his life, work a month so that he could afford a couple hours with a young woman. Edit: I'm seeing responses that wonder how I know the guy was miserable. I know because he told me. He was super depressed and basically worked, then went home and drank himself to sleep every night. He didn't have any hobbies and he knew that he was drinking himself to death, which he did a few years later. Occasionally some of the guys would go grab a drink after work and he was usually invited but never went. He was bitter, lonely, and resigned to his fate.
   — Sparkykc124


3. I’m in favor of two consenting adults doing whatever they’d like to do behind closed doors, regardless of whether someone’s getting paid for it. However, given all the news I’ve heard over the past year or so about most escorts being human trafficked, I’m much more conflicted about it now. If the escort is truly consenting, fantastic, but it’s hard to determine whether she truly has the freedom to make a choice.
   — trip_trip






4. I have a good friend who works as a high class escort in London. The job seems pretty glamorous, amazing pay, fancy restaurants, club appearances. She tells me that she rarely has sex, the men that pay her are mostly just lonely and seeking somebody that will listen to their conversation. She also tells me that she's envious of me for having a "normal" life, even though bills and expenses are of trivial concern to her. I think it's cool. People should be allowed to do whatever they want with their bodies. As long as they're in it consensually, escorting should be completely legal IMO. Legal regulation would make the industry safer too. Edit: no, really... She is always very open about sex, she shares explicit details, doesn't shy away from being nude or showing me videos with clients. She has sex with some of them yes, but not as many as you'd think. Why would she lie about that when she's so completely open and comfortable with what she does?
   — allygolightlly


5. I suppose the "enlightened" position is that people are free to do with their own bodies as they choose. The difficulty with that position is this freedom rests on informed consent, which is quite difficult to achieve in this kind of work. It starts with consent in it's most basic form: is a sex worker being coerced to do this type of work by someone else? It's not an insignificant part of the sex industry world wide, and kind of hard to say. When talking about escort services in particular, it's likely that coercion is not as big a part, though still possible. So, one part of my opinion on buying escort services is that it would be nice to be sure that the women are there by their own choice. This seems easy enough, but there is another part of that choice, namely the question of how informed that choice is, and in which freedom it was made. I don't know the figures, but I feel safe in the assumption that people coming from poverty and lack of opportunity will sooner go into prostitution than people of means. So, even if there was no person coercing the other to go into prostitution, we can ask ourselves how "free" that choice truly was. To put it differently, how many sex workers that are not forced to do the work by a person, would have still chosen something different, had they had the opportunity? I will make another assumption in saying that a fair number of them would. So, if you engage into escort services - the question becomes if you are exploiting the circumstances these women were born in. On the other hand, how many of us can truly say that we have the job of our dreams? How many people are flipping burgers, cleaning toilets or doing some other work with low socioeconomic status because they never had the opportunity to develop themselves? Why would taking a job in prostitution be any worse than taking a job at McDonalds? And that's where the last part of the equation comes in: social stigma. Society's attitude towards sex and physical intimacy makes it so that sex workers are looked down upon. It's "shameful" that they are selling their bodies and their intimacy. This stigma is pretty universal, even in the most forward and liberal countries on this planet, so at the very least we can ask ourselves: why would someone freely choose something that has this big of a downside? Does that not say something about how "desperate" their situation would have to be, and that the gun to their heads forcing them to do this work might not be literal, but figurative? Sell your body or starve kind of thing. There's no real answer here, unfortunately. For some sex workers, that will definitely be the case, whereas for others it's just a way to make some good money on the side. Even others do it because they like it, it's a sexually liberating experience. Almost all keep it a secret from their family and friends though, as a way to avoid the social stigma. It's a spectrum of varying shades of hue that can be difficult to distinguish. I've had conversations with someone who did some work as a sex worker for the thrill of it, and she said that even for her it wasn't clear cut. Sometimes she felt it was degrading, other times it as exhilarating and liberating. Whatever part of that spectrum, I don't think this conversation is complete to mention that almost all sex workers that engage into the profession for longer periods of time have some horrific stories of rape attempts (for instance, when people close to them find out about their work) or being stalked by crazy clients. In the Netherlands, sex work - unlike any other legal profession - falls under the Ministry of Justice, rather than the Ministry of Economic Affairs. A lot of sex workers think that's completely unfair and stigmatizes them further. I don't quite know how I feel about that. In an ideal world, sex work would be just like anything else, a job that isn't a big deal. People can accept it for what it is and not get hung up on outmoded social constructs. But as long as we aren't there yet, some special scrutiny might be useful. So I don't think there is a clear cut answer about how anyone should feel about escort services and sex work in general. I would say that in the case of escort services, you are less likely to find people who are in the business truly out of choice and who are not being exploited.
   — mistervanilla