Petter Häggholm’s blog

Of course, sex workers don’t actually sell their bodies: like everyone else, they sell services. The “selling bodies” line is used simply for shock value and adds an assumption that it’s wrong into the question itself. But still, you might ask, why those, why sell sexual services? I think it's for the same reason that men become fishermen, which is to say that it varies, and may include

• They are forced into it, as happens with tragic frequency on fishing boats off the coast of East Asia. Literal slavery is unfortunately not dead.
• They have no other options, though they wish they did. In some places there are no jobs, and even if you loathe the very sight of water, let alone the stink of fish, your choice is between fishing and starving.
• They have no access to better jobs. If the choice is between fishing and cleaning toilets, you might choose fishing.
• They see it as just another job. To some people, fishing isn't special. Everybody has to earn a living; why not through fishing?
• The money tempts them. The king crab fishery is hard and dangerous work, but a captain can make $200k in a season and take the rest of the year off, if they want.
• They genuinely enjoy the work. Personally I don't get it—I love the sea and enjoy fishing under certain circumstances, but turning it from a private pleasure to a job would make me miserable. But even if it wouldn't suit me, I have no reason to think that there aren't people who love it and cannot get enough, and even if some proponents are just putting on a brave face, it seems foolish and rudely dismissive to insist that someone who claims enjoy it must be lying. Different strokes for different folks.

Personally, I think the poor fishermen kept as slaves deserve help, to be freed and helped to find new means of subsistence, lest they have no option to go back to a now angrier and warier ship owner. Child labour is horrible and should never be tolerated. Those who regard the job as a foul, stinking drudgery should have better opportunities. And obviously all fishermen should enjoy the protection of occupational health and safety laws. But who am I to criticise the others for their choice? It would be foolish to judge their job satisfaction by how I feel about the job, and if some people sneer at the hands-on, blue collar work, that's snobbery and classism we are better off without. If they're treated poorly for their profession, it's the ill-treatment we should stop, not the fishing!