I will testify anywhere that these are the exact reasons why a minor ever trades sex:
***
With a system that entirely fails to protect and serve young people, either forcing them back into abusive homes or shuffling them into new, potentially even more violent environments such as group homes, foster homes, and juvenile halls, it’s no wonder these young people take their fate into their own hands. The few jobs that will hire young workers pay a pittance, and signing a lease isn’t even an option for minors.

For the majority of young workers, it isn’t cash they’re looking for. It’s food, shelter and sometimes drugs. It’s survival.
***

I would be thrilled to see the harsh criminalisation of those who create such a nightmare for the young people who deserve love, nurturing and freedom to develop into healthy adults. But that is not, realistically, ever going to happen, particularly as so many people want to make an issue of the fact that there is “no mention of pimps and grooming”.

They do not explain why a young person with their very survival at stake would require “pimps and grooming” as well…only someone who has never been really cold, hungry and hopeless could believe that.

Nor do they explain how Mikey is supposed to produce an account of “pimps and grooming” if they were not actually there.

If young people are made desperate enough to do this to escape: http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/may/01/erskine-bridge-suicides-care-home they are surely desperate enough to sell or trade sex to escape without further encouragement.

It is the people who create such desperation that belong in jail.

The laws where I live mean that I am able to consent to sex at the age of 12, so long as my partner is within two years of my age, and to a partner of any age at 16. The vast majority of my clientele were within those age ranges within my time as an underage worker, but as transactional sex, it remained illegal and was defined as trafficking and/or rape. On top of that, not all transactional sex sessions actually involve penetrative sex- but they involve sexual services and would still be criminalised. Such a simplistic view of consent contributes to the harm against me- I broke this down in the original article. To frame me as having been continuously raped means that times when I was *actually* assaulted are taken less seriously; by treating me as an endless rape victim, it results in me being treated as unrapeable.

Where I live (Canada), the age of consent to sexual activity is 16. However, the age to consent to sell sex is 18. This is where it can get confusing. A 16-year-old is legally allowed to have sex with someone, but only if that someone is not paying him/her. If the 16-year-old is being paid for the sex, then it becomes illegal, even though it would have been legal if there was no money involved. Hm.

So while the other girls had beautifully furnished rooms in squats, all the clothes they wanted (to this day I resent never having an Afghan cost and a swirl skirt in the early 70s), plenty of food and fun I starved in unheated derelict houses unless I traded survival sex, which does pay as well, confers no autonomy and seems to involve a LOT more anal.

Compared to the alternatives on offer the fact that it was sex JUST DID NOT MATTER, no *then* no *a the time* just *FULL STOP*. The world for those who fell down the rabbit hole and live beyond the glass wall is full of far worse things than sex. In the care system we were intelligent young women with less rights than animals…fine, until someone made a career out of abusing that, as they always did, in cruel destructive asexual ways nobody would do anything about.

No I AM NOT ok with very young people having to trade sex for survival…I am less ok with it than ANYONE ELSE I can think of, but I know from experience that the fact it is utterly appalling doesn’t mean we have a better alternative to offer…and we SHOULD have a better alternative to offer.

In fact the career abolitionists should pull the handbrake on EVERYTHING and work on overdrive until every underage person on the planet is guaranteed a *genuinely* better, safer option than selling or trading sex (not just empty, abusive lip service as at present)…if they cared, but, of course they don’t…about anything outside themselves and their own careers and ambitions, and at heart, neither do the professional allies…they just picked the side of less harm to ride to success is all.

Amnesty cannot afford to fight for that, it’s impossible and would compromise the whole resolution, and, in truth it is a separate issue related only by the fact that people tend to sell sex because their options are worse.

SO WHY ARE WE LEAVING THE CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE WE SHOULD TREASURE WITH SUCH TERRIBLE OPTIONS? HOW DARE WE!!!

So while the other girls had beautifully furnished rooms in squats, all the clothes they wanted (to this day I resent never having an Afghan cost and a swirl skirt in the early 70s), plenty of food and fun I starved in unheated derelict houses unless I traded survival sex, which does pay as well, confers no autonomy and seems to involve a LOT more anal.

Compared to the alternatives on offer the fact that it was sex JUST DID NOT MATTER, no *then* no *a the time* just *FULL STOP*. The world for those who fell down the rabbit hole and live beyond the glass wall is full of far worse things than sex. In the care system we were intelligent young women with less rights than animals…fine, until someone made a career out of abusing that, as they always did, in cruel destructive asexual ways nobody would do anything about.

No I AM NOT ok with very young people having to trade sex for survival…I am less ok with it than ANYONE ELSE I can think of, but I know from experience that the fact it is utterly appalling doesn’t mean we have a better alternative to offer…and we SHOULD have a better alternative to offer.

In fact the career abolitionists should pull the handbrake on EVERYTHING and work on overdrive until every underage person on the planet is guaranteed a *genuinely* better, safer option than selling or trading sex (not just empty, abusive lip service as at present)…if they cared, but, of course they don’t…about anything outside themselves and their own careers and ambitions, and at heart, neither do the professional allies…they just picked the side of less harm to ride to success is all.

Amnesty cannot afford to fight for that, it’s impossible and would compromise the whole resolution, and, in truth it is a separate issue related only by the fact that people tend to sell sex because their options are worse.

SO WHY ARE WE LEAVING THE CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE WE SHOULD TREASURE WITH SUCH TERRIBLE OPTIONS? HOW DARE WE!!!

Here are two articles of my own on the subject from different pespectives:
https://mymythbuster.wordpress.com/myth-there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-child-sex-slave/
https://mymythbuster.wordpress.com/myth-turn-off-the-red-light-are-trying-to-save-children/

(Ironically I tried to tell the chief antagonist in the second article about the facts of the first one 2 years earlier. He did not want to know…no celebrities, fortune or fame involved you see.)