Overly analytical guide to escorting

All of the rest comes down to baseless mental hangups, although e.g. withholding random sex has basis in safety considerations. There's also reputational damage, but that cannot be used to to justify reputational damage, that would be circular. It sadly has to be managed, though, so even those without mental hangups and safety concerns might withhold sex.

The answers are "yes, probably" and "yes, if that's the best option in terms of income and safety". To the extent that it gives me pause, I can recognize those are just bugs in my thinking. It's often helpful to analyze your reactions and conclude they are broken, not trust your gut with no justification, e.g. instinctively get angry when someone cuts you off in traffic, or in this case are instinctively disgusted by sex work.

I - and others too - have repeatedly pointed out how prostitution is not different from other already legal physical labor, but here goes the summary: it's consensual, something adults do, it can be relatively safe[0], it isn't necessarily more of a health risk than a lot of other jobs both for physical and mental health[0].

Selling organs clearly does not fit that. Slavery does not either. Child prostitution does not either. Your argument seems to be "if we allow any paid work, this will lead to child exploitation". "If we allow factory work, then it's a slippery slope to legalizing child factory work", "If we allow prostitution, then it's a slippery slope to legalizing child sex work". No, it fucking isn't, no matter how often you repeat that argument, slightly rephrased.

Your only other objection I keep hearing is that that genitals are somehow magical and very different from other organs so that when you use them for work instead of pleasure they will immediately fuck with your head, unlike say your brain or hands which are fine to use for work. And that prostitution is somehow degrading in itself [citation needed] most of the time. All those claims are not just outright wrong, they are on a level of "the earth is flat" to me.

> chose a more likely reason to go into prostitution,

How exactly do you figure it's "the more likely reason"? What informed that? Do you have any foundation to make this claim?

>Is technical college in Germany somehow a bad choice, compared to cleaning? Good grades are not needed and you get payed while studying, or it's not as cool as internet describes it?

That's a misunderstanding of how the system works. First of all, you don't get paid for visiting any school. You usually do not have to pay (much) either if it's a state run school (private schools are different and can be quite expensive).

We have state-run vocational schools, as well as private vocational schools. If you want to learn a trade, such as plumber, hairdresser or welder or sales or whatever, you have to find a company hiring you as an apprentice and then that company will educate you on the practical hands-on side while the vocational school will give you a good chunk of theory specific to your job and/or more generally applicable knowledge (e.g. they might teach you how to write a proper, legal invoice) as well as additional general education (math in particular). But here is the thing: finding a company to hire you as an apprentice is hard, and it can be quite impossible depending where you live if your final school grades are shit. Too many applicants for open spots, and there will be applicants with better grades. If you get an apprenticeship, you get paid a small salary by the company, but it's usually not enough to live on your own, often not even enough to live with room mates. So you can either "freeload" from your parents or take out a special state student loan[1] (or somehow have money saved). An apprenticeship lasts between 2 years and 4 years, depending on the specific trade. Expect 700 bucks a month if you're a plumber apprentice, before taxes. The pay is worse now than ever in most apprenticeships, by the way. My mom in todays equivalent money would have been paid more than double what she would get now as an apprentice in the same vocation.

Then there is what one could call "technical colleges", which are a little like community colleges I suppose. You get a "uni-degree-light" (Fachhochschulabsluss). E.g. you can become a "programmer" but you cannot become a "computer scientist" or "computer engineer" (for those degrees you have to go to a university). Applicants must however have a certain school or equivalent degree ("Fachhochschulreife"), and a lot of people don't (my friend did not). You can get this required degree by either staying a little longer in school, go back to a (night) school or you automatically get it if you get an accredited vocational degree[2].

Then there is full universities. In order to get in, you have to have the highest school degree (Abitur) or a completed masters degree or diploma from a technical college. So if you do not have either, you can go back to (night) school to get your Abitur. Certain fields of study, like medicine, have additional grade requirements ("numerus clausus") because there are far too many applicants (with certain exceptions, e.g. if you can demonstrate you had a "problematic" upbringing for example).

There are basically six ways you can leave regular school as a kid: no degree (congrats, nobody will ever hire you for anything except the worst menial jobs), Hauptschule ("main school" or "basic school", very hard to get an apprenticeship with just that, but not impossible) after grade 9, Realschule (mid school, you usually go the vocational school/apprenticeship route after that) after grade 10, Erweiterter Sekundarstufenabschluss I (basically Realschule+, the difference being your grades were good enough to allow you to stay in school and pursue the Abitur) after grade 10, and Abitur after grade 12 or 13 (qualifies you to go to university, technical colleges or you can of course go to a vocational school, but a lot of companies will not offer you an apprenticeship because they consider you "overqualified"). The "Fachhochschulreife" you can get by going the Abitur route, but leaving with good enough grades after grade 11, or visiting a "Fachoberschule" after you already earned a Realschule degree (Fachoberschulen often offer night school for people getting their Fachhochschule while working an unskilled job during the day).

Everything is rather complicated, I know. But it also gives you a lot of options and different way to get there.

The point is: you don't get paid going to school, and you don't get paid enough being an apprentice. I am sure that some people earn money from prostitution and other sex work to finance their time in school as opposed to taking out loans or work dead end side jobs with a lot worse pay-by-hour rate. Tho the common trope is that your waiter is probably a student (which is true enough that it became a political issue when gastronomy was shut down during corona and a lot of students got into financial dire straits thanks to it).

>If we legalize prostitution so prostitutes could get pensions and other security benefits, it wins, hands down.

That's what happen in Germany, by the way. Prostitution counts as regular work and thus you get access to all kinds of benefits and access to the national retirement insurance, workplace injury insurance, etc.

>So, if prostitution is just the same, we get serious inequality: women, by birth, have better opportunities than men.

Uh... what?

>But there's a problem here - if I advice that to the women/girls I know, I can 100% tell you that the response I will get is a slap or, more likely, a punch in the face, a kick in the balls or a combination from those. What am I missing here? Do you think it's because they are just not as open-minded as you are?

The thing is, you'd get that slap under the current situation, where prostitution is not legal were you are and highly stigmatized.

Then again, such advice would be misleading regardless. Prostitution is not necessarily better than other jobs. Other jobs often offer a guaranteed salary, while prostitution does not as you're usually self-employed. Self-employment usually has other legal and practical ramifications as well, in general. Prostitution usually has a limited time you can keep doing it, because demand for your services will get lower and lower as you get older (usually), so you have to earn enough and save enough to finance your early-compared-to-other-jobs retirement, or be prepared to change professions later.

I personally would not advice anybody to take up prostitution as their only profession, because of the uncertain financial future, even in a world were it's legal and does not carry an excessive stigma. I won't tell anybody not to take up that profession either, if I get the feeling they carefully considered the pros and cons. Then again, I wouldn't advice anybody to pick up any kind of other self-employment either, for the same reason, unless they well researched it first and are confident it's going to work out for them.

[0] If you do it legally and aren't cut off from the police and welfare systems, and take the right precautions. As with many other jobs, if you do not take the right precautions, you can be harmed. As with other jobs even with the right precautions you can only minimize the risk of harm, not eliminate it entirely. Some jobs are explicitly about you putting yourself into harms way, like soldiers, security and bouncers, bodyguards, police, fire fighters. Other jobs have an inherent risk like cab drivers, construction workers, etc. There are jobs that can be very bad for your mental health, like again soldiers and police, EMTs and nurses and doctors, child protective service and social workers, and a plethora of others. And dull, repetitive work does not have a reputation of being particularly good for your psyche either.

[1] Called BaFöG. Basically a no interest loan, and you only have to pay back if you can, but how much of a loan you depends on your means and the means of your parents.

[2] Vocational degrees are usually not given by the vocational school, or the company which had you as an apprentice, but by a trade organization. It normally requires passing a final round of exams administered by those organizations.