Thank God, there were Escorts at WEF in Davos
Part 1
It’s been a couple of months since I was hanging out in Davos learning about this ‘World Economic Forum’.
I have been following up the conversations ever since: about world leaders said to be not acting as role models (or acting as bad role models), the hypocrisy about sustainability, philanthropic models or the proposal to adjust taxes for the wealthier amongst us to secure the basic standard of living for all, a conversation the one directly affected seem to be avoiding.
Of course, as the founder of Peppr and Ohlala and the person said to be responsible of #escortgate and “We all have sexwork to do”, I follow up on all conversations related Escorting and sexwork, which I deliberately call ‘paid dating’.
However, I am still a bit confused about the opinionated statements that were going on this year after Davos. It’s the same debates and thoughts we had around #escortgate, a hashtag which went viral, after there were said to be “escorts” at the afterparty of one of the biggest investor conferences in Europe.
I have been wondering how to productively progress the conversation around this morally, emotionally loaded topic, because clearly we are running around in circles.
Why? In none of the articles or posts that I found so far, any constructive solutions were proposed as to how effectively improve the circumstances in this context. Instead what I saw is a whole lot of personal, subjective judgement of people that are sometimes being labeled as ‘escorts’ and how they are not supposed to be around in places like Davos during WEF. I had hoped for a more deliberate, thought through conversation, a dialogue, but mostly what I read is discrimination by stigmatizing and judging people, upon their very personal choice and agreements: how they want (or have to — as most of us do) to make money, to afford a living.
In a grassroots chat group, ‘UnDavos’, I read a very good statement, with which I would like to set the stage:
“As for those purchasing the services? I personally do not believe that I would extend an opinion or judge a relationship between two consenting adults. At Davos. Beyond Davos. What do I know of their personal relationship choices, circumstances or agreements? Yes, agreements.”
And there are all sorts of them, from marriage contracts to short term paid dates, all addressing the same thing: money.
What if we just respect other people’s agreements and choices and instead decrease risks of offline encounters and make it safer for those who are involved?
