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Comment by ihsw2 | Hacker News Reader

Prostitution is abhorrent to the women's rights movement -- it is another tool of oppression.

Women are having sex with men whom they otherwise wouldn't have sex with -- we should be removing the need for sex work rather than accommodating it. Sex "for survival," child prostitution, sex trafficking -- none of these go away when the stigma and illegality are removed and if anything it gets worse because clients just automatically assume their sexual partner isn't (for example) a victim of sex trafficking.

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Ah no. If you listen to the sex workers who are generally WOMEN they advocate for legalizing and regulating sex work. Because they want a safe environment to work in.

By making sex work illegal you are preventing people in the industry from going to the authorities to report all the things you are against. You will never stop prostitution by saying it is illegal, all you are doing is allowing the criminal elements to thrive. If you care about preventing sex trafficking and child prostitution you need the help of people in the industry to ensure organized crime can not operate with a cloak of silence.

How is prostitution different from rape, where sexual autonomy is removed by economic force rather than physical force?

How is having a job different from slavery, where personal autonomy is removed by economic force rather than physical force?

Abolish the wage system!

Consent. In a proper/safe environment the prostitute has the option of declining a client. Such an environment would hopefully be easier to create if it was legalized.

Sorry, I completely disagree.

Sex is one of the last places where women have more power than men. I believe that illegalizing prostitution and other forms of sex acts is a way for a male-dominated world to try to, yet again, limit the power women have in society.

A regulated sex marketplace is going to mean women can be much more picky about who they choose to sleep with, and can do so much more safely. They can use their sexual power to make financial gains for themselves. I believe this is empowering towards women, much more so than trying to erradicate all forms of prostitution.

There will still be illegal activity, but legalizing prostitution will decrease the noise on activity that actually IS bad (children in sex work, forced sex work, etc).

>> Sex is one of the last places where women have more power than men.

It's interesting that you point that out. Some claim that plenty of women use their sexuality to manipulate men, to trade sex for resources (marriage), and other such things. By legalizing prostitution you deprive the rest of the women from being able to do this - guys don't have to buy the cow when they can get the milk on an as-needed basis for a negotiated price and no strings attached.

Those managers and husbands and whoever else are still bound by social rules. Legalizing prostitution doesn't magically make it ok to go out and bang a bunch of hookers if you're married or have elevated social status.

Are they more likely to do it? Maybe. But I think woman can still use their sexuality outside of the legal sex market to achieve the things they want, if that's what they choose to do.

Is it moral to use sex to manipulate someone into giving you the things that you want?

Just because it happens doesn't mean it's something that can't be construed to ALSO cause harm.

I would be devastated to know that a partner was only having sex with me to further some other goal. I don't see how this is good for the parties involved.

You misunderstand. Women use their sexuality to manipulate men all the time without actually having sex or violating social rules. In fact a lot of them play this game for sport. Here's one woman's take on this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manipulated_Man

That's only true for the middle class. Once your social status is sufficiently high it doesn't matter. Case in point, the current POTUS is known for banging hookers.

Sure, but those people aren't harmed by banging illegal hookers already, so legalization of sex work is irrelevant to them anyway.

To them, yes, but not to the prostitutes they use.

Many people do all kinds of jobs they wouldn't otherwise do for survival. Sex isn't magically different from backbreaking manual labor.

I don't know why you're being downvoted. I agree completely. Sex work, when legal and regulated, is just like any other vocation. Putting female sex workers onto some inexplicable pedestal doesn't make sense.

It seems like ihsw2 has a problem with markets in general. I agree that it sucks sometimes people are forced to do things they don't like for economic reasons, but that is not a problem specific to prostitution, and treating prostitution like a special class of work that's somehow different from other jobs is counterproductive to what sex workers are trying to accomplish, I believe.

Prostitution trivializes sex by converting it to an activity fueled by capitalist incentives, forcing women to transfer control to her client rather than keeping it in her individual control.

It is definitely different in that consent is removed by economic force rather than physical force.

Why do we take sex so seriously? What's wrong with trivializing it? We don't make a big deal about kissing, or playing golf? Animals often fuck without consent (although most other mammals have mating sessions that last less than 15 seconds).

There is a really interesting dynamic in humans where we have either evolved or socially constructed (or both) this very strong sense of importance (and also shame) around sex. Part of this has to do with ownership and the fact that we possess things and status which we pass on to a known set of descendants.

You can look at a beautiful peace of art that's colorful and evokes incredible emotions .. and that's art. Two people fucking and it's not art, it's porn .. unless it's in an art gallery as an exhibit about the porn industry.

I wish our University wasn't so insanely big. It'd be interesting to find other sentient life and see if all life tends to evolve this specific attitude around sex or if it's unique to our species.

Sex is where new people come from. Once a society loses this perspective it dies.

It is well worth reserving some things from being subsumed directly by the economic system. I don't understand the distinction ihsw2 is trying to make with the repeated argument about removal of consent, but I would agree if they simply were arguing that human sex shouldn't be commodified.

Economic and societal forces are making these women let men use their bodies. In form it looks different than traditional rape, but in function it is no different. Women are being forced to let complete strangers abuse their bodies in the most intimate ways possible.

Not all of them. Some women (and some men!) consciously and specifically choose to engage in sex work.

The way we're trying to "protect" the people being trafficked into sex work is putting them, and the ones who do it voluntarily, in even more danger.

Legalizing and regulating sex work protects them all so much more, but entirely too many of us would rather moralize about others' choices than approach the problem with harm reduction in mind.

Let's imagine a world where prostitution is entirely legalized and regulated. We still have rampant STDs, unplanned pregnancies, the dehumanizing of women, etc. The field itself is inherently destructive to all participants.

> The field itself is inherently destructive to all participants.

This is the language of moralizing, not of problem solving. You aren't interested in making anything better; you're interested in making sure everyone knows how "bad" you think this thing is.

The thing is: no-one's arguing there's badness here, just over what the bad and not-bad parts are. You aren't going to convince people that it's all bad, going about it the way you are, though.

Right. So we have what we have now, but sex workers, in general, are much safer. Seems like a win to me.

It's fine if you don't like prostitution, but what is your practical proposed solution for erradicating it?

There are plenty of alternatives. Provide these women with clear alternatives. Provide significant punishment for those who engage in prostitution, be it the users, the pimps, the prostitutes, the establishments, etc. In general, eradicate the culture of female objectification, primarily by eliminating porn. Encourage people to form committed families. Many, many, alternatives to making prostitution easier.

As human beings, we don't encourage other human beings to continue destroying themselves, just because that course of action is easiest. We try to save them from their self destructive course. We do not enable self destruction.

> harm reduction in mind.

Yep. I'm seeing many, many comments about how prositution is bad. I'm not seeing any that suggest workable alternatives. Most seem to be socialist-leaning (attaching market incentive to sex is bad), but we don't have socialism, and sex workers need protection now.

Ok, so whether or not we agree that prostitution is bad, what do we do about it? I think legalizing/regulating makes a lot more sex workers a lot safer. Those people were going to be doing sex work anyway, but now they have the state-level protections a plumber or a banker have.

Once that's done, then we can argue the morality of it to death.

Are people more likely to do something that is safe or is dangerous?

We can make similar arguments for all illegal activities. Why don't we make murder safer for the murderers? They're going to murder anyways, so we might as well keep one of the parties alive and healthy. Why don't we just give thieves all the free money they want? They are going to steal anyways, so we might as well make it more convenient for them.

In short, why have rules with negative repercussions at all? People are going to do 'wrong' anyways, so let's instead of doing something negative to them, make it as positive an experience as possible.

I don't think comparing sex work to murder is warranted. Murder is almost universally agreed upon as being morally wrong. Sex work is not as universal.

Also, murder generally involves a willing participant and a non-willing participant. Sex work, is generally two willing participants, especially if it's done with the protection of a state's legal system.

I think the problem with prostitution is that people apply the moral platform of what happens in underground sex work to above-ground sex work. But so many things change once it becomes legal that it's not an effective comparison.

My goal with sex work would be to vastly reduce the number of unwilling participants and offer protection for those who follow the law while engaging in it. I think "it makes me feel bad therefor should be illegal" is understandable, but not incredibly nuanced and ends up hurting many more people in the long run.

Why is willingness the magic that makes it alright? Many actions are engaged in willingly that are not good. Suicide is the primary one that comes to mind.

I think someone should be able to kill themself if they want.

> Animals often fuck without consent (although most other mammals have mating sessions that last less than 15 seconds).

... are you advocating non-consensual sex should be legal?[1] I don't think so, but I'm not really sure how "animals have non-consensual sex" really supports anything related to this argument.

[1] To be clear, there are people on various places on Reddit that do advocate for non-consensual sex to be legalized... as a measure to "prevent rape." I kid you not.

I don't think that the point the GP is trying to make. It's rather the curious uniqueness that we imbue sex with. We treat sex as different from any other human interaction. Why?

That's probably the most dystopian version I've heard of, of people gaming KPIs.

You made a very good point and I'm in full agreement. Sex is overrated.

Back breaking manual labor is not legal, or rather you can be forced to pay rather steep fines for doing it. (The definition of the words we use is key here)

Back-breaking isn't generally used in the literal sense, but to describe something very difficult. Legality is regional, and often doesn't apply to contractors or, say, a farm owner.

Sorry for lack of precision, but I think my intent was clear. "Back-breaking" here means "difficult, and undesirable manual labor".

What I meant in the first place (which I think was clear to begin with, regardless of language) is that many people make choices to do jobs they wouldn't otherwise because they need the money. Many jobs are taken for survival. Prostitution isn't really significantly different than any other undesirable job, aside from the emotional significance that we often assign to sex. But there isn't fundamentally anything about sex that differentiates it.

This was not my point, from what I've understood sex work is a really high risk work. You might argue that it could be made safer, but to state that prostitution is like any other work is just a sign of you ignoring the real problems that exist in the sex industry. You can not separate the act with the environment it is done in.

I would compare sex workers to something that is way more safer, mining jobs. You only have safe mining jobs if you strive towards it, same goes for sex work.

For the record I've lived with a family with a daughter/mother in the in the sex industry of a port city, but do not base my views on those anecdotal evidence. But sure it colours it a lot.

You are of course correct in that prostitution is abhorrent to the women's rights movement. That's because women's rights movements see prostitutes as collateral damage in their war against male oppression: prostitutes should not exist, therefore we can pretend like they don't exist.

Political ideology over reality, this is the sad story of many of the policies pushed both by the conservatives and progressives, and here they agree. The real people are left with the consequences, pushed to the fringes and victimized both by the state and the traffickers.

> Prostitution is abhorrent to the women's rights movement -- it is another tool of oppression.

One of the core tenets of feminism is that women have a right to do what they please with their own bodies.

A lot of bad things come out of prostitution. That needs to be addressed and policed. Jailing the women practicing it to survive fixes nothing.

Jailing the women who practice is not the only option here.

The nordic model advocates that it's only the buyers who are penalized. Women are then given services that provide a path towards a different means of earning income. The idea is that by making it riskier for the buyer, the average John won't bother with looking for that type of service. The aim is to reduce demand for prostitution in general, which in turn should reduce the demand for trafficking for the purposes of prostitution. Studies do indeed show that countries with this model (Sweden) have less incidence of human trafficking than countries with legalization (Netherlands).

There is a tradeoff though with that model. Mainly that the Johns who remain in the market are more likely to be dangerous.

This is not a clear cut feminist issue though. Many feminists do indeed believe sex work as an industry is harmful to women, even if regulated for worker safety. There are feminists who are ex-sex workers that advocate this position.

For some context, while Sweden doesn't criminalize women who sell sex, it does criminalize everyone around them - including landlords who knowingly rent to them, with the main defence being that they evicted their tenant as soon as legally possible after finding out. So sex workers in Sweden have gone to the police about being raped by clients, only to have the police tell their landlords to evict them. They don't report rape to the police anymore. (I think the other Nordic countries that adopted this model have the same issue.)

A few years ago, Amnesty International found out about this and took a strong position against the Nordic model because of it. The response amongst feminist supporters of the Nordic model was not to disown this part of the Nordic model or try and change the law in Sweden; instead they launched a campaign against Amnesty International to try and shut them up. Its proponents might try and spin it as something that protects women in the industry and only affects johns, but pretty much all of them are fighting hard to strip those women of any police protection against rape and violence. Occasionally, you'll even find someone who openly admits that they want those women to be more at risk of rape because they hope it'll encourage them to give up a trade that they think is hurting other women, and no-one else in the supposedly feminist anti-sex-work movement seems to have a problem with this from what I've seen.

Prostitution destroys the sexual autonomy of women by introducing economic incentives to performing sexual acts, this the opposite of sexual freedom.

What do you say to women--and they do exist--who choose prostitution voluntarily, despite having other options? Who is served by imprisoning and persecuting those women? How does that protect their sexual autonomy?

So anybody with a job is a slave to economics? Isn't this just capitalism/free markets in general? Seems like you're saying women have more freedom by being told they cannot do something that elevates them economically.

Women are still free to have non-paid sex with whomever they want. But if they choose to make money doing it as well, I believe that is another form of empowerment.

Consent is removed by economic force rather than physical force. Performing sexual acts is much more than plain physical labor like lawn maintenance.

This is appalling. Have you ever done any manual labor more difficult than mowing the lawn? Work 12-hour days in a factory for a few years, then tell me you wouldn't rather get paid to have sex.

So what's your solution?

Sex robots? (I'm not kidding). If there are people willing to pay for sex, and people willing to have sex for money, how do you stop them from entering into this transaction, whether regulated or unregulated?

I can see you are morally opposed to prostitution, but, like, what's your solution here? What, in your head, is the lesser of all evils that can be practically implemented and enforced?

> we should be removing the need for sex work rather than accommodating it.

What would that look like, exactly?

I think this is the most important question. I've seen a lot of comments saying various things are bad. I have not seen any suggest alternatives.

It seems like the people who think prostitution is bad want it to just go away, favoring words like should/shouldn't. I want to know a solution to prostitution that takes into account human nature and markets.

It's really sad that you're being downvoted. I can't believe so many people here have twisted themselves in to knots claiming prostitution is "empowering" for women. Absolutely incredible.

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