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Comment by biophysboy | Hacker News Reader

When somebody like Bella Thorne wants to "destigmatize" sex work, what exactly is he she talking about? Does she just want more people to respect the profession outright? Because I think there are a number of hurdles to this, even if we completely ignore traditional views on sex/relationships that a huge fraction of the country holds. Sex workers are luxury service workers. The job is transient and alienating. I feel like there are legitimate reasons to be wary of sex work, even if you don't subscribe to "all sex for all people must be in dedicated long term relationships".

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She's trying to get richer by being associated with sex without actually getting involved with it. She's "appropriating" sex work into a PG-13 version that further marginalized the people she claims to be supporting, while financially outcompeting them.

IT work is transient and alienating too, but people do it because it pays the bills for their skills

Sex workers are workers. But they don't have the same labor protections as any other blue collar or white collar job. The stigma from a cultural side is pretty small, especially given the millions of dollars flowing into online sex work.

The stigma from sex work being in a legal grey zone affects those who rely on the income to support themselves and their family.

Also I would be interested to know what other professions you consider "luxury service work" since I can't seem to find a proper definition readily.

Definitely agree with you on the labor protections - they are gig workers at the end of the day. And they're probably even less likely to "organize" (whatever that means nowadays) than other gig workers.

By luxury service work, I mean something where you perform services for people with much higher than average disposable income. Basically think of all the bottom rung jobs in the most expensive parts of the most expensive cities.

Is the stigma not on both sides of sex transactions? In my circles I don't think anyone would boldly profess to being a regular at a brothel. Parent post asked a legitimate question, it's not clear how she intends to remove stigma on sex work.

You remove stigma by desensitizing the broader population through repeated exposure. She's just one drop in a very large bucket.

Destigmatizing sex work is ironically bad for sex workers because it massively increases the supply by removing a major barrier to entry (the associated stigma of being a sex worker.)

Yeah, it's meant in the sense of respect. People who discuss "destigmatizing sex work" are saying they want it to be something like creating Youtube videos or running an Etsy shop: not necessarily a stable career, but something you wouldn't be embarassed for people to discover.

It is strange that we think its repugnant to shower someone with money for leveraging their beauty but then think it is awesome to give millions to someone due to their athleticism, charm, etc. Maybe it flies too much in the face of our 'hard-work = success' mentality.

We can fool ourselves and attribute actors and athletes success to hard-work. It has a bit of truth to it, but a beautiful woman getting thousands a month just for being hot and talking into a camera might be too blatantly unfair for us to ever view it without some stigma.

being a professional athlete doesn't take hard work? just because you and I may not have the innate natural talent to play in the NFL doesn't negate the fact that everyone there has dedicated their lives to training. I don't waste my time watching sports and I hate most celebrities but comparing professional athletes and acting at the highest levels to posting a picture of your butthole online is ridiculous.

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