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Comment by cultus | Hacker News Reader

Sex workers are exploited much more than they exploit their clients. I think most people know what they are getting into.

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How so? The way I see it is that they rake in thousands while not giving anything permanently, on the other hand there are people who risk financial and emotional ruin from predatory sex workers (I am not saying all of them are that way, I have met honest ones myself).

If you are talking about pimps, Onlyfans has mostly indepenent workers AFAIK.

What permanence would you expect from transactional intimacy? It’s like going to the movies, you’re paying someone for a temporary escape from reality.

Permanence would be a sex worker on retainer or a committed partner.

Permanence, as in friendship after the fact. And some people might mistaken transactional intimacy for real friendship.

They are giving quite a lot permanently. Their images will always be out there on the internet and in the world, and could be used against them when applying for future jobs, etc. The sex worker generally doesn't have XXX footage of their clients. It's the other way around.

Sure, some people give them more than they can afford. Sometimes car dealerships sell people dumb cars they can't afford too.

edit: Regarding pimps, there's plenty of women who are forced by pimps to perform online. It's extremely common. I imagine moreso with COVID.

I would argue that the normalization of virtual sex work is in the process of being socially accepted because a lot of sex workers are forced into it due to unemployment and the current COVID-19 situation, and due to the sheer amount of girls getting into it. It seems quite trivial compared to people losing their wealth and emotional health because they "don't know what the world is really like".

Please exploit me buying from me a $20.00/month subscriptions of my semi-naked pics.

and exploit us of the relentless (and devious) spamming of websites like reddit, dating apps like Tinder, POF, etc.

OnlyFans creators have quickly started to use very underhanded self promotion techniques, and unfortunately many of them are straight up emotional manipulation.

two wrongs don't make a right.

"A hurts me, so it's ok to hurt B" mentality is destructive indeed.

No, but exploitation of the type of man that thinks the stripper is actually into him is not among the most pressing issues surrounding sex work. It's an extremely strange thing to focus on. It's like focusing on anti-white racism. Sure it exists, and it is bad. But it has nowhere near the consequences of anti-black racism, so there is no equivalence between the problems.

Suicide is one of the top causes of death for people under 55. Suicides are overwhelmingly male (4:1). I think exploitation of lonely men absolutely has consequences. None of this downplays the consequences for women in online sex work however

I wouldn’t say it’s extremely strange. For example folks that have been through an issue themselves or know someone that has are likely to be more attuned to it’s effects.

There’s also statistically a rather large reduction in initiation and frequency of sexual activity for young adults in the us, particularly young men. Things like this could be causal factor.

Lastly young adults are killing themselves at record rates and young men 4x as much as young women, again things that feed into depression and detachment are worth considering.

I’d say it’s ok to be concerned about both.

The exploitation of lonely socially disabled men is not something insignificant. It's actually quite big on the severity scale compared to the exposure of the material of the performer as Onlyfans is in the process of being normalized to society.

Is it really?

I don't know, but I have the feeling that "lonely socially disabled men" are just very vocal about it.

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