Hacker News Reader

Comment by _huayra_ | Hacker News Reader

This feminist take was definitely uncalled for in this article. The author's bias about how the women, _who are actually getting monetarily compensated_, are the victims completely misses the costs to the purchasers, who are almost all men, in terms of their money and the neurologic changes that such sex work consumption has. Having the "algorithm" suggesting and enticing these men back to buy more subscriptions / pics or however it works on these things is just as much a negative side effect as the women experience in social stigma.

View on HN

Wow. Are you really saying that the men who consume porn are equally victimized as actual sex workers, because of an algorithm?

In the sense that algorithms do nudge our behaviour in insidious ways, addicted consumers of porn can be seen as victims of a sort. But, to suggest that the social stigma associated with porn usage is equal, much less anywhere near approaching, or in the same order of magnitude of the social stigma that sex workers face, is just so incredibly wrong.

I think you're right if you're only putting 1 sex worker and 1 porn addict on the scale, but I would imagine that for every sex worker there could be 100 porn addicts watching them, the math gets more tricky.

This is an interesting point. The problem, I think, is that as individuals, we only have feelings based on our own experiences.

So, perhaps in an aggregate sense, there is more suffering of all the men men who are slightly stigmatized because they watch too much porn. But, none of them feel this as acutely as the single single sex worker who can 1) probably never get a more "legitimate" job again 2) may not be there of her own free will (yes, even if she is getting paid) 3) may not have any support network because her family has cut her off because of what she does (this is common).

If I understand it correctly, porn actors are adults, working under signed, legal contracts that specify, in extreme explicit details, exactly what they will be doing during a shoot. If they were actually forced to do it, then it would be a criminal act of rape, something that would very quickly bring down producers responsible for it. Do you have any evidence that porn actors in general are forced to work?

Check out Doe vs. Girlsdoporncom.

The decision finds that the company used manipulation and intimidation to force young women into signing contracts they weren't supposed to understand which were contrary to spoken agreements.

This company was big (maybe still is) and isn't an outlier in the space.

Actually that company is now dead, and one of the owners is an international fugitive.

A single example is not evidence for it happening in general. There are plenty examples of factories dangerously mistreating their workers. That doesn’t mean that they all do it or that it is common practice.

Username checks out.

So there is some sort of scale of victimhood, and everyone should measured against it?

Are men victims of their own biology? How come they're the ones that predominately, are they inherently evil and exploitive, is that what we should believe.

Whoa inventing moral codes is hard, i wonder how long it will take us to figure it out again.

> The author's bias about how the women, _who are actually getting monetarily compensated_, are the victims

Being monetarily compensated doesn't prevent being a victim, which is the basis of all labor protection legislation beyond “workers must get paid at least a token amount”.

If I understand it correctly, the sex workers are adults who has signed contracts to do a specific job for a specific amount of $ The same as a factory worker who might end up loosing their health or lives doing their job. What is the difference exactly?

> What is the difference exactly?

The difference is that when widespread systemic labor abuses are revealed in a manufacturing industry, people who aren't members of the capitalist class or spokespeople for the firms in the industry have no problem recognizing that the factory workers are victims.

No one put a gun to that guy's head, society won't even ask him any questions about nor assume what he does in his personal time, whereas that same politeness doesn't extend to sex workers. That's just the tip of the iceberg as far as the difference between these two goes, as I see it

Well if we're going to go this route, no one put a gun to the girl's head either.

She just didn't want to work night shift at 7/11 for $10-$15 an hour. In Fort Worth, I've seen night shift "supervisors" for the convenience store where I usually stop for gas being offered $18-$22, starting salary. With 1 year experience. Yes, that's a shitty job, on a shitty shift, and the pay is nothing to write home about at $36,000 - $44,000 a year, but for someone with nothing more than a high school degree, and clearly a tremendous lack of applicable skills, it isn't terrible.

If these women want to do porn instead of slaving away at Walmart, hey, more power to them. I don't begrudge you your choice, but don't act like there's no alternative. Entirely too many people make the claim that "there are no jobs for me!" when what they mean is, "There aren't any jobs that I want to do, I'm not supposed to be a janitor, I'm supposed to be a TikTok star!!"

That's the big fucking lie our society has told people for the past 40+ years. Most of us, even most of us in high positions in respected companies, are easily replaceable cogs.

A lot of people were very concerned about Apple's future when Steve Jobs died. Looking at the M1 chip, it seems like Tim Cook and Apple will be just fine.

Yea no one wants to work at walmart and no one wants to shop at walmart, but hey look at how many walmarts there are. When people complain that there are no jobs they mean there are no meaningful careers, not that there aren't enough walmarts to work at.

Yeah, according to Keynes we were all supposed to have 15 hour work weeks by now... makes you wonder what exactly went wrong.

Keynes forgot about greed. He thought after making workers 2.5x more efficient the machine would be happy with still making 1x the product.

I really hope this isn't the ultimate answer, because if so, that's extremely disappointing.

Not really? I can't think of the last time a prominent newspaper named & shamed a random working man for spending money on porn, whereas that happened with the NY Post and a paramedic with an onlyfans just last week. Your view of reality is wildly distorted.

Nowhere in the comment you're replying to is it stated or even implied that men suffer a significant social stigma from consuming porn, nor that women DON'T suffer a social stigma for producing it. The viewpoint you describe is certainly twisted, but it hasn't actually been expressed by anyone.

> named & shamed a random working man for spending money on porn

How would they find out?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com