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Comment by hirundo | Hacker News Reader

Is this a side effect of normalizing porn, that sexuality is more effectively partitioned?

I once had a debate in an online forum about legalizing prostitution, and most participants were supportive of it. Then I asked the same group, what about legalizing partial prostitution, like a receptionist that also has sex with the boss as part of the job description. The participants all immediately switched to revulsion at the idea and none would support it.

So why is 100% sex work less exploitative than 50% sex work? I don't think it is. But for some reason our culture finds specialist sex workers more tolerable. The same pressure seems to be bifurcating entertainment.

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No ones bought it up but to me it seems an issue of of coercion and consent. Even if prostitution was 100% legal it should absolutely be up to the prostitute on a case by case basis when, where, who and how they had paid sex. On that basis your boss who inherently has power over you being able to ask for sex is to close to exploitation and easy to see how it can be abused. We should note this abuse is already all too common in non-sex roles.

I also think this applies to full time sex worker positions if there was an “and you’ve got to fuck your boss” contract clause.

That's a very good point: basically, it's easy to support sexual work as "contractor work", where the "working party" can choose who they work with, without any long-term commitment (or at least, simple way to break off the contract).

An employment contract is significantly different in that employer gets to decide who the work is done for by the employee.

The same protections should be extended to full time employment as well. In the same way your boss cannot compel you to do something dangerous and there are standards around safety and workplace rules.

Not so fast. Can a landlord refuse to rent to someone because they are black, because they have children, because of their political affiliation?

Once sex work becomes legal, then it has to abide by the same rules as everyone else.

They are going to get a lot of customers that many of them would probably not want to touch if they were not getting paid to do so.

... and in many cases that will be exactly why they are getting paid to do so.

Others have explained why certain jobs are "segregated", and how sex work could plausibly fit into that category. But even if it does not, there's nothing we can learn about sex work from the reactions described above.

Isn't it strange how most programmers think that specialist barista work is not demeaning, but would quit on the spot if they were instructed to serve morning coffee to the management?

Oh wait, it's not strange at all! Most people who work as programmmers do not want to serve coffee, and will naturally coordinate to avoid normalizing it, lest it become a recurring part of every job description. This happens even though work as a barista does not fit into the 'dangerous and therefore segregated' category. Indeed, there would be nothing unusual about a receptionist who also handles catering at events and serves coffee to management.

Or is serving coffee also "effectively partitioned" by "our culture"?

At my salary I would welcome serving coffee while everyone is in the standup.

A quote that I picked up from my grandfather, "They pay me the same no matter what they've got me doing."

I'd rather be doing something that will lead me to get paid more in the future, learning new skills

I optimize the way I put dishes in the dishwasher, I design my own closets so I'll have the best design for what I do every day (i.e. clothes I use regularly are close by) — eg. I hang my t-shirts because it's faster than folding them — etc.

There are things that can be optimized in serving coffee too!

And when you had enough, you can just start serving terrible coffee :D

Those things can be optimized, but the payoff for that optimization is pretty low.

That depends on how you measure the payoff.

Maybe they don't pay you enough if they can afford to waste your skills by making you serving coffee.

If it were part of the job description, there would be nothing wrong with being asked to serve coffee to management, no matter what your position is. If it is not in the job description, then it is generally inappropriate.

Neither is wrong in the sense that it goes against any proven cosmic principle (depending on where you live it might go against national law, see below).

It's just that, as it was written above, the people who would be requested to do it "feel revulsion at the idea and none would support it". They'd coordinate against ones that tried to normalize such a policy.

Many programmers don't want to live in a world where they have to agree to serve coffee every morning if they want to make their living as programmers. And they have sufficient leverage to make sure that things won't turn out that way. Doesn't mean that they have anything against people who choose to make their living serving coffee. That's the whole point.

People have even stronger feelings about the importance of sexual service not being part of receptionist job descriptions. They felt so strongly about it that they outlawed the practice, and they make sure that it stays illegal even in countries where prostitution is otherwise allowed.

Many job descriptions have a catch-all “other duties as assigned”.

> Isn't it strange how most programmers think that specialist barista work is not demeaning, but would quit on the spot if they were instructed to serve morning coffee to the management?

It's trivial to get that exercise on its' head. If management is ok putting clauses into highly trained workers' contracts about coffee serving, as a highly trained worker, I'd demand they introduce a clause for highly-trained and highly-paid management to clean others' shoes. What's fair is fair, right?

If they can't take the same high, non-elitist ground, well, that's a clear-cut abuse, ain't it?

But to be honest, "elite" jobs classification is present across the population (ask anyone in "low-skilled" job what they think of University professors; now ask us who know how Universities run internally :)).

There is a huge difference if those "non-job" things are "communal" or written-down or coming from authority. I think most people would not have a problem taking the broom and cleaning up after someone else has left a mess at the office ("look at this mess, let me clean it up" — "hey, let me help too"). But having your "boss" order you do it is an altogether different matter.

I don't want to serve coffee... or apply application hotfixes (stuff more typically "administrators" or "ops")... but at my pay rate? I'd do it and question why I'm getting paid $$$$$ to do something that $ can do.

If your boss is the sort of person who would serve coffee to the team you're probably fine cowtowing in this way. Otherwise, I think you risk being tainted in their eyes. They might see the others at the meeting as superior, wrt the role of programmer (etc.); and unconsciously associate you with less technical work.

I think you risk "why are we paying $$$$$, isn't that the guy who serves the coffee" even if it's subconscious.

I think this plays a funny parallel to SNL in 15/16 with Trump and Hillary... Trump played President on the show and Hillary played a bartender. (I may be off slightly on details, but the idea is there - perception is reality).

But my attitude is more along the lines of "I'll do what it takes to get the job done" and that attitude comes from my veteran experience - there was no shortage of times where the NCOs (mid level enlisted) would get "dirty" when a job has to get done...

You can see it as "why is that person relegated to nothing duties"... I see it as "that guy is part of the team and will get the job done, no matter what".

I do get your point and can see how "office politics" can spin things that way.

You have missed the point entirely.

If a company advertised for a part time programmer, part time barista, how would people react? They might think it was funny, and they probably wouldn't apply, but they wouldn't think that the very existence of such a position was unacceptable.

There isn't generally a common problem with people being coerced into programming or into serving coffee against their will. There is a common problem with people being coerced into sex.

So why is 100% sex work less exploitative than 50% sex work?

Gotta say that often questions like this are often as just taken as ways to win rhetorical points and not thought about seriously by those who ask them. But there's actually a good answer. Yes, sex work is extremely exploitative in the sense that you selling a "big piece" of yourself. Which doesn't mean it should be illegal but it should segregated. Why?

Other kinds of work exists that extremely exploitative - dangerous, physical exhausting, possibly-humiliating and damaging. Those should be segregated also and usually are. But let's an experiment:

    Receptionist + some danger deep diving
    Receptionist + some heavy underground construction
    Receptionist + some lion tamer work
    Dangerous heavy construction for part off your rent

The reason all those are a problem is because they take a lot out of a person and if you pair them with receptionist, you'll get someone who is paid as a receptionist but often doing these things. Which screws both ordinary receptionists and people paid more to do the highly exploitative labor.

Honestly those examples you provided take a lot more skill and effort than most people put into exploitive sex. The consequences of doing those examples “wrong” are far higher, too, e.g. loss of life or limb.

I think a better retort would be that people want professional jobs where their contribution is based on seemingly objective merit. If 50% of your performance is judged by one person in an entirely subjective way, i.e. their satisfaction with sex, it’s not a very well protected job for one thing. Further, the benefit of exploitive sex industries is not having to commit - to be able to switch it up. Tightly coupling your exploitive sex with job positions whose value increases directly with the amount of institutional knowledge retained would not be wise - your turnover or dissatisfaction would be too high. Finally, despite all the efforts of exploitive industries, sex is still a biological function and very personal to many (most?). There are subtle relationships involved in such intimacy despite efforts to avoid it. From a management perspective, there’s a risk to being “friends” with people that work for you, much less having sex with them. I think it would introduce too many opportunities for personal feelings interrupting optimal productivity. Put directly, the integrity of your decision-making ability on behalf of the company would likely be compromised.

Most people have no job protection whatsoever.

Could just as easily argue that providing sexual services increases her job security.

That’s not remotely true for US corporate work. Companies want to protect their investments - progressive discipline policies are set up with the intention of avoiding the liabilities and wastefulness incurred by the hasty decision making of a single individual. Most companies reserve their “at-will” status, but in practice getting fired on the spot for an exception or omission (non-criminal) is pretty rare. Usually there’s a layer or two before outright termination. It took me years to appreciate the fact that my skills and knowledge made me more valuable to a company than a single screw-up could overshadow. Took a lot of stress and anxiety off my shoulders when I did.

This phenomena doesn’t apply to just dangerous work. One should expect any provision in a contract to be the norm. If a contract specifies that work on Saturdays is ok, assume every Saturday that you will work. Adjust your pay requirements to reflect this. Don’t let the other party to convince you that “it’ll only be sometimes” or “just in case”. For the 50% stuff, the real answer is empower the worker and train people to sign 2 different contracts for seemingly unrelated jobs. If that screws them out of benefits, then ask for more money. At the very least, it prevents the low pay for hard labor.

Receptionist + some heavy underground construction at the boring company.

Sounds awesome.

None of those examples seem to have a problem...

I think people are confusing the notion of being a secretary and having sex with your boss with the idea that it is inherently wrong for superiors to use their workplace capital to exploit those who work under them. It is completely correct that the latter idea is exploitative; however, if a woman is a secretary and is also arranged to have sex with her boss via her job description, and she consents to this when accepting the job offer with full understanding of what her job entails -in effect being a fifty fifty secretary sex worker- then there is nothing wrong with this at all, quite self evidently. It would be consensual and in writing. If she is not coerced into the job, it is not exploitative.

What about when all of the unfilled job listings include this requirement?

The only way I can see prostitution as ethical is if someone can choose to have no job and be fairly comfortable.

I get what you're saying and think that's a pretty reasonable view. But why do we see having to use your brain to earn a living, or use your muscles to earn a living as any less exploitative? Why is any job ethical unless someone can choose to have no job and be fairly comfortable? Either way, you're essentially forced to do something you'd otherwise not do.

I’m not sure I can describe to you why I feel this way in logical terms. Perhaps it’s just cultural but I know I, and the vast majority of the population finds mental and physical work far less undesirable/bad than sexual.

Yes, that all makes sense. Will just note that there was a time not so long ago when just as large a majority of people thought homosexuality was a horrible abomination, or worse.

Attitudes change and in my view it's time to stop being so emotionally negative toward sexuality and the diverse choices made among consenting adults.

So you'd wank a stranger off as soon as carry their bag?

Depends entirely on how much you're paying now doesn't it.

But that wasn't the condition that the OP said made him comfortable. He said he'd be okay with legal sex work only as long as the person could otherwise live a life of comfort without the need to work. He didn't say he'd be okay with legal sex work as long as the person could have chosen to carry a bag instead.

Well they're pretty identical in effort, so the same - you apparently consider them to be entirely the same class of work with no moral/ethical difference.

Lifting a pen to write a cheque for 10,000 is identical in effort to doing the same thing to write a cheque for 10. Physical effort is not the only criteria we use to assign value. I don't believe that it's ethical to enforce my moral/ethical beliefs on other consenting adults.

So you would, I'm assuming they asked you so there's no issue of forcing beliefs on people.

Why is 'forcing beliefs' even at question, you surely don't think whether you're forcing your beliefs on someone when the issue is carrying luggage?

Or, maybe they're different classes of activity and you already realise this ...

Buying the time of a Nasa engineer and buying the time of a day labourer are different classes of activity. Just because it costs more for one than the other does not change the ethics of the situation.

You feel differently about someone charging for sex than someone charging to use their brain or their brawn, but that does not mean that everyone feels the same way. Why should your feeling rule the day and be enforced on adults who feel differently about it? Sounds like the church of old.

My initial post in this thread was about the legality of consenting adults engaging in whatever activities they both agree to. I tried to highlight the distinction being made and think it has a lot to do with slightly prudish notions of sexuality and frankly a notion that men and especially women aren't capable enough to make the correct choice for themselves.

I think there is something very wrong with that requirement. In the name of sexual liberation you would make sexual wage slavery common. In a world where this is normal or acceptable corporate lawyers and HR departments may write in such clauses into employment contracts just to cut down on the number of sexual harassment cases and issues.

Sex work and pugilism I think can be strongly equated. Both involve using ones body and adult consent. One for sex, the other for violence.

We don't outlaw boxing or MMA. But we put regulations on it. We shut down illegal basement fights. And we hope people going into it aren't coerced and have recourse if something goes wrong. We accept that if an adult wants to get punched in the face for money that's something society can accommodate with reasonable expectations.

But there's no world where we would see a boss getting in the ring with his employees to fight for money as something acceptable.

I don't think that's a perfect analogy because the worker can win in boxing in a way that they can't as a prostitute and there is likely far less of an appetite for compelling your workers to fight you than there is for compelling your workers to have sex with you.

I agree we shouldn't normalize employer/employee boxing matches (although I'd be willing to participate in some instances...) but it seems a lot less consequential a choice as legalizing the hybrid prostitute role.

This is an anecdote from my student life. One of my colleagues told me how all the girls in the class (including her) are going out of their mind for the chubby, average looking teaching assistant and how he's "very sexy". He wasn't even particularly nerdy, nor well-dressed, humorous or well-spoken (since those might be quirky or well-regarded behaviours that can be considered "sexy" too): to me, he was decidedly average in any way I'd look at him. Nothing wrong with girls liking him, it was just curious to hear him being called "very sexy"!

Similarly, male students were going crazy about female teaching assistants who were admittedly very average looking, and didn't have much going for them otherwise either.

Thus, I've always interpreted that to be that "position of power" makes for an unreasonable judgement (of both brain and heart :), but you are free to make of that what you will.

Some of my university professors and assistants were too nerdy or decrepit to be sexy, but most were smart, interesting people that students listened to attentively for hours and found attractive beyond their moderately plain appearance. There were several couples (and triangles) among faculty, evidence that they made a strong impression on each other too.

I wasn't at all focusing on appearance: thus my mention of "decidedly average in any way I'd look at him" (this includes how smart they appeared to be). Your professors/assistants were obviously "well spoken" if they could keep their students' attention for hours, and I had such professors/assistants too.

At university, my then-girlfriend confessed that she had had sexual fantasies about her tutor, an unremarkable-looking white-haired man in his mid-fifties at the time.

I think because prostitution is considered “dirty work”, must like many other dirty professions.

Receptionism is “clean work”, consequently a receptionist cannot be forced to lower himself to dirty work. — this would apply to working with human waste or various medical work as much as prostitution, I would gander.

A receptionist can be required by contract to serve drinks, play the piano, and various other things that a receptionist does not ordinarily do, but weeding through garbage, performing sex acts, or changing diapers, — that is off limits.

In my eyes, the issue is that it the becomes the norm that receptionists need to have sex with their bosses and people who are only interested in the receptionist part are put in the position of needing to go into sex work or someone else getting the job they want.

> But for some reason our culture finds specialist sex workers more acceptable.

Does it? You asked this on an online forum, not a national survey. I don't think our culture has a majority view on the nuance of prostitution. The most engagement I'd expect on this topic is from people who feel strongly that it shouldn't exist at all.

On the other hand there are people who are all for it provided the prostitutes are not their own daughters.

Is it the exploitation or is it the idea of it being a normalised part of workplace culture?

I'm in favour of fully legalised prostitution, but I don't want to be personally exposed to it in any capacity. I want the workplace to be about work. I don't want my money wasted arresting people for having sex.

> why is 100% sex work less exploitative than 50% sex work?

I oppose receptionist that also has sex with the boss. Exploitation has nothing to do with that.

At least in my world view, having sex at workplace is unprofessional.

First of all, spending corporate or investor's money on paying sex workers is wrong.

Even if the boss is the sole owner of the company i.e. spending their own money, boss fucking a receptionist causes unhealthy atmosphere in the company. The company gonna have hard time attracting female candidates on other positions. Employees who have families gonna have interesting conversations with their SOs.

Why is spending investor's money on sex workers any more wrong then spending it on other job perks?

What's "unhealthy" about boss having sex with receptionist.

Got news for you: it already happens a lot :)

As far as employees who have families, can't they just go poly if they don't want to risk being fired?

> Why is spending investor's money on sex workers any more wrong then spending it on other job perks?

Because it harms the company. This perk gonna reduce hiring pool by a factor of 2-4. I think many married people, women, and probably many lgbtq+ people wouldn’t want to work there.

> What's "unhealthy" about boss having sex with receptionist.

Sex between consensual adults is fine. The unhealthy atmosphere is caused by other people in and around the company knowing, and discussing, what’s going on.

> can't they just go poly if they don't want to risk being fired?

Gonna be hard to sell that idea to wives/husbands of these employees.

You seem to be suggesting there would be logistical problems with the idea of the prostitute/receptionist, but I think that even if those problems were solved it would still be a bad idea. If there was a clause in the contract that sex had to be outside the workplace and the money to pay for the sex act had to come from the entertainment accounts and the company had no problem attracting female employees or retaining workers, would you support it then? That would seem to answer all your logistical concerns.

> even if those problems were solved

I think the only way to solve them, pay all employees way above market. If you do that, it doesn't matter the money to pay the receptionist comes from entertainment accounts.

Another hard to solve issue is envy. A manager in the company might want to have their own receptionist.

> would you support it then?

In a hypothetical world where all parties are totally OK with a boss sleeping with a receptionist - sure, why not?

It's OK to spend investor's money on massages or fitness coaches to keep the team in top shape, but not OK to add a happy ending and blow off some steam?

Some people aren’t gonna be interested in sex at work. I would expect many women and non-binary people gonna pass. This means they’re unfairly compensated. While you can argue employer-provided or subsidized childcare is unfair too because people without children don’t benefit, I think there’s a consensus that productivity hit is too expensive for the company.

Other people have families, for them it’s even harder to solve in a good way. You can’t just pay them more money, they might find themselves in a position to choose between job and marriage, that’s not a good position to be.

Sex at work might be a great perk for single male employees, but I think issues caused for the rest of the people are worse, gonna affect bottom line in a negative way. Hiring is the worst of them, IMO.

Did you just assume that the receptionist is going to be female?

The reason why “50%” sex work shouldn’t be legal is because job descriptions change over time so it could easily be the case that every attractive women with a male boss suddenly has to have sex with them or be fired for not completing their job description. Sure, a lot of women can quit, but exploitation already happens now when it is illegal so if the law was on the exploiters side things would only get worse.

Things wouldn't get worse ... they'd just have to start paying taxes on it.

I disagree, a world where any job can be coerced into being a sex job is a worse world over all. People don’t generally get away with coercing women who are researching astrophysics into sex these days, your idea would make that legal and thus more common.

This is no brainer. If a job description involves having sex, then people who don't want to have sex will be forced to do so which violates basic human right. On the other hand having sex with boss or any one with consent should not be prohibited legally.

If a job description involves something you object to then you probably shouldn’t apply for the job, whatever it is

The argument can be applied to the number of working hours in a week or minimum wages. Exactly this is the problem. There won't be any jobs for people who don't want to have sex as part of the job

> people who don't want to have sex will be forced to do so

This doesn't make sense. Not everyone wants to weld either.

That’s a fascinating question!

I think the answer to it might be in assigning some unscientific statistics to the world.

Starting here: perhaps 5% of people are psychologically capable of sex work. The reason behind legalizing (or decriminalizing) sex work is to maximize the liberty of, and reduce the harm to, this 5%.

Concurrently we must account for the 95%.

If we were to normalize sex work in the context other professions, then the volume of jobs requiring sex would quickly outpace the number of people who would choose that profession in lieu of economic necessity, and so you will have people be sexually exploited. Perhaps the free market will solve this in the long term but in the mean time you’ll have many a hurt persons.

So basically the whole thing is a compromise based on what we believe about the economic incentives and workforce, aiming to please multiple outlooks.

Although the “contractor” point another poster made is maybe more compelling.

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