Sex workers explain why the Safe Tech Act will break the internet
vice.com
vice.com
[1] I'm using SquareSpace as a placeholder. I think netfliy, wordpress builders and hosts, and other similar companies could also be impacted(?)
Because of SESTA/FOSTA, Section 230 no longer provides immunity for websites or website infrastructure from civil or criminal liability with regards to knowingly hosting trafficking-related content (however how "knowingly" and "trafficking-related" would be defined/interpreted in a court case, I'm not aware). Square space would theoretically be liable even if it is an intermediary/provider of infrastructure but neither a producer nor direct provider of content.
Before SESTA/FOSTA, SquareSpace would have legal immunity from suits regarding user-generated content and only users would be held liable if the content was determined to be criminal. SquareSpace has not and is not legally responsible to police content of it's users. Doing so would violate the SquareSpace's 1st amendment rights as a private company. However, under third party doctrine, SquareSpace could be subpoenaed for (theoretically)narrowly tailored and relevant user information by a court of law. Netlify, wordpress and other hosts would similarly be held liable to the degree SquareSpace is: knowingly hosting trafficking-related cotent.
However bigger question is how far does this go? To the registrar level (e.g. Namecheap)? The DNS (ICANN/IANA)? What about Internet Exchanges and Peering (e.g.AMS-IX)? While SESTA/FOSTA hasn't been tested at these levels, it theoretically implicates the entire infrastructure of the Internet should just one site host sex-trafficking related material. This would violate the sovereignty of other nations and gives the US government universal jurisdiction. Hopefully this can be resolved at some point by the Supreme Court. Hopefully.
§230 explicitly never limited criminal liability, and arguably didn’t limit civil liability for knowingly distributing unlawful content (publisher liability, which it expressly prevents, applies without knowledge; distributor liability, which some courts have found it implicitly prevents as well [IIRC, only the 11th Circuit had ruled on this, at the federal appellate level] applies to knowing distribution).
And FOSTA-SESTA adds no-knowledge civil liability for owning, managing, or operating an information system with “reckless disregard of the fact that such conduct contributed to sex trafficking”.
Thank you for the correction.
>>and arguably didn’t limit civil liability for knowingly distributing unlawful content
Prior to FOSTA/SESTA, would a search engine be considered liable for knowingly distributing unlawful content? The 1st Circuit argued that was not the case[1] by citing Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley vs Roommates.com. Trafficking-related content would require inducement/incitement of action by the website (not mere advertisement, invitation or facilitation thereof) in order to be deemed unlawful. Trafficking-related content on a website was not, on its own, per se unlawful to distribute knowing or unknowingly. That was the case until Backpage's founders were indicted and FOSTA/SESTA was passed.
>>And FOSTA-SESTA adds no-knowledge civil liability for owning, managing, or operating an information system with “reckless disregard of the fact that such conduct contributed to sex trafficking”.
And this is the concerning bit I had in my last paragraph.
[1]https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/5914f772add7b049349953...
Same thing here. The very act of "protecting" the victims creates even more victims and worse victimization, by driving the activity underground and outside of any civilizing public view.
If they were actually concerned about protecting children and women from sexual abuse, then they would regulate, license, inspect, and tax sex work, not try to ban it.
Instead what they care about is pleasing the significant number of voters who publicly behave as though any form of sex or interpersonal relationship other than what they do for themselves, is an inarguable innate objective harm like theft, slavery, maiming, murder, where no one has any valid right to freedom about it.
The arguments don't hold any water, but that doesn't matter in a popularity contest.
Historically, you see more prostitution in "Victorian" style eras of prudery. During "Hippie" style eras where ordinary women will put out for free because they actually enjoy sex, you see less sex in exchange for money.
Let me remind people that marriage is the only contract that is considered void and annullable if it is not consummated with an act of sex and dividing up marital assets and monies is a big part of concerns about divorce and rightly so. Historically, a man was hired to a lot of jobs more or less on the assumption that he had a wife at home to cook for him, do the grocery shopping and clean up after him so he could focus on his job and then his money was viewed as "family money" not his personal income. She had a right to it and those rights have eroded over time.
This is not at all a simple topic because if you assume that couples must marry for life ("until death do us part") and cannot divorce and yadda, then you are saying people have to stay in abusive relationships and that's all kinds of problematic.
Anyway, our laws surrounding topics like this generally do a poor job of protecting the people we claim to be protecting because our mental models aren't actually about human rights. They aren't actually about things like agency, quality of life etc for women and children.
They are about prudery and an assumption that sex is bad and somehow adding money to the mix makes it pure evil.
And, yet, men tend to be expected to pay for dates and men tend to be expected to support their wives financially, etc. So there are lots of ways in which money is already tied to sex and in a gendered fashion. Sex workers are typically women. Their clients tend to be men.
There is a lot of growing that needs to happen before we can get to a point of actually giving a damn about the welfare and agency of people who are at risk of ending up sex workers for various reasons.
At the risk of having this misconstrued as usual:
When I was homeless, men would straight up offer me money for sex based solely on being pretty plus very obviously poor while at the same time trying to network via HN and figure out how to adequately support myself some other way has gone very poorly for a lot of years. There are lots of factors suppressing my income. It's not just my gender. But my gender is a factor and most of the time when I bring that up, I get a lot of not great replies that boil down to people trying to deny that men here are somehow guilty of something .
I'm not trying to point fingers and say "men are bad people." But the reality is that simply being female makes it hard to figure out how to connect with businessmen in a way that helps improve my bottom line and doesn't get misconstrued as me offering to date someone, in essence.
I don't know how to solve that. I've worked on it a lot of years and things are less crazy making than they used to be, but I haven't found any slam dunk wins substantially moving the needle on my bottom line.
So if you are inclined to be all "La la la not listening, not my problem" about how the highest ranked woman on HN finds HN not fertile ground for trying to establish an income when lots of men have no problem using it that way, then you are part of the problem here. Women tend to do sex work because it pays better than a lot of jobs that are open to women and it's amazingly hard to keep "choosing the high road" when that involves literal starvation. (For those who did not get the memo: I was openly homeless for nearly six years and an active participant here for most of that time.)
So think on that. This issue is complex and cannot be resolved by just focusing on sex work per se. It isn't going to be resolved until there are other avenues for women to readily support themselves, among other things. "Just say no to sex work" when there are no ready replacements for such income for so many women is simply not a viable method of fixing the underlying social stuff that fosters current outcomes and statistical trends for this issue.
Although I'm not sure if HN is fertile ground for establishing an income. It would be less than 1% of users, I imagine.
Although I'm not sure if HN is fertile ground for establishing an income. It would be less than 1% of users, I imagine.
The top answer to the question 43 days ago of Ask HN: What tangible benefits did you get from spending time on HN? is:
I did a Show HN for the idea of a SaaS for GitLab and I’m now the CEO of a $6b company.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26366538
There are people here who are not interested in using HN to make money. But there are many men who do, in fact, make tons of money because of their relationship to HN. This is extremely well documented to the point that it just makes me nuts that people try to tell me that doesn't go on.
They do monthly hiring threads. They advertise jobs here for YC companies. They do a Freelancer? Seeking Freelancer? thread every month. I've seen comments by individuals that talked about having no problem making money via HN from people who had been here about the same amount of time as me and had lots less karma.
Men can come here, connect to other businessmen and make money if that's what they are looking for. I appear to be the only openly female member to have ever spent time on the leaderboard and I remain dirt poor with terrible prospects for the time being and this has been true for a lot of years.
Please do not do this. Address the issue of sex work. Don't add comments politely dismissing the idea that men make money via HN or something. Men make money via HN. It's common knowledge that men make money via HN, sometimes scads and scads of it. Meanwhile, the highest ranked woman here still has to put up with this kind of crap where people act like I'm imagining things and this isn't a real problem.
It makes me feel like the entire forum is intentionally gaslighting me because, wow, can 5 million people actually all be that completely oblivious to how much men use HN to line their pockets? I have enormous trouble believing that.
Edit: I will add that even if it is "only 1 percent", with 5 million monthly visitors, that would be 50,000 people.
2nd edit: There was also this question two days ago that got overwhelming support for a young man who is having trouble getting hired and it stuck in my craw because there has not been overwhelming support by HN of people trying to help me solve my problem:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26825017
Instead, I continue to get amazingly shitty replies implicitly suggesting "It's not a real problem. She's exaggerating and the problem is her imagining that participating on HN has any real power to positively impact your income. Ha ha ha."
HN makes you money only if you use HN to make money. At the end of the day, Hacker News is a public forum. Some people use it to launch their startup, or get hired. Some people use it to find news. Some people do not read the articles and instead read the comments.
It's up to you to use HN as you see fit as long as you are within the site guidelines. I think your confusion is stemming from the fact that HN Karma and the amount of dollars you make from HN are correlated. They are not.
No, I have no such confusion.
I mention my karma as shorthand for "I appear to have done the best job for figuring out how to participate as a woman here and can't turn it into adequate income though it's an explicit goal of mine."
I'm well aware you have to seek to use it that way and karma score does not directly correlate with success in using it that way. I've sought to use it that way. It has not gotten satisfactory results. I have good reason to believe my gender is a factor in that failure to achieve what I would like to achieve.
This is solely your depiction and doesn't make it a truth (and I don't think it's anywhere close to being true). I also think if you keep thinking that, you are unlikely to achieve satisfactory results (and subsequently shift the blame to your gender instead of your strategy).
Some issues:
1. If men will only take me seriously if they think I'm a man, what happens if they arrange to meet me in person and find out I'm a woman?
2. How do I arrange to accept payment online for work while continuing to hide my gender? My name is not gender neutral.
3. Business is done on a basis of trust. How do I convince people to trust me when they find out I have been actively deceiving them wrt my identity and gender?
There are other complications specific to me as an individual, but women generally will face the above issues if they try to take advice to simply hide their gender as a supposed "solution" to such problems.
I've heard that kind of thing a lot -- "On the internet, no one knows you're a dog if you don't tell them" -- and it ignores a lot of critical details. You can potentially be anonymous online for purposes of engaging in discussion in a forum but if you wish to actually make money, it gets vastly more challenging to be anonymous and hide your gender.
But it's no longer a barrier to YOUR success, and you just might, if it's what you want, have the comfort and audience in your success to spread this message more effectively.
But if you feel gas-lit, and like you're yelling into the wind, finish your breath and change tactic.
Genuinely: Do you want to do business with the sexists etc, anyway?
I did run into some sexism, but not enough to make me want to make my own account.
In seriousness, focusing on outliers sounds like a recipe for disaster. I hope you achieve your interpretation of success.
Honestly, my only idea is that you go to a strongtowns meeting (virtual or physical) and try to meet people there, they are far more involved in urban planning than any random HN user.
The people making money using HN are ones seeking it. Usually at the expense of other goals. At least in terms of directness of achieving those goals.
My suggestion would be to shift focus a bit and try to find money areas of public planning where money is being spent badly or where it can’t be spent currently.
What is a problem for public planners they’re willing to spend to solve and how can you use that to advance your own goals in public planning?
I remember reading your comments pretty frequently, but the ones I see are about being an abuse survivor or a woman[0] rather than tech or any other industry, and a quick look at your HN bio, twitter, and blog doesn't show a portfolio or a company.
[0] which are fine things to talk about, I just have no idea what you want to do for a living
I have a Certificate in GIS from a very respected program and I wanted to be an urban planner before life got in the way. I had a college class in Homelessness and Public Policy years ago as part of an incomplete BS in Environmental Resource Management with a concentration in Housing that was intended to be the basis for eventually getting a Masters in Urban Planning. (Most planning degree programs are masters programs. There are relatively few bachelors in planning.)
So housing issues were a main focus and I've probably gotten the most traction or respect on HN for writing about homelessness. The two are very much interrelated. Housing policy is a large factor in homelessness in the US.
I also worked at Aflac for a bit over five years which exposed me to the award-winning design work of their wholly owned subsidiary Communicorp.
I went through YC's free online Startup School last fall and I'm doing what I can to try to figure out how to develop community development resources for underserved small communities and also find some means to turn that into a real business.
Community development work is somewhat outside the scope of what is typically handled by YC companies and much of it is done by either government entities or non profits.
For profit companies in urban planning or economic development spheres tend towards being consulting companies that do contracts for government entities.
I did some volunteer work locally for a couple of years for a couple of non profit organizations that operate in that realm and quit last May, which is a long story that I don't know how to sum up.
I started Eclogiselle a bit after quitting and likely wouldn't have done so if I had been taken more seriously locally. I'm okay at this point with how all that has gone so far.
Maybe I'm "dead" in the eyes of locals and maybe I'm not. I don't know. I have reason to believe some local movers and shakers have followed my writing and that has changed the discussion of local issues but I haven't succeeded in turning that into significant paid work for me.
Related projects:
ProjectSRO.blogspot.com
ButterflyEconomy.blogspot.com
At the moment, I'm pretty pleased with Project: SRO though it's small and I don't know how to get traction with it.
Peddle the idea.
If you have the political chops: city planning meetings. There are usually developers going to these meetings.
If you can find a way to monetize these buildings (e.g perhaps establish a homeless-to-work program with the city, that provides subsistence jobs to homeless people, that they can then turn around and be funneled into these SRO properties, and make these commercial real estate developers bank), then you can talk your way into being a consultant.
There's a more humanitarian way to phrase this (and assuredly, a more humanitarian way to organize and build this type of venture), but I frankly do not have the emotional bandwidth.
Funny that Vice didn't mention that the Communication Decency Act was actually passed to ban porn on the Internet.
Given what internet+sex-trafficking bills actually accomplish, it's fairly clear they're designed to cripple the power that the internet brings to the electorate. The trafficking rhetoric is little more than marketing.
When a sex worker gets a record for being a sex worker it makes it a lot harder to escape that life.
Having safe houses and required STD testing are other supportive measure for sex workers.
The government does not care about the sex workers in the slightest.
This is about censorship and control in the name of 'safety'.
Gives them the power to take a website down in the name of safety if there's ANY questionable content on it even if there's millions of users. They will cudgel sites with it to give in to their demands for data requisition and to remove messages that they don't like...or suddenly the site will be brought down by force of law due to one person out of millions posting something questionable.
Just like what Duterte did in the Philippines with his bloody drug crusade that also happened to not so coincidentally kill a bunch of his political rivals.
Anytime the government tells you it's doing something for you in the name of 'safety' chances are you're about to get screwed.
The average ignorant human's fear of whatever nightmare scenario the government and the media has created playing out in their head, is what ruins the world.
Also the rhetoric we use here (defeatist, people are going to solicit sex and break the law so let's make it easier for them, etc.) is in stark contrast to how we talk about problems we actually want to fight in our societies like obesity, racism, worker mistreatment by employers, etc. In those situations we never say that people are going to do such things anyways and criminalizing it just makes those who do those crimes more unlikely to change, more unlikely to get back into society, more distrustful of the system, etc. In those situations we spend tons and tons of money at the corporate and the government level trying to teach people these behaviors are wrong and to not engage in them.
Why can't we do that with people who solicit prostitutes?
Not going to lie, but I feel most people don't care about these either. All I see are platitudes.
For example, the criminal justice system is all messed up. Over-criminalization, coercive plea bargains, law enforcement unaccountability etc. But we focus on police shootings of black men, which aren't actually disproportionate to the number of police encounters with black men.
Because it's a thing you can put video of on the television and get people frothy about, but it's not a thing you can solve on its own because it's a consequence of all of those other things and not a cause in itself.
By getting people to focus on the wrong thing, they can get votes without having to do the hard work of solving the underlying problems. Instead they give you empty symbolism -- take down statues, rename stuff -- which doesn't fix anything. More than that, because the underlying problems never get solved that way, they can keep campaigning on it forever.
You know what FOSTA/SESTA did? Push it deeper underground.
Evidence indicates that lawmakers don't care about victims in a meaningfully helpful way. They absolutely crave the power/cash that anti-trafficking rhetoric brings.
A competent press would examine the history of trafficking laws and report the actual outcomes - instead of parroting the PR that pols hand to them.
It is one thing to claim that we are passing laws in good faith that end up not working as well as we hoped. It’s quite another make unsubstantiated claims that people are acting in bad faith.
They're not accused of acting Immorally, which would be taking action with mal intent. They're not trying to increase child prostitution. They're not trying to enable it. They're not looking to abuse children themselves.
They're accused of being psychopaths, not criminals.
I don't understand how the default position can be anything but that politicians indeed act amorally. There is a very long history of politicians enacting laws specifically to hide prostitution, not to stop it. There is an equally long history of people asking them to do so. Society definitely wants prostitution. Society also wants very vulnerable prostitutes, well hidden from view.
I think you may be confused. The articles' consistent and well done sourcing is a solid opposite of rumor-mill behavior.
> It is not a reputable source for anything and the owners make no qualms about it.
Obviously not true as even a casual read will attest. As evidence I offer the site, in partial or it's entirety.
TechDirt has been on a backslide in readership for years, primarily from it's crappy "we just post what we hear" nonsense. What you see now is a rebranding (eg* "free speech") which has served them better than the previous snicker journalism that they are known for. The fact that they have seemingly well-sourced articles is incidental to the past, which you seem wholly ignorant enough to assume was a quality source.
*It does seem to be working as other sites are increasingly linking to it.
From this article:
> “We assume it’s a great thing that Backpage closed down,” Stefanie Jeffers said. “And it is, because it’s horrible that Backpage existed and so much trafficking occurred through the users of Backpage. But I do think that it comes with its dangers too.”
> Jeffers, the founder of the nonprofit Grit Into Grace, works with women who are engaged in street prostitution in Indianapolis to help them get out of the life. She says Backpage’s closure came as a shock to the women she talked to.
I don't get why you're hung up on whether TechDirt is reputable or not, just read the actual article?
Lawmakers were warned that shuttering Backpage would harm LEO efforts to rescue trafficking victims and they passed SESTA/FOSTA anyway.
The law has been used exactly one time.
> I was specifically referring to your claim that They absolutely crave the power/cash that anti-trafficking rhetoric brings
Is your assertion that lawmakers do not crave the power/cash that comes with anti-traffic rhetoric? If so, why do you believe that?
> TechDirt isn’t exactly a reputable, well-researched newsgathering organization.
That's an interesting opinion about one of the few news orgs that actively documents their analysis in every article (inc court filings), consistently targets all administrations (inc popular ones) - and (unlike most news orgs) isn't at all known for parroting Gov/Corp/LEO PR w/o contextual or historical analysis.
> Genuinely curious, not crapposting.
okay
I’ll stipulate to that. But it’s a pretty long logical leap to deduce from the fact that they heard a lot of opinions and made a (perhaps incorrect) judgment call that they don’t care about sex trafficking victims.
Also, linking to other news sources and commenting on them isn’t “newsgathering.” That’s just operating a blog. If they perform their own investigations, then my opinion might change.
Before passage: LEO warned lawmakers and those lawmakers minimized and gaslighted their expert concerns - concerns voiced by the exact people in the best possible position to know.
After passage: LEO exampled the harm done by FOSTA/SESTA and how the law was further endangering sex trafficking victims. In response, lawmakers crowed about the success of the law - w/o offering anything at all that might indicate success.
Creating a law that further harms and endagers sex trafficking victims while pretending the opposite - this seems like a fairly stellar example of not caring about the well being of sex trafficking victims.
We completely agree about the purpose of government.
The government exists to provide education and support for people to escape toxic situations, NOT more LAWS backed by the threat of violence, with over reaching questionable authority to force people to do what a subset of people believe is morally right, based on sensationalized media reporting, whether that's prostitution, drug use, abortion, gun laws, mask usage...etc.
Unless there's unquestionable hard science to make a law over, with data effecting the majority of the population, the federal government should not be involved in a legislative capacity.
There's already an uncountable number of federal laws(you can google it).
We need to err on the side of freedom not safety and morality.
I would imagine a vanishingly small percentage of people are consenting to be on the receiving end of racial discrimination or hate crimes.
-------
Quoting @notsureaboutpg: “This hasn't led to a decrease in trafficking in the countries that have tried it though. Many of them in Europe have become trafficking destinations for women from other countries. There's lots and lots of studies out there that show that decriminalizing prostitution does not lead to lower trafficking or better outcomes for prostitutes.
Also the rhetoric we use here (defeatist, people are going to solicit sex and break the law so let's make it easier for them, etc.) is in stark contrast to how we talk about problems we actually want to fight in our societies like obesity, racism, worker mistreatment by employers, etc. In those situations we never say that people are going to do such things anyways and criminalizing it just makes those who do those crimes more unlikely to change, more unlikely to get back into society, more distrustful of the system, etc. In those situations we spend tons and tons of money at the corporate and the government level trying to teach people these behaviors are wrong and to not engage in them.
Why can't we do that with people who solicit prostitutes?”
You seem very confident that this is an indisputable fact. Can you explain to us why paying for sex work and performing sex work are always degrading acts?
However, we know very well that making prostitution illegal has no effect on those either. All else equal, it's more expensive to fight something you can't stop or even really slow down very much, which is why I think less money should be spent on enforcement than, say, treatment of the inevitable consequences.
(Or better yet, trying to address the underlying factors that drive demand, though we almost never try that)
I think there are legitimately different classes of problems, and some are better addressed through regulation, and others are just made worse.
Racism (read: systematic racism at an organizational or policy level) and worker mistreatment are likely in the former: problems that are possible to at least noticeably mitigate through legislative changes, incentives, and punishments.
Alcohol and drug prohibition I would put into the latter class: things people will continuing doing no matter how illegal they are.
Prostitution seems like it clearly belongs with drugs and alcohol, though I would love to hear the reasons you disagree.
By the way, I have no idea why your comment got downvoted. I disagree with it so far, but it's a coherent argument and not particularly nasty. It's hard to have discussions on HN when dissenting opinions just get buried.
There’s strong indications that the immediate effect of a jurisdiction trying to do that is to make the jurisdiction a magnet for sex trafficking. Now, you can argue that the long term effects will be better, or its a matter of fine tuning protections, or that the effect is in part illusory because it makes detecting trafficking easier, or that it actually makes things net better, and that the trafficking it reduces is greater than the trafficking it diverts in from other jurisdictions; I personally think all of those arguments have truth to them. But those are things that are less apparent from the data, so its a hard sell.
Yes, but no one haa found a way to regulate it thst doesn’t result in an apparent increase of trafficking activity compared to prohibition.
Again, I’m pro-legalization and subscribe to the whole list of reasons I cited upthread for not considering that appearance decisive. But it makes legalization a hard sell.
https://swopusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Advocacy-Agen...
https://www.amnesty.org/en/qa-policy-to-protect-the-human-ri...
* did -> did not ?
I never appreciated the nature of abuse until a friend of mine confided in me about their own experience being an abuse survivor from something that happened when they were a child. The Internet is just a high profile target. I won't say that the overwhelming majority of abuse happens among people who know the victim, but it's almost certainly close. Of the survivors I've spoken with, while this is anecdotal, it seems to me that they all knew the perpetrator personally either through church, school, family, etc. The Internet wasn't involved.
If anything, targeting the Internet may actually impede one's ability to speak out against abuse and seek out others to help encourage them to speak out, find help, or approach the appropriate authorities.
It reminds me of a sad story. A number of years ago, there was a pastor who found out that there had been some abuse of a child in his church. So he reported it and the perpetrator to the authorities. When the dust settled, the church committee fired him for sewing division and dissent when all he did was follow the law. That's kind of what bills like this feel like.
Well, one could argue about "overwhelming", but I believe on the "majority" part there is no question, statistically speaking. So let's say it: the majority of abuse cases involve people familiar to the victim and their immediate relatives, regardless of any factor connected to the internet.
This is and has always been true.
>... regardless of any factor connected to the internet.
The LEO narrative seems something like 'We didn't sex abuse before the internet so the internet must be responsible.'
The flaw with that perspective is that police did not see sex abuse because (historically) they overwhelmingly Did. Not. Care. about children's (or women's) well being.
As evidence, I offer a century of clergy (and other) sex-scandals that were rarely (or possibly never, ever, ever, ever) shut down by police - even tho the cops were the people who's actual damn job it was to put a stop to it.
Most (just about half) child abuse is committed by other children (mostly slightly older than the victim). Almost always under government supervision (translation: at school/school related activities).
Half of what remains is committed BY the government (meaning teachers/trainers/social workers/... government employees). A significant portion of this kind of abuse is either very young or "almost adult" kids. These cases are special because of often one sees very large numbers of victims per perpetrator (it is absolutely exceptional for a pedophile outside of any institution to have even 3 victims, whereas institutional employees have seen cases with thousands of victims for ONE perpetrator).
You might wonder how one person even abuses thousands of children. In some cases government employees (ie. social workers, psychiatrists, ...) are found to abuse the power of the institutions they work for with the specific intention to abuse children. In one famous case, a German youth services therapist took that job, and climbed to director of an institution, to prove that both vulnerable children and pedophiles (including, of course, he himself) "benefit from being placed together". He implemented his experiment, not just placing children with himself, but also with pedophiles entrusted to him by the justice system, and managed to continue this practice ... for 30 years. He was in it, literally, to prove that child abuse benefits children. Hundreds, maybe thousands of victims.
If you look into "clergy" sex abuse scandals you will find that these also mostly happened at schools, school-related youth associations and in things like orphanages. And as we can see now, clergy has mostly disappeared, school employees haven't. The abuse also hasn't disappeared. People abuse children when they have access to children. Clergy used to have that, because they were school employees, and their profession attracted pedophiles because of that. Now other people, almost all government workers, have access to children, and abuse that access just the same.
For the remainder the largest groups is people the family knows that aren't related. Then strangers. Then relatively far or indirect relatives. And only then do we start seeing first foster siblings, foster parents, then "reconstituted family" siblings and parents (ie. legal, but not biological sibling/parents due to often multiple divorces and remarriage), and then as the least likely group natural parents.
You will never hear anyone discuss anything but the need to hide these to maintain the reputation of various institutions (from schools to CPC itself). Sometimes things like teachers' unions actively suggest ignoring kids complaints to protect teachers (e.g. against false accusations, or to avoid pointing out that CPC regularly CAUSES abuse of a child to start, not exactly what they're here for. And questioning the results of CPC "protection" for kids, even when well-intentioned, we don't seem capable as a society to admit that good intentions don't make for good results).
Anti-child abuse action invariable focuses on natural and reconstituted family parents, the least likely groups to abuse children. And going further, like acknowledging the many things that cause the abuse (like sexualization of youngsters in commercials and entertainment, even to youngsters themselves). Getting such groups to acknowledge the very big role of the government and various education and protection services play is just out of the question.
If you want to limit child abuse, the area of focus for maximum effect seems very clear: school. Both protecting kids from each other as well as from the staff and other government employees (including, perhaps even especially due to large number of victims per perpetrator, those whose job specifically is to protect children).
It seems it is very hard for people to believe that exactly children themselves and the people who we entrust children to are the biggest problem when it comes to child abuse. That, and of course that governments don't want to take clear measures against their own employees, even if they are the most likely child abusers. There are many sad cases where a perpetrator who is a teacher, sometimes with multiple previous convictions, succeeds in having child services go after parents after a complaint is filed. And of course, on occasion convicted child abusers are found to have taken jobs as for example a teacher or in youth mental care specifically with the intention to abuse children (even though it is pretty obvious that these people aren't in those jobs for the money).
This has been my conclusion also. I'd broadly expand it to include any efforts to wage a "war against $PROBLEM" where it tends to either mask or make $PROBLEM worse. Or, in the case of sexual abuse, make it harder for victims to seek help. Or even know they can get help. Then it levies onerous requirements on otherwise law abiding services to do the government's policing in its stead making the companies arbiters of right and wrong.
> He was in it, literally, to prove that child abuse benefits children.
Good Lord, these people are sick!
> For the remainder the largest groups is people the family knows that aren't related.
This is what happened to my friend. It was someone whom they knew, and the family knew, who abused not only my friend but also everyone's trust. Since it also happened in a foreign country and my friend is American, it complicated matters. I don't know if they ever elucidated the outcome, but I gather there was never any legal action taken.
What worries me about this, too, is the fact that the abuser apparently has a family of his own now, and without any legal repercussions, I would be concerned that he might abuse his own children or their friends for the reasons you highlight.
> You will never hear anyone discuss anything but the need to hide these to maintain the reputation of various institutions
So true. No one wants to admit that there's a problem, and they will actively attack the people trying to stop it from happening.
> like sexualization of youngsters in commercials and entertainment
This is despicable, too. What's even more disgusting and reprehensible is the efforts by certain groups and companies trying to normalize this!
Because the latter often has deep pockets, getting the government to do anything about it is probably an effort in futility.
> It seems it is very hard for people to believe
I'm not sure why, except to reference your earlier remarks about institutions protecting institutions and deliberate, willful ignorance. It only seems logical that people who have access to children will therefore be the more likely to abuse said children. So, it seems that at least part of the onus on resolving this rests on society and bringing to light the reality that, just because a truth is uncomfortable, doesn't make it any less true.
At the risk of drawing the ire of others, I have half a mind to suggest that sometimes an appropriate length of rope is the only solution.
Edit:
I meant to thank you for your thoughtful (and thought-provoking) post! I appreciate you for taking the time to reply.
This is what worries me the most, because it's masking the underlying truth and trying to sideline the reality.
As the sibling comment to mine delved into, it's kind of terrifying how much of this occurs within activities that should be safe and are sanctioned by bodies of authority.
Of course, I feel I can't say as much about how LEO and politicians are poised to abuse the narrative to get what they want as I've never been a victim of such abuse. That's why I am glad that people like you are speaking out against it, because the chilling effects of potentially causing greater harm to victims who haven't come forward really bothers me.
IIUC, they're part of Hollywood's Righteous War on Tech and its Wild-West Internet. Based on SESTA/FOSTA lobbying. So perhaps "to media consumers" rather than "electorate". Perhaps roughly: Hollywood fighting to bring law and order to the Internet (there's little good about it, and it's mostly just video packets), against media consumers steeped in entitlement and illegality, Google/BigTech's unconscionable power, and their corrupted mendacious supporters in Congress.
That much press writes about this, and it's discussed here, as if trafficking was the issue... oh well. I'm reminded of a, IIRC, a Columbia Journalism Review column, roughly "why a liberal dislikes the NYTimes", describing each morning getting it and Financial Times, skimming NYT, throwing it out, and reading FT... because while FT was "of the enemy", at least it didn't misdescribe political issues as conflicts of ideas rather than of interests.
Do they have to use a US-based platform? If the US won't stand by its own 1st Amendment, take your business elsewhere. I assume the clients will follow.
(I'm sincerely asking; I assume there are facts that I'm not familiar with)
Talking about the role and responsibilities of platforms, whether we should think of them as a "space" where people can talk, like ISPs or the Mail Service or more like a publisher, the implication on freedom of speech vs freedom not to be offended, etc, would be more productive and cover the impact of this Act more broadly and more accurate than trough the lenses of a specific profession.
The issue of over policing and censorship hasn't anything to do with sex work, they just a one group that will likely be affected but many, many more people who are not sex workers will be affected too.
To me it sounds like talking about the performance implications of a processor design decision for fortan-based web servers, I mean yes sure they will be affected by reducing core count in favor of a bigger cache, but so will a lot of things and there is nothing special about them to warrant them being the focus of such an article.
If this article was targeted at sex workers and/or their clients specifically it would make sense, but vice is a mainstream thing isn't it?
Also I hate this kind of click-bait articles SAFE TECH will not break the internet and even if it did, engineers, tech-pioneers, relevant companies like Google or Microsoft, etc would be way more qualified to explain why it will than sex workers.
The US doesn't have an opinion on sex, it just has different fractions with enormously different pov that can't agree to let sleeping dogs lie.
It also has the last serious Christians with political influence for any advanced nation, and they are still fighting the war on porn.
Basic epidemiology.
Telling the state in no way keeps you from giving it to others. The existing legal requirement to disclose STIs to partners is targeted at that. In terms of actual epidemiology, the government just needs to know O() how many new cases have been found in a population, not specifically who has been diagnosed with what.
There's no great difference between giving a person a massage and a hand-job. Nor between an attractive person modelling for a clothing shoot, vs modelling nude to sell sexy photos. Sex hotlines are not exploitative if advice hotlines are not - it's simply a person using their skills to provide a service.
The history of vice criminalization is also informative.
- Prohibition was anti-irish, and anti-immigrant in general. KKK resurgence in the 1920s involved in part them being anti-alcohol vigilantes too.
- Original criminalization of cannabis after in the 1930s to not abolish the prohibition bureaucracy saw Mexicans as expendable scapegoats. This is why there is little use of "marijuana" in English before this time.
- Current drug war initiated in conjunction with the "southern strategy".
Now I think a lot of the bad morality is genuinely held, just as there were probably non-nativist teetotalers a century ago. But the clear negative structural consequence of anti-sex-work is to continue to try to keep the public sphere and less shitty parts of the formal economy male-dominated.
Is that true? From my understanding, Prohibition on a national scale was championed by women's movements and temperance activists (Susan B Anthony was a leader of both) as states across the entire country were enacting these laws on there own. If the KKK was involved, that wouldn't explain why Massachusetts and Maine were among the first to initiate such laws.
Certainly the KKK couldn't have been the earliest to push prohibition. It's important to remember that the 1880s and 1920s KKK were almost separate organizations: the original largely disbanded because "mission accomplished", with the end of reconstruction and imposition of Jim Crow. The 1920s iteration was a much more national organization kicked off by "The Birth of a Nation". This was also the peak of Social Darwinism, and racism being not only acceptable but fashionable among northern intellectuals.
So the new KKK couldn't help but be late to the temperance party, but it fit in with the overall milieu. A gentile KKK fashionable to northern and southern elites is rather separate from the low-class Appalachian moonshiners and bootleggers whose descendants we stereotype as the most angrily racist today.
- Making only one side of a transaction illegal is absurd.
- Because the customer assumes more risk, they are often more antagonistic. Sex workers have to more explicitly offer to protect their customers from legal repercussions to maintain their business, rather than the the mutualism of same risk (with legal or illegal for all).
- Legal work is always the least exploitative; that's why big agriculture wants migrant workers etc.
Kinda standard practice in europe. Ex. Drug laws are also often written like this. Basically to make sure to hurt those most who profit most, ex. it doesnt make much sense to bill a junkie every other day.
Unless someone is proposing government run sex work, it's not a fair comparison.
B) Drug dealing and sex work are also quite different in that the former in it's modern day incarnation can be highly anonymous with dead drops and whatnot, but that isn't possible for most sex work.
C) Finally, maybe the above does make drug dealing a nastier business, but few people are worried about the well being of drug dealers that aren't also for legalization.
Even thats a thing. Sex workers for mentally challanged people, is a state organized programm, which is paid by health insurance.
How has that worked out for [at least certain types of] religion?
1. Not every sex worker are doing it for the money only. Many do enjoy doing this. Not every person goes to sex workers for sex but more of a "hired" companionship. 2. Demand for sex would not just disappear. Sex is human nature and sex work has been around since the beginning, it will never "stop". 3. This would increase human trafficking and more abuse to women because of 2 and it has already happened thanks to previous laws like this as mentioned in the article.
This means increased costs for us taxpayers to pay for increased policing due to 3.
You want to make the system cheaper? Decriminalize sex work and/or go after the sex buyers instead.
This would reduce/filter out anyone there for necessity.
What if you paid them not to have sex and they had sex anyways?
What if you paid them not to have sex, but then somebody forced them to anyways?
It's not smart to pay people for something if there is no way to know if you've gotten what you paid for.
But typically sex workers can also include porn actors, strippers, web-camers (if you want to count them separately from porn actors) and other professions.
Basically it's both a broader term, as well as a PR move.
An "internet sex worker" is a content creator on OnlyFans, for example.
So was PaaS.
The goal is to make it seem like prostitution is work like any other work and should by that logic be legalized. They try to make it seem like it is about helping prostitutes and "empowering" them and try to appeal to liberals when in reality it is a campaign that legitimizes exploitation and violence against women.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2017/08/the-sex-worker-myth/
> One of the most disturbing discoveries I made was that the loudest voices calling for legalisation and normalisation of prostitution are the people who profit from it: pimps, punters and brothel owners. They have succeeded in speaking for the women under their control.
> Legalisation of prostitution in Germany, Holland and Australia has not led to a decrease in violence, HIV rates or in fewer women being murdered. I met a former ‘sex workers rights’ activist in Melbourne, Sabrinna Valisce, who, confronted with the reality of decriminalisation, had a dramatic change of heart. ‘I thought it would improve things if everything was legal and above board, but it just gave more power to the johns and the brothel-owners.
What a weird perspective. Do you consider performance music or performance artists to also not do real work? Do you think that successful internet sex workers are putting in less than 40 hours a week? I can't speak for them directly, but I would bet successful sex workers are putting in at least that much if not more time than that per week to ensure their business is successful. In fact I would guess (and I'd love to hear from a professional) that they prob burning the candle if they expect to build their business.
Such a weird perspective to have. What is it that makes sex work not work relative to other kinds of creative/ performance based 'work'? I mean, even a greeter at walmart is putting on a kind of show, at a fundamental level, whats the difference? Is it not enough effort in your perspective? Not enough time per unit effort? Is it that they get paid to much? Too little? In your perspective, what qualifies as 'real' work? Is a lecture at a university 'real' work (trading your time and a perspective, only communicated; nothing materially trades hands) not real work? Is a laborer putting up concrete block not real work (trading their body and their time for money)? Is marketing not real work (you don't create anything)? Is management not real work (you don't explicitly 'make' anything?
Even just in asking the question, it makes me consider that you may have a poor definition of what 'work' is if you don't consider modern sex work as 'work'. I'm interested to hear how you define work.
'Elaborate'
'No'
As Marx himself pointed out, it is capitalism which, by reducing the working class which composes the greatest part of society to consumables in the system of production, destroys the family unit and other cornerstones of public order and decency of the society in which the Enlightenment emerged, and the capitalist habit of blaming opponents of capitalism for that is a diversionary tactic.
The conversion of the means of production from appurtenances to land that was usually held as entailments to independent marketably property held in fee simple (along with land itself being converted from entailments to fee simple ownership) driven by pressure from and to the benefit of the burgeoning mercantile class is, like, a real thing that happened. The idea that capitalism exists only as a concept within Marxism is novel, but not even popular among anti-Marxists.
> Maybe that’s why Marxists have reached total penetration and are having difficulty converting new useful idiots.
Marxism was a reaction to the particular situation in the dominant economies of the West in the late 19th Century, and played a powerful role in shaping the reform of those economies that occurred in the early-mid-20th Century and essentially completely replaced the system that Marxism reacted to. While the dominant system of the developed world is still sometimes called “capitalism” (though others distinguish it as “welfare statism”, “the modern mixed economy” and shares some key characteristics of the earlier system, it is also radically different.
Marxism is part of the background of a lot of modern movements most of whose members wouldn’t describe themselves as Marxist because they are working from a different point and responding to different problems.
> Most people wised up to the re-definition of language and the predominance of neologisms and tuned it all out.
Yeah, I don’t think “re-definition of language and […] neologisms” have ever been a particular problem for Marxists; all systems which give importance to distinctions that have not otherwise been considered import either create new language or use existing language in special ways, and many of them are quite successful.
As far as sex work being nasty and exploitative I can think of plenty of capitalistic industries that are and have been equally exploitative to their workers. (mining industry, Foxconn, etc).
Is the work more or less real if that therapist is allowed to touch you?
What about the two ladies that looked after my Dad, while he was dying? They got him up, washed him, dressed him, and put him to bed. I know they used to smear ointments on his body. Is there really such a clear distinction between care work and sex work?
I'm seeing some pretty shocking prudishness in this thread. Different people live their lives in different ways, and scolding people who are not like you isn't going to change that.
People that think sex is necessarily "dirty" and worthy of disapproval are people with problems. They're entitled to their point of view, but trying to enforce that view through repressive legislation is just mean and intolerant.
I absolutely agree. To add, I think a lot of this comes from people that see sex as this magical thing separate from all other human activities. Not that it is dirty, but that it is special and so cannot be sullied by capitalism. So a coal miner risking his health working underground is normal, but a sex worker risking their health is a reprehensible human rights violation. A retail worker being disrespected and demeaned by customers is just part of the job, but a sex worker feeling like their work is demeaning is a destruction of the beautiful spark that is the human spirit. Someone working 3 minimum wage jobs just to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads is just the way it is, but someone selling sex for the same reasons is an unforgivable exploitation.
I’m all for moving towards a society where no one had to debase themselves, risk their health, or feel forced to work just to survive. But as long as we do all have to sing for our supper, I don’t see sex work as existing outside that framework.
'Work work'
of whom?
And what is work then? What factors need to be true for you so you consider a money making activity "work"?
Oh you're continuously studying sex work? Please link us to some of your publications then.