Comment by blippage | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blippage | Hacker News Reader

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> I feel like these dangerous aspects of sex work are often ignored in the current zeitgeist of de-stigmatizing,

I agree entirely. I heard of one young lady who started an OnlyFans, apparently did quite well, but decided to stop it because of the psychic damage.

I'm going to be heavily downvoted for this, but I'm going to say it anyway ...

We need to stop all the bullshit about how it empowers women. Certain sections of the Women's Lib movement are particularly to blame for this, and it is right to heavily censure them.

Sites like OnlyFans exploit lonely young men who are poor at making connections with women. It's morally wrong to engage in exploitative behaviour. Period. I don't care if they're "beta cucks", "incels", "losers", or whatever de-humanising manshaming words one cares to use, exploitative behaviour is still wrong.

Sure, if you bounce your tiddies over on OnlyFans then it doesn't make you literally worse than Hitler, but these people should be discouraged from what they're doing.

But what about me? I'm not a beta cuck, incel or a loser (last one could be debatable). Yet I love OnlyFans, I love the amateur porn videos on PornHub, I love live webcams and all that stuff. I love that I actually pay for a lot of it! I certainly enjoy these things much more than traditional porn videos. My partner enjoys viewing some of these things with me. We may or may not have even partook a few times ourselves!

I don't see why I should be denied access to all of this fun paid sex stuff (consuming and producing) just because other people can't handle themselves. Should I also not be allowed to drink or gamble or play video games just because some other people abuse these hobbies in a dramatic and harmful fashion?

Is it worse than fast food restaurants, pizza joints, or bars exploiting customers who appear (in retrospect) prone to over-indulge?

This question is interesting because we don't even consider the opinion of the chicken that are being served.

To me, both statements are true.

Sex work is empowering because it gives opportunities to people that they wouldn't have otherwise.

It's also very exploitative and risky, both for workers and clients.

In an ideal world, we would find a way to make sex work less exploitative and risky. In the real world, prostitution is a complex problem as old as humanity itself...

You're making the implicit assumption that sex work is always inherently exploitative.

That is a common assumption shared both by social conservatives who think any sex outside marriage is wrong anyway, and certain feminist circles who seem to have a problem with seeing male sexuality as anything but a threat.

But I don't think that assumption is correct. Sure, sex work can be exploitative, and it often is. But it doesn't have to be. Just like the hospitality industry has an endemic problem with workers being exploited financially and tolerating verbally abusive behaviour from customers - yet nobody suggests restaurants in general are morally wrong and should be discouraged.

It is possible to do sex work in a non-exploitative way that maintains respect and boundaries between sex worker and client.

The problem is that you can increase short term profits by blurring boundaries, and the network effects of online platforms probaby magnify that.

The problem with sexwork is that it is based on the persistent and dangerous illusion that there are NO boundaries, either emotionally or physically, between the client and the customer. In many cases, the boundary is enforced by physics (time-space) but often it is not.

The appeal of sexwork products is that they can be used to simulate a needful human interaction, one that implies the highest degree of intimacy even when intimacy is explicitly not present.

The necessary deception inherent in the consumption of sexwork products is normally voluntarily performed by the consumer of the product, but even so, failure to successfully self deceive shifts the onus of deception onto the performer, either with or without their knowledge.

The complex and inherently (usually consensually) deceptive nature of sexwork makes it a minefield of misadventure and unintended consequences. Add some unstable people in there, and you have all of the necessary elements for extreme negative outcomes.

I think there is an argument to be made that for the 30 percent of the population on the backside of the bell curve of intelligence, emotional agency, or socialization there is a high probability of an inherently exploitative interaction with most live sexwork.

Are you suggesting men are the real victims here?

You assume he cares about who is a "real" victim.

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