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Comment by throwaway5752 | Hacker News Reader

With all due respect, the fact that anyone is forced into porn to get housing be safe from abusive partners is the indictment of a society.

I get that it's a de facto situation for some, but let's not drop the onus on "morality police", payment processors, and OnlyFans for a massive societal failure to help vulnerable people. You could take that argument as far as you want (prostitution, drug sales, etc). There is some level of dignity that everyone's entitled to. If someone does OF by choice because they love it, good for them. If someone is compelled to in order to feed their kids or leave an abusive partner, then we should all be ashamed of that.

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A huge chunk of the planet is forced into jobs they don't like to provide for themselves and their families. What's so "dignifying" about a job getting humiliated by entitled customers in retail or waitressing for minimum wage or breaking your body doing hard manual labor? Religious morality is the only reason a much more safe, comfortable and lucrative option like OnlyFans is banned.

Exactly. People talk as if these girls are oblivious to the fact that they can work some shitty minimum wage jobs.

I totally get their mindset. If it wasn’t for my own residual sexual conservatism, I’d much rather be an OnlyFans sex worker than some underpaid wage slave.

I think you should accept some people think of it differently.

And let's be frank here. OF is probably a viable financial opportunity - on average - for a small number of more attractive that normal people, and it's probably weighted towards younger women. I'd love to have hard data to present to you, but I can't find it.

I have literally zero problem with people who want to use OF to support themselves. However, let's agree 1) that some people for whom it would be a viable financial option find it objectionable and 2) it's a less viable financial option for some, even if they don't find it objectionable.

I think that groups 1 & 2 in there should still be able to work a 40 hour job and pay for food and rent, and still be able to save something to retire if they want to. And they probably should fear starving or dying of exposure even if they don't have a job.

Call it unrealistic, but I prefer to fix that problem, too.

I am completely fine with people having their own views on this issue and not participating in it if they don't like it, blocking it on their computers or whatever else. The problem is these views being imposed upon the greater population for no reason.

The point is, why would you specifically single out sex work? Why should the people "still be able to work a 40 hour job and pay for food and rent" without getting involved in sex work in particular? I.e. jobs with far less dignity, or far more danger (e.g. logging), less comfort, etc., are ok in that broad "work a 40 hour job" category, but sex work is not ok? You could as well say "some people find retail jobs degrading/exhausting/unfulfilling [many if not most retail workers do, I suspect], so they should still be able to work a 40 hour [non-retail] job and pay for food and rent".

The only real reason to single out OF (an objectively superior option to a median job, if you can get it) is precisely the puritanical morality.

> I think you should accept some people think of it differently

But why? Because their parents told them so?

Is there some fundamental reason to see this differently? Some cultures accept murder too, should we accept that some people think of it differently? I say fuck those people.

All cultures accept murder. The ones that didn't were killed by the ones that did.

How so? Murder seems to be very looked down upon in most cultures and is not generally accepted. There are nations that wage war, yes, but this is not generally accepted as good. And in daily life, murder has been basically banished completely (compared to, for example, 200 years ago, where murders for honor or duels were more socially acceptable).

> Murder seems to be very looked down upon in most cultures and is not generally accepted.

Mostly for people’s in-groups. The care goes down as in-group association goes down.

—-

America, Europe/NATO, and other allied countries have unnecessary “wars” and conflicts and use things like drones to murder people. Drones killing people randomly isn’t war a lot of the time.

Murder definition is silly. Says “unlawful” killing of someone. Who determines what’s lawful when the countries included at the beginning do stuff overseas? Obviously some will consider all the killing done as murder.

It’s not hard to say we (as in the west) murdered Yemenese, Afghans/Pakistanis (the drones attacking people), Palestinians, and more in recent years. Then we have the big name ones like murdering the Iranian general a year ago.

via equity, alliance, and diplomatic and financial support. Not directly, but murder charges in most countries can be charged to people who aren’t directly doing the killing too

American culture did not think killing Osama Bin Laden was objectionable.

Are you saying that working retail or construction is about the same as doing porn in terms of how society treats you? That does not match my experience by a long shot. They are qualitatively different.

> Religious morality is the only reason a much more safe, comfortable and lucrative option like OnlyFans is banned.

I do not think this is right either. Take away all the religious baggage and still parents will try to keep their daughters from doing porn. Change our neurobiology so we don't act that way and, well you have a different species.

I believe they're saying working retail or construction is about the same as doing porn in regards to how some people have to work jobs that break them down (emotionally, physically or socially) for money.

> I believe they're saying working retail or construction is about the same as doing porn in regards to how some people have to work jobs that break them down (emotionally, physically or socially) for money.

You believe the long lasting consequences of doing porn and being a waitress are exactly the same? You've never been involved or talked to a porn performer. Suicide rates for the latter don't lie.

No, I believe the original commenter believes that. I never said it was my personal belief.

That said suicide rates at my engineering school were high enough that the administration had to close roof accesses :)

>What's so "dignifying" about a job getting humiliated by entitled customers in retail or waitressing for minimum wage or breaking your body doing hard manual labor?

The fact that you can (at least in theory) quit, recover and find a better job, or get promoted. Unlike humiliating videos of yourself being on the internet forever.

I do not consume OF but tbh if I was an attractive girl I would probably choose making 80k a year on OF over 30k a year as a hostess or factory worker or whatever. I don't think it is exploitative or has less dignity than these.

> the fact that anyone is forced into porn to get housing be safe from abusive partners is the indictment of a society.

You're right, we should tell them to wait until society is fixed.

You make the claim they are forced but do you have any sources for that claim? All I can say for sure is that now, they are forced out of porn. This problem is not directly a morality problem. It is a chargeback issue. More like chargebacks via stigmiziation of sexuality but that is just an opinion.

> With all due respect, the fact that anyone is forced into porn to get housing be safe from abusive partners is the indictment of a society.

with all due respect, most people are 'forced' into some sort of labor to get housing or escape abusive partners. It's the way society is built. If it's sex work or not, that's a different story but not by much. Work is work.

They're not forced into it the same way nobody is forced to be an under the table construction laborer. They just consider it to be a better all things considered way to make a living than getting a fast food job or whatever.

It doesn't have to be "porn".

People are making huge bank with content you could post on Instagram without fear of being banned.

Women, especially attractive women always had this option, historically it was just usually done through marriage.

Arguably one can claim that marrying upwards isn’t always bad and quite often they are loved and cared for but in the end this is nothing new.

The "morality police" are the ones who say that women must keep their dignity but live on the street instead.

I'm ashamed to participate in a society where anyone has to do work they find degrading. We have the technology to eliminate the you'll-starve-if-you-don't-work dynamic. It's heartbreaking that we don't also have the political will to do so.

Pardon my ignorance, but when was it ever about technology? Seems technological progress has done nothing to alleviate the starve-if-you-don't-work condition. Higher industrial efficiency in the 19th/early 20th centuries came with the promise of less work and more leisure, but that never arrived. I'm not sure why, but I'm guessing it's an economic/sociological problem, not a technological one. Curious to hear what ideas you have enough.

I think we're in agreement. It's totally an economic/sociological problem.

I was just pointing out that technology's ability to reduce scarcity keeps increasing--so as time goes on, our obsession with scarcity as a motivator is increasingly embarrassing.

> There is some level of dignity that everyone's entitled to. If someone does OF by choice because they love it, good for them. If someone is compelled to in order to feed their kids or leave an abusive partner, then we should all be ashamed of that.

Well, it's still more dignified than telemarketing - the worker, the viewers and the platform all benefit from the transaction, unlike telemarketing call centres, where the worker is paid to screw over people at scale. If you want an indictment of a society, I'd first focus on people being forced into jobs that involve hurting other people.

> With all due respect, the fact that anyone is forced into porn to get housing be safe from abusive partners is the indictment of a society.

I absolutely agree. A society where people have to resort to prostitution in order to keep a roof on their heads FAILED, politically, morally and culturally. In fact, that's exactly how things go in third world countries...

I'd like to agree in some way - but I wonder, is there any countries in the world where a woman can leave her husband, take her kids and have a safe place to live the next day?

I know there are 'shelters' in various cities (and the one in my town has been over 110% capacity for like 20 years (every time I've checked) afaik) - but I mean they can move into a place and start working a minimum wage job and not worry about paying the bills for the roof / utilities / child car / rice and beans?

I'd love to know about such places, I don't think this is possible in the US, and never heard of such options elsewhere, but could exist.

> If someone washes dishes for a living by choice because they love it, good for them. If someone is compelled to in order to feed their kids or leave an abusive partner, then we should all be ashamed of that.

Agreed, I think this is a crappy policy and I feel sorry for those that would get hurt by it, but blaming it for the suffering of domestic violence victims is over-the-top.

With all due respect your opinion is that of almost all human beings.

From the Taliban to Democrats to Republicans to Socialists to Libertarians. (except the aside about "If someone does OF by choice because they love it, good for them")

So I don't see the relevance.

OP offers a solution to keep the current maxima for these girls. Fight for their well being and ask OF and payment processors to let them stay.

The best actionable plan from your comment I can see is, lets dump these girls in the worst of it so it shames people into improving society.

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