This is why sex work should be mainstreamed and laws created to protect workers in the industry, including prostitution.
We should not be letting "our systems" in Big Tech do their thing. Specially when it comes to a person's accounts
BTW: For example in Switzerland it is legal, you even have (in theory) to pay taxes. But still the problems are the same (human trafficking etc), nothing changed, and if you go to the police you have accidents like floating dead in a river a week later. Legalize it but make nothing to take the mafia away from it brings nothing, in fact it gives them a legal way to make money.
Maybe it should be a state owned business only and not a private thing, sounds crazy but if you work for the state not even the mafia would dare to touch you, you have stable employment, insurance and medical services.
https://www.ncsl.org/research/civil-and-criminal-justice/dru...
No you don't, you just need to make buying sex and pimping illegal, you can do that without punishing the victims, what you call "sex workers" is a euphemism for sex trafficked women.
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/04/19/is-legalize...
The best estimate I've seen for percentage of active sex workers that are currently being trafficked was between 3 and 4 %.
https://aella.substack.com/p/what-percentage-of-sex-workers-...
How involved are you in combatting sex trafficking? I've been involved in this to varying degrees for a few years now, and this is would be new information to me.
Sex trafficking and sex work is a Venn diagram with overlap, certainly, but they are definitely not the same. Many women do sex work as an independent decision, choosing it over other choices that they are presented with, and they find fulfillment in it.
Trafficked people are, at best, highly vulnerable individuals who feel they don't have any alternatives and are brainwashed by people close to them. More often than that, they are simply abducted and traded as property. Sex trafficking is a recognized form of slavery. Very different from independent sex workers.
EDIT:
The reason it's important to get this distinction right is because misinformation around it dilutes the seriousness of actual human trafficking. There are people in slavery who need intervention from police and governments. Not middle-class women in Orange County who do private sessions in the basement of the home they own.
Nor are the differences as clear as you make them out to be. Sure, there are clear cut cases of human trafficking, but how do you know that your Orange County basement whore isn’t caught up in an abusive relationship with some indolent man who uses her as his livelihood? More to the point, how does the john know? The whole narrative that women freely choose sex work and find it fulfilling may be true in some cases, but there’s no easy way to tell which cases those are, and the human consequences of guessing wrong are awful.
But if you want to actually address the problem, you do need to decriminalize prostitution.
All adult women want is the empowerment to make decisions for their own bodies. It is theirs, after all.
No, it's completely intertwined. Because these pressures exist in numerous contexts, we've developed both social norms and laws to limit the race to the bottom, overwhelmingly with the support of the women affected by those pressures.
> All adult women want is the empowerment to make decisions for their own bodies. It is theirs, after all.
Which women? More women identify as "conservative" than "liberal"--and even among the latter, legalizing sex work is not a majority (and possibly not even mainstream) position.
My mom thinks sex work is very bad for society. It's probably one of the things my mom, all my aunts, and my wife's mom and aunts agree with, despite being from different countries and otherwise having quite different political views. Opposition to sex work is something that women tend to get the most riled up about, because ultimately its mothers and daughters that suffer from the consequences of sex work.
Not even close to reality. More women identify as liberal than as conservative, more are registered Democrats than Republicans, and even within the Republican party women skew moderate rather than conservative. Among nonvoters the gender breakdown on various issues that can be easily identified as liberal or conservative shows that women favor policies that are generally considered liberal.
Women tend to be less libertarian than men, and sometimes that breaks towards more liberal attitudes (they are more likely to favor generous social programs), and sometimes that breaks towards more conservative attitudes (they are more likely to oppose legalized prostitution and pornography).
As of 2016, attitudes were closely divided on legalizing sex work overall (40% in favor, 43% against). But the gender breakdown was striking: https://www.vox.com/2016/3/11/11203740/prostitution-legal-me.... Men supported legalization 51-36, while women opposed it 30-50.
Women similarly oppose pornography--just 25% find it morally acceptable, compared to 43% of men: https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Pro...
Being a Democrat, of course, isn't dispositive of anything. My mom is a democrat, because she likes Obamacare and Anthony Fauci. But she's as socially conservative as any republican. (Like Black people: https://news.gallup.com/poll/112807/blacks-conservative-repu...)
Social libertarianism is championed mainly by the white college educated wing of the Democratic Party. But the party is ideologically diverse. For example, under 60% of Democrats say that “changing gender roles” has “made it easier for women to lead satisfying lives”: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/10/18/wide-pa.... For Democrats without a college degree, it's under 50%.
Sorry for the lengthy rant, but people projecting their views onto "women" (or another popular one these days, "people of color") has become a pet peeve of mine. When you say stuff like what "adult women want is the empowerment to make decisions for their own bodies" you’re making a libertarian argument, and statistically that’s going to be most appealing to white men. (That doesn’t make it wrong, but if you’re going to bring identity into it you don’t get to play fast and loose with what arguments different groups tend to find more compelling.)
Similarily theres men who do the same thing using either their looks or wealth as a chip.
We are human, but we are also bunch of monkeys in the end.
Are these purely Christian morality or do they hint at very real underlying biological reasons total sexual freedom might be problematic to a society? These sorts of things do happen.
Your hypotheticals talk about people who are dishonest. The problem is inappropriate activity outside of a monogamous relationship. If one partner doesn't discuss their behavior with their other partner, the problem wasn't the sex worker, it is that they are not being honest about their activities. Your examples are moot anyway because regulated sex workers are tested every day, and are required to use condoms to protect against HIV. The risk of STD or pregnancy with a regulated sex worker are miniscule. It's far more risky for the husband to go to a bar and pick up someone randomly.
> Are these purely Christian morality
> total sexual freedom might be problematic to a society
At least for now, we have sexual freedom in many jurisdictions all over the world, and society seems to be chugging along. Sexual activity isn't bringing the world to it's knees. (hee hee) The concept might be problematic to your vision of what society should look like, but the rest of us are enjoying life and letting others live their life choices.
> Who cares? There's no law against this.
There are, in fact laws against extramarital (and, for that matter, premarital) sex, though in the US those that remain in the books are unenforceable (though the line of Constitutional law making it so is under massive assault at the moment, so maybe not for long.)
Which is why prostitution is embraced in the Muslim world, Asia, etc? Or maybe these completely different groups of people tend to overwhelmingly agree on taboos against sex work because it reflects something fundamental about human psychology?
As for the "Muslim world", I wouldn't be so sure that there's anything behind the sexual taboos held except garden variety discrimination. Monogamy is a sacred duty for women, but men are allowed to take up to 4 wives by Islamic law. Why can't women have 4 husbands?
Read Quran, Verse IV: 3. The best part is that if you can't be nice to your wives, just marry 4 slaves instead! That's a pretty serious endorsement that the roots of "taboos against sex work" are really just part and parcel of how men in ancient times maintained control over women.
Men get 4 wives, women get but one husband. Not only is it unfair, it's purely about keeping control over women. Or 4 women, for that matter.
It isn’t “mainstreamed” (see original comment in this thread) anywhere. Even in countries where it’s technically legal—like Bangladesh, where I’m from—the associated business activity is still illegal, and there are strong social taboos against sex work.
Sometimes societal evolution takes a wrong turn and embraces ideas that are maladaptive. For example, in the Netherlands, the Muslim immigrants who are demographically ascendant for the most part embrace these “1950s” ideas, and are outcompeting the Dutch folks who have embraced sexual liberalism.
The Netherlands has chosen to legalize prostitution, for good reasons which have proven in practice that the argument that you are making is invalid. That immigrants (the bulk of which joined since that legalization) are demographically ascendant and embrace those same ideas that you espouse is utterly irrelevant. The point is: there is ample evidence that the theory you push is wrong.
Ok, so now we're in 1890 or so. Really, this is beyond absurd.
> The literal commoditization of it through legalized prostitution is a merely a specific manifestation of a more general cultural attitude.
No, it means that you recognize that realistically prostitution is going to happen anyway, regardless of what you think or feel about it, so you try to make it as safe for the sex workers as you can and legalization is a very important step in that.
I give up.