Most people are forced into work by life circumstances. That's how society operates: work or starve.
Sex trafficking is a genuine issue, but it's not at all the majority of the industry. I don't see what makes consensual sex work uniquely coercive or evil when compared to other physically or emotionally intensive labor.
Such regulation inherently requires society to make decisions about what sort of work should be off limits to reduce social pressure to do those jobs. You might not agree that sex work falls in that category, but women themselves decisively do: https://www.vox.com/2016/3/11/11203740/prostitution-legal-me...
And as to your own view, do you think unemployment offices should tell women to look for jobs in sex work before they can get unemployment benefits? After all it’s just another job right?
No, not certain kinds of jobs, that's absolutely the wrong way to think about it. People shouldn't be forced into certain kind of working conditions. That's an entirely different perspective. If impersonal sex doesn't bother you, sex work is a perfectly legitimate form of labour as long as the working conditions are just as safe and regulated as any other job they could choose.
> And as to your own view, do you think unemployment offices should tell women to look for jobs in sex work before they can get unemployment benefits? After all it’s just another job right?
The notion that unemployment benefits should be contingent on anything is a notion you've carried into this, but even if we go with it, if a woman could not stand the thought of being a sanitation worker, then she has every right to reject that kind of job. The same argument applies to sex work.
From that perspective, any difference between "type of work" and "working conditions" is wholly artificial. People don't want to be pressured to work on weekends, they don't want to be pressured to do sex work, etc., so we ban those things to eliminate those pressures.
It only looks artificial because you cited an example of working conditions, not type of work. The right to refuse certain kinds of work is a perfectly cogent concept and does not require artificially restricting other people's choices.
Such rules are not made for the benefit of these powerless people.
It is more like how biology operates.
My 8 year old isn't working, but somehow manages to not starve.
We absolutely could structure society to prevent starvation without forcing labor.
We don't know that. We are told that, without evidence, a lot.
And of course, technically, most of us are forced to work by life circumstances.
This is the point - sex work is a job just like any other and deserves at least the same protections as any other job.
Citation needed. Porn stars are coerced into it? Are cam models forced into it? The fact that the oldest profession is illegal leads to exploitation.
"You think I sell my body, I merely sell my time" -NOFX
I would argue that being contracted to kill other people other people is very different from other jobs. But we still provide them with insurance, healthcare, acceptance, etc, why not sex work?
Institutional support instead of prosecution also comes with the benefit of at least partially undermining the black market of the work, and the additional crimes that are frequently associated with sex work.
When would you do this? I do not see this argument.
> We also know that the vast majority of people who work in the "industry" are either coerced by others or forced into it by life circumstances.
We also know this about 95% of employed people, and 100% of those who don't have savings adequate for retirement or sponsors. You don't work, you don't eat.
> Internet porn makes this even worse, since even if they decide to stop, their material will stay online forever.
It would be irrelevant if the material were online forever if large minorities didn't feel it was their duty to punish people indefinitely for ever having done this job.
The second is having empathy for the worker, a key progressive position. That says, for example, that if you do think that there’s something truly degrading about the work the answer is to have economic and social policies which reduce the number of desperate people without good alternatives, or to have better regulation of the middlemen profiting from the situation, etc. rather than traditional approaches focused on punishing workers.
You seem to only imply these arguments. What are they, specifically?
A coal worker or someone working a similaily harsh job is also renting out their body in ways that might ultimatly proof to be far more destructive to their lives. Whether someone can perform a sexual act for money or not is on a base level purely a question of personal preference. Just like some people enjoy acting or being on stage and others don't. The question is if you are forced into doing it or under which conditions you have to do your work. For sex workers it is pretty clear that their working conditions are coupled to how accepting society is of that job. If it is basically criminalized, you will have criminals run the business hidden from society. If you have it accepted and strictly regulated, there might still be criminals, but the individual sex workers have a greater agency in how, when, with whom they work.
Puritan religious ideas in that context are powerful if you believe in them, but meaningless if you don't. Sexuality comes in many forms and not everybody feels a strong connection between sexuality and love (which is e.g. why many sex workers would rather have sex with someone than kissing them).
I recall some studies showing even just folks at strip clubs enduring a lot of emotional pain and etc. Is it the job, is it the folks who take those jobs? I don't know but I'm skeptical about "It's simply a job." kind of blanket deceleration.
Human sexuality is hardly like typing on a keyboard or etc... I don't buy into just declaring it like any other job. Granted I don't care to stigmatize those folks either, but that statement seems somewhat dangerous / off the mark.
If you work with the elderly, especially in dementia care, included in your job description is mopping up piss and shit. You'll also receive all manner of verbal and physical abuse.
It is absolutely degrading.
So it's retail work with better pay.
- actors (non-porn, but sex scenes, full or partial nudity, kissing etc)
- gastronomy (hooters as an extreme example, hostesses at conferences/buffets less so, the emotional and physical expectations placed on normal waitresses)
- modeling
- construction, truck driving, health care and other "will wreck your body and possibly mental health" professions
- butchers, executioners, soldiers and other jobs which are "voluntarily" doing things which in current norms are not acceptable to do in public or regularly
I'm personally not convinced we should target sex work per se if we want to save people being forced into it by circumstances or people, but we should target the circumstances or people that cause the duress. If people still want to do sex work then, hey, it's a free country.
Physical laborers rent out their bodies in a way that often causes permanent damage. It's literally degrading their bodies. Some construction workers live with chronic pain for their entire lives.
There's a psychological component as well, which is more vulnerable in sex work, but there are no shortage of people who also end up with psychological damage from their jobs outside of sex work either. Another commenter pointed out military work — being ordered to kill results in absurd levels of trauma, but it's a completely legitimate career path in the eyes of most societies. Why is that?
I find it fairly hard to distinguish sex work from other work. There's a different balance of upsides and downsides, but you can find similar impacts in other legitimized lines of work.
Not to labour the point but: cf Soldiers.
Men can take the emotional and physical toll but women can't?
edit: just to expand on this, talk to people who have been on military tours about the horrors of draging dead bodies (that they might have killed) from the road side, the pain of loosing friends, being away from your family etc.
The army has always been glorified as a country without soldiers is free pickings. It's practically a necessity, as current day tensions show.
Sex work isn't a necessity. Worse, regarding prostitution and porn, most of it's clientele remains secretive to avoid shame. Even if sex was considered a necessity, the stigma alone would prevent individuals from persuing services.
The fact you specifically discriminate between men and women gives it away (women can be soldiers, men can be sexworkers). We consider both the purity of women and the willingness for men to sacrifice themselves and be assertive as virtues. Now turn it around and you have your answer as to the status quo for almost our entire existence across the entire globe.
That is your own conlcusion. Historically armies were "staffed" by nobles. You couldn't be a soldier if you didn't have land or title, so it started out as something of prestigious and exclusive (as an alternative explanation why it was/is glorified).
My point isn't that we should see sex work as important as being a soldier (though this is still somewhat subjective). My point is that people do things _as jobs_ that can have psycological impacts. Soldiers are not treated in some different class to other jobs. They are treated essentially the same: people have contracts, insurance, pensions, etc.
why is sex work different?
> The fact you specifically discriminate between men and women gives it away
Thank you for pointing this out.
> We consider both the purity of women and the willingness for men to sacrifice themselves and be assertive as virtues.
Who is we?
> Now turn it around and you have your answer as to the status quo for almost our entire existence across the entire globe.
I don't understand what you are trying to say here.
If you as a man weren't willing to fight, be it the army or your home, good luck attracting a mate for most of history. Similar dynamics exist today.
>why is sex work different?
Already answered. History and cultural virtues.
>Who is we?
The far majority of your male and female ancestors, for one. The majority of cultures globally, for two.
>I don't understand what you are trying to say here.
The opposite of purity is lust and promiscuity. The opposite of being assertive is passivity and avoiding conflict. The opposite of wanting to fight is running away or freezing up.
The vast majority of women aren't attracted to weak men who won't stand and fight for their hypothetical children.
The vast majority of men aren't attracted to promiscuous women looking for the next meal ticket.
No amount of reasoning changes dynamics that have existed for millions of years. Culture too originates from something.
Now look back at what soldiers do and what sex workers and their clientele resemble. It has nothing to do with emotional burdens.
Most men, for significant parts of history, weew explicitly excluded from joining the army (e.g. Roman armies were only "staffed" by citizens). Where are you getting the idea that most men had to fight at home? Do you have any relevant sources for this?
> The vast majority of men aren't attracted to promiscuous women looking for the next meal ticket.
Ew. I generally prefer not to pass judgement, but this is an unpleasant turn of phrase in the exposition of your idea.
> No amount of reasoning changes dynamics that have existed for millions of years
Anatomically modern humans have only been around for ~300k years, civilisation ~5k. What millions of years of dynamics are you talking about exactly?
Examples of reasoning changing dynamics that have "existed for millions of years:"
- Money - Democracy - Contracts - etc.
> what sex workers and their clientele resemble
What do they resemble to you? Is this a modern conception or one that has existed for millions of years?
Er, no. It was a path to citizenship. The Tartship Strippers quote "service guarantees citizenship" had real antecedents, and is even now a benefit of military service in the US.
See, e.g. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-roman-stu... for the first, and https://www.uscis.gov/military/naturalization-through-milita... for the second.
Being gay used to be taboo and shameful too, it still is in many places... but this is changing. Sex work is already a little less taboo in places where it's regulated. Societal norms are much easier to change than biological compulsions.
Despite being recognized as a necessity in many countries (mine included), you won't get subsidy or sexual assistance as an otherwise capable individual. For obvious reasons, this affects guys the most (the problems for women come after, generally). You'd need a really severe case for governments to make the wet dream of specific circles come true. The equivalent of your country's leader being at gunpoint by an opposing invading army.
If your country gets attacked, you bet mandatory draft will be reinstuted ASAP and executed. It's obvious, just look at Ukraine and Russia.
It's not the same. Actions speak louder.
That's not to mention, sex usually isn't the only thing lacking, making sex work a horrendous substitute or even exasperating the problem.
To try to bring things back from this extreme tangent; my point was that on an individual level, trauma from sex work is no worse than trauma people face on the front lines, yet one is acceptable and one's not. That's a somewhat arbitrary construct.
As individuals both sex (and/or some adjacent intimacy) and safety are very low on the hierarchy of needs.
Thank you for distilling this.
So with military work, it's not about being required to kill as much as getting it that the killing needs doing. An overpowered army like the Americans conquering Iraq will induce trauma, but if you're outnumbered and alone, and you win? In my case unarmed. Five times, Thursday was my first 4-on-1, not a scratch. They threw a rock at me, 505 grams (I just weighed it), it hit a lamppost. Holy shit, screamed at the stoner QUE CHUCHA PERRA!! FUCK YOU, which is what you're supposed to say in the circumstances, being ganged up on and all, but standing your ground. It's my turf. I told them never to come back, the rapist said he'd come back any time he wanted, no respect. That's what he said! I told him there'd be consequences! I was within my right, not the initiator by any means, I've been a Roman Law hero for ten years by this point, that's gotta add up to something!
So things are getting crazy violent. A little too violent. More than would be entertaining for a neighborhood, too much. American Embassy in Santiago said I should pack my shit and go back stateside. But you know what? Where? Stanford has worse rape extortion. California...Canada same, all about the straight white male Christian, like...no I'd rather be a totally hated minority where I can actually claim to be a minority and defend myself (and the rest of the minority obviously, I'm the only gringo who could have realistically retaliated for that sodomistic screaming catcall, nobody else literally nobody), but all the same...the fetish for lynchings is even worse in California. The rape extortion is the motor of the Californian economy, or should I say, the Fornicalian economy? Fornicalia. Women open up to me about rape extortion in California all the damn time, just the rent is insane pervy rapey landlords taking all wages (and frequently colluding with employers hearing about you getting a raise before you do). One woman was working in a Hispanic Supermarket, just said the rent is disgusting, while knowing full well (exact) what she made. Literally rape extortion. Her landlord, like most Californian landlords, was a rape extortionist because she feared and he know and now I know and I vouch the first thing that happens upon eviction is rape. Landlords threaten with rape. That's how they make money for nothing. Like yeah bring in a handiman every now or never, nah. Another one, this is damning, I was in a psych ward (as I frequently am), and one of the staff opened up about the rape extortion. Didn't actually say rape! But complained, it's all so competitive, rent is so disgusting, meaning she never profited from her work, and she was telling an inmate in the asylum! Because at the end of the day, they see me and know I'm not a bullshit guy who wants to barge through the door without saying hello, fuck as infectiously as he think he can get away with, and jump out the window without saying goodbye. A good man, a man who wants to be a husband and a father, a Christian, the absolute only true monster.
Really beautiful women trust me, I kind of hate that trust but oh well. Particularly when they tell me they've been raped, I hate that! That burns all bridges forever, because that means a greater than 1 in a million chance of accusing me of rape! And frankly having heard enough by this point, all beautiful people get raped. All of them. It's inescapable, they're targeted the most. The bitchvictim media sabotages their defenses because it wants them to get raped. Stanford feminists argue not, say it's about power, but they're chock-full of dogshit, it is partly about power but it is mostly about genetic reproduction. Get real. My accusers are so gross, I turn my phone off around them because I wouldn't touch them with a photon! Just gross, Ariel and Ashley, nothing so gross as betrayal, not glamorous at all, each synonymous with ten thousand instances of rape dungeon punishment. Dude can't go to Stanford reunion to talk to my witnesses because my accusers are very empowered and lying in wait under a bridge. When I returned to Stanford years later all I could think about was switching classes to something with no women, two female professors was terrifying because of the disgusting gullibility of the deans thirsting for a pretext to extort me with sodomy. Neither of them stood upright the whole meeting when they accused me of rape, because they couldn't they both had erections and both had eyes glazed. Witnessed the meeting of the minds, I arrived last to a meeting meant for me alone with the dean, and there were three other people there, you think they spoke before I arrived? What a complete gang-rape. Perfect crime because they knew if they accused me of rape at maximum speed with all the most disgusting ejaculations implying my guilt, off a script, and didn't let me open my mouth at all until the double bind where I was expected (being under coercion after all, sodomy extortion already being declared) to confess. Yeah never figure that one out.
But with this screaming sodomist, this Thursday, no post-traumatic stress disorder. More rather, losing my shit, as many on this forum said I was, but wasn't at the time, got it vetted by my doctor mind you, now it's like...am I living in a society that only wants to rape and murder me? It all started when a flamboy with 5 inch platforms screamed at me "gringo culiao" meaning calling me cooperative with being raped, ie by him, it was rape extortion, dude...without me saying anything to him, just walked down the street, being white, being tall, being straight, being a stranger to homosexual sex, and THE WORSE OF ALL having a fully straight backbone, from winning 33 conflicts before then. How am I supposed to hunch after 33-0? It's an animal status thing, dogs raise their tail, men raise their backs. Very visible when I'm also 6'2" (188 cm) (but for real, not like men who tell women they're 2 or sometimes up to 4 inches taller than they actually are, in person at least, on a dating app who gives a shit 6 inches taller). Specifically determined my height at the doctor's office because I kept getting asked what it was at castings, and while I could say it was 190 cm and they bought it, I said 189 cm (didn't round up), my best estimate, until a checkup where I asked for it exact. 188 cm is very tall, I don't know, only seen one woman taller than that in my life. So all that, and I guess people read my having been a straight model, and in some cases (teenage women especially can tell, I hate this about them) that I'm a hero (strictly according to Roman Law, got called a hero meeting all the criteria), then that's when I get targeted. It's a combination of their being 4 of them and 1 of me, the impunity, the feeling of power that I can be accused of being a violent homophobe for retaliating against a homosexual with 5 inch platforms screaming rape extortion at me, and of course his 5 inch platforms guy was like 5'5" without them, they uplifted him. They made him feel big, and it was the first time I encountered a flamboy dressed as a goth with such high shoes, hard to compensate in my mind, it was like he was 5'10". Besides being sexual display, ordinarily of being a homosexual, but in the context, of being proposing sodomy. Specifically had to do with my being white. So "gringo culiao" refers to my whiteness, like he wanted to stain me with his superior sodomist genetics...like what is he then going to buy my children, with his DNA, a gift for their first birthday? Will he go to their baseball game? Put food on the table? Give that daughter a generous allowance so she can buy outfits freely, which I heard one beautiful girl say once, and made me want to someday be the father who could come up with the money for that. Alimony? Pay for the wedding? Go to prison if he's behind on child support? Because he's screaming that he's straight, everybody's straight, he wants to have babies alright, he just doesn't want paternity himself, he wants to spread his genes through me. Wants to infect me with thousands of sexually transmitted infections, which in addition carry his human genome as a reward for spreading them, that's the endgame. I've been getting these threats for decades, and I'm just fed up with this shit, they always get mulligans and it's sodomy extortion, it's just wrong. And I'm realistically the only gringo who could retaliate for that, no other American could go back and give him a chance to back down on the sodomy threat. And follow through when he arrogantly upheld his threat of sodomy.
END OF PART I
Dude I'm a Roman Law hero, I just won my 34th street fight, I'm taking the stairs now because I see too many smiling faces on the elevator, I was scouted many times and eventually actually went to get photos taken--I was a straight model, and the tallest model at all the castings.
Nobody ever talks about this black hole. No man has ever--apparently--come forward first of his own accord to denounce how destructive these lynchings are. Not all of them can take place in court--certainly not mine, maybe next week I don't know, any day now I'll get my trial. Someone has to win in the court of public opinion.
And frankly I really do want the Mark of Cain, it's wrong for women to be like "oh great look who's crossing the club to talk to me" then we hit it off, then ten minutes later (it takes longer for the most attractive women though) I start losing my nerve and deliberately reveal my fear. They deserve to know the reason I can't go home with them UNCONDITIONALLY EVER FORGET IT is because I got lynched. They deserve to know I went through a decade of rape extortion, caving into demand after demand so I wouldn't end up in the abyss. Dude I couldn't sit down with a lawyer for ten fucking years. Is that what you mean by someone in my life that I trust that I can talk to? It was extortion the entire time up to that. And I have nowhere to come up with the $25000 it costs to mitigate the lynching. No Stanford student except the kids of billionaires does. Lessig put it best, "it's a rich kid school.".
This is it. Besides it's largely bots on this site, and nobody reads the walls of text, in fact in part III this forum was the only document that didn't get destroyed along with most of the other evidence. I'm telling this to myself, I'll read this, I'm the intended audience.
Like I treat your gratuitous response like the bots accusing me of being mentally ill and a bot, same as I was called a rapist and a virgin. It's like a prompt from a book of writing prompts. You don't actually give a damn.
Yeah there's lots of street fights here. So one way of communicating it is I used to wear flip flops but after two aggressions (one of them rape extortion) I hate myself for having backed down on--strictly because I was wearing flip-flops--I never wore flip-flops again. I like running shoes, those are much better. Dude never wear uncomfortable shoes not even to meet the President of Russia. Suit yeah but with sneakers. Of course! Once you get whacked, you never go back!
I wear flip-flops often myself, but they're definitely not good for fighting or running, I can see that.
Well, the latter part is valid for almost every "bottom of the ladder" style precarious job. Be it agriculture, meatpacking, construction, flipping burgers, hauling trash, handing out Amazon parcels or sex work - all of these don't require much education or training, they're fairly risky (in terms of danger of accidents or other harm) and there's an abundance of potential workers which means the wages are very low.
> Internet porn makes this even worse, since even if they decide to stop, their material will stay online forever.
The irony is, there are so many people shaming anything sexual from erotic art over r/gonewild nudes to full-service sex work, but almost everyone of the shamers is jacking off to porn regularly.
In a decent society without religious bullcrap, there would be no stigma attached and that's it - and we're thankfully heading that way, given that "having an onlyfans" is basically the norm for young women these days employers simply can't afford to shame women for enjoying sex as they won't find staff otherwise.