cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/18475086
I’m not against those who work for sex, but the idea to earn for a living doesn’t seem nice. IMO, sex should be for 2 people (or more for others who prefer polyamory) who wants to be intimate/romantic with each other. My point is money should not be the purpose.
Yes, but ideally there should be regulation to prevent pimping, predation, trafficking, and STI spread. At the very least, decriminalization protects sex workers from fear of prosecution preventing them from seeking healthcare, legal help, etc.
Trafficking is heinous, but it also gets irreverantly thrown around as a whataboutism by people who are against it for personal instead of rational reasons.
The root of the problems with sex work, as always, is tying means of survival to productivity, which I am against both personally and rationally :P
Agreed. If they decriminalise and regulate it, sex work is much safer for all involved. People gotta pay bills and if sex work is their chosen profession, good for them.
Always a great question to ask software nerds. Great thread idea dude!
Legalize and regulate.
This view also applies to many other issues our society faces.
I don’t believe that my approval or anyone else’s is at all relevant.
My position is that there’s only one person who has the right to decide that they wish to trade sex for money, and that’s the person entering into the trade. Assuming that all other contractual requirements are met - they’re of legal age and acting of their own free will and so on - it’s just as much their right to trade sex for money as to trade ditch digging or code writing or coffee brewing or meeting taking for money.
Sex work is work.
The people that do it deserve respect, and all the social and legal protections that attach to any other kind of work.
Your own preferred attitude to sex isn’t the point.
But should it be work?
Should we really have a society where selling your body is an opportunity to make money.
For instance, it imply that some poor women are gonna take it regardless the consequence, just because it’s the best alternative to pay the bills.
I can barely tolerate the physical straining we put on some workers. Sex work’s consequences are unacceptable to me in that same sens, sometimes worse.
So sure, no matter your opinion we should respect them, and not incriminate them!
And of course not all sex work is the same… to be acceptable it just requires better conditions. It can’t be something you choose out of need.
For instance, it imply that some poor women are gonna take it regardless the consequence, just because it’s the best alternative to pay the bills.
How is this principally different from a poor person taking any shitty job to pay the bills? Like garbage collector or similarly unpleasant/disrespected jobs. The system always forces poor people to settle for shitty jobs. Sex work is not the issue there, the system is.
It’s different in nature. No other jobs infringe on your intimacy in this way.
I do agree the system is the problem, i also would advocate for better conditions for any difficult jobs.
Therapist, hospice, nursing , sports medicine, massage… a lot of jobs require some level of physical or mental intimacy.
Therapist is another topic, with problems of mental intimacy indeed.
The rest is the patient’s intimacy that you have to deal with. It is a vastly different intimate experience to wash a genitalia and be penetrated. And so, vastly different consequences for your well being.
selling your body
i hate that phrasing to describe sex work. no one is “selling their body”, as they are still in control of it. sex workers provide a service, same as a masseuse or hair stylist (except their service involves genitals) and it should be treated as such.
Otherwise one could argue that all (physical) labour is “selling your body”
It seems to me like joining the military is arguably more deserving of the phrase “selling your body”; you’re basically signing up to get injured or killed.
It’s not even an argument really, it’s the undeniable logical conclusion that trading your labor and/or time for compensation is work, period.
It is a high risk job along the lines of coal mining and such, since it will result in an increase in transmitted disease risk. It’s important to acknowledge that, but I am on the side of it being work. I just think we need strong protections in place and regulations to handle it akin to other dangerous jobs. Like, a sex work branch of OSHA.
I think the “body” in that expression is quite specifically referring to genitals, or the selling of your intimacy.
Because that’s what’s different from any other physical labour, the part of your body involved. That’s the specific problem of sex work no?
Regulations would help, but create their own hurdles.
True and tested.
The best help is probably indirectly having better social policies overall. Although never perfect, the best we are the lesser the problem.
It have side effect on the people who do it: yes, I give a flying fuck about it: no
I’m of the opinion that if you don’t want people performing sex work, you should be enacting measures to improve people’s quality of life to where that’s not their only option. The workers themselves should have legal protections and be permitted to perform their job like any other worker is.
I suspect some people would prefer that as a regulated option anyway, and they should be defended in their choice to do so. Sex work is work.
Moreover, if you don’t want people doing sex work, then you probably especially don’t want people to be forced into doing sex work. But that’s precisely what happens when you criminalize it: you make it so that the only way the demand can be satisfied is through a shady black market where trafficking is orders of magnitude more likely to take place, and you make it orders of magnitude more difficult for victims and witnesses to go to the authorities to report it.
I generally agree with you, but it is so complicated. I read a piece in The Nation a few years ago (written 2019) and whenever I see a question like this I have to dig it up. Sex workers in Spain applied to become a union (OTRAS, for short, full name basically means “the other women") and were approved in August 2018. Here are a few snippets:
After OTRAS was legalized, its two dozen or so members—who include women and men, both trans and cisgender—quickly found themselves engulfed in a national controversy. Prominent activists, academics, and media personalities swarmed social media under the hashtag #SoyAbolicionista (“I’m an Abolitionist”) to denounce what they saw as basic exploitation masquerading as the service economy. The union’s opponents argue that in a patriarchal society, women can’t be consenting parties in a paid sexual act born of financial necessity. They liken sex work to slavery, hence their name: “abolitionists.”
OTRAS calls this abolitionist opposition “the industry.” “They live really well off of their discussions, books, workshops, conferences, without ever including sex workers,” Necro says. “We’re not allowed to attend the feminist conventions.” OTRAS accuses “the industry” and the government—the two loudest arms of the abolitionist camp—of racism and classism, and is irked by their claims to feminism. “A government that refuses to guarantee the rights of the most vulnerable, poorest women with the highest number of immigrants? How is that feminist?” Borrell bristles. “We’re the feminists, the ones fighting for their rights.”
While advocates for legalization argue that it will make sex work safer, abolitionists counter that it could instead endanger women who, unlike the members of OTRAS, did not choose to enter the profession on their own. Abolitionists frame their anti-prostitution stance around the issue of human trafficking, specifically for prostitution. They argue that regulating sex work will simply allow traffickers to exploit women under legal cover.
“The trafficked women have no papers, so if police raid a club, the women have no choice but to say they’re there because they want to be,” says Rocío Nieto […] Once law enforcement is out of earshot, Nieto says, “none of the women tell you they want to be there. None of them tell you they want to do that work.”
A handful of smaller radical-left parties also back OTRAS, as well as one unlikely ally: the right-wing Ciudadanos party, known for its harsh anti-immigration stance, among other more traditionally conservative postures. “Experience shows us that when the State refuses to regulate, the mafias make the rules,” the party’s press corps wrote me in an e-mail.
Sure, I don’t see why they should be treated any different than anyone else. I think the problem is the stigma around sex in general, and for that I blame religion.
Absolutely, as long as there is safety and security for all parties involved. Consent must be obeyed by clients and both the clients and employees should be required to supply current STD screens as well as having a safe location for the work.
Its been said in this thread better than I can - but I wish the people who argue sex work is immoral because you’re “selling your body” would apply that same logic to labor.
For most of us, our body is the only capital we have and were taught to devalue that capital into oblivion so those who deplete that capital the most make the smallest possible piece of the pie.
See, I wasn’t really sure, but I think this thread has helped convince me that it’s probably okay. I was for sex work before, but then I had heard that countries with more lax sex work laws had more human trafficking. But that might just be a result of work in our moder capitalist hellscape. Part of me thinks sex work should be illegal until capitalist is abolished, but part of that is probably just some ingrained puritan attitudes of sex and personal philosophy about its intimacy. It doesn’t mean the state should ban people from selling it and it doesn’t mean I have to partake if it’s legal.
I’ll probably keep reading this thread to evolve my attitudes on the subject more, but thanks everyone for the interesting comments on a subject I don’t think about much (sex work… Sex itself I think about all the time lol).
There are other ways in which we sell our bodies in exchange for resources. A lot of people point to soldiers, but for those of us in knowledge work, we sell our brains in exchange for stress and depression if things aren’t in balance. Think about construction workers who break their wrists drilling down floorboards, or caregivers that expose their immune systems to a high quantity of kids who are likely to spread any bugs they pick up because they don’t know better.
Sex work just involves people selling entertainment or enjoyment in a more intimate setting. The fact that it is intimate doesn’t change that it’s work, and that resources can be exchanged for service.
I think this all comes down to stereotypes specific to a certain culture. Hoping I see my culture in America make it more legal so we don’t have some of the issues that come from this market not being legal
People break their bodies doing other kinds of work and people don’t seem too upset about that.
Some sex work isn’t even very physically involved. Take some pictures in the shower. Video yourself rubbing one out. It’s not all walking a dark, rainy, street in your underwear.
All workers should be unionized. Or maybe be in a worked owned cooperative. Capitalism will ruin everything eventually.
Everyone should have access to health care and basic needs.
Laws should be written with input what those they would bind and those they affect. Do sex workers want certain requirements? What do medical professionals think is safest? Laws should not be written to appease the nervous stomach of uninvolved parties.
But this is all fired from the hip because I haven’t done any real research. My gut feel is that most arguments against it are inconsistent (eg: “it’s degrading! But nevermind the job where they literally clean shit off the floor”) or personal nonsense (eg: “it’s a sin! But I don’t care that your worldview doesn’t say so”)
IMO, sex should be for 2 people (or more for others who prefer polyamory) who wants to be intimate/romantic with each other. My point is money should not be the purpose.
This is your personal opinion and really doesn’t justify laws backing it. It’s not founded on anything. Also I’ve got bad news about how a lot of sex isn’t intimate nor romantic.
I can’t fathom any reluctance coming from the left with respect to unionizing and providing necessary health services to any worker. If people do need to resort to sex work to make a living, then what are they supposed to do when they get older? Do you have to do a “respectable” job just to have the right to …retire? I feel some arguments come from a cruel place.
Actually the left’s arguments come from information from the pornographers involved with digital pyramid schemes that also launder human trafficking by people like Andrew Tate.
Nobody in this thread has even heard of the Nordic Model, which helps get women out of the trade without criminalizing their activities, instead going after pimps. Employing former prostitutes as social workers.
There’s no need to rehabilitate women who are just entertaining the prostitution pyramid schemes or in the top brackets (essentially participating as e-madams). It’s practically just sharing nudes for pocket change for 99% of those involved.
We can do a lot better than the Nordic Model, by the way!
The “legalize everything” response to the ineffeciveness of crackdowns at eliminating the root cause of social problems - like drug abuse and prostitution - is just libertarianism.
So it’s no wonder a bunch of nerdy guys groomed on reddit would be defending this.
The real purpose it to set up a wider market for dubiously sourced videos from human traffickers/kidnappers like Andrew Tate with better monetization than video streaming sites. The people jerking off in the shower are just helping provide cover by moving their nude sharing and cosplay activities into a human trafficking monetization pyramid scheme.
The best money is in the most violent and degrading acts available online. People purchasing sex acts through these platforms do it because the manipulation itself is valuable to them. They enjoy forcing people to do very uncomfortable things I’d rather not describe.
I’m getting all of this from actual sociologists by the way, before I get accused of having the same taste! They do studies on the german prostitution forum posts where they complain about the girls having sore holes and broken backs like it’s the wrong sauce on a schnitzel sandwich they ordered. The disgusting behavior is all public and cataloged, but ignored by the sexually desperate men in this thread
Many of you are underselling the exploitative and degrading nature of prostitution by referencing the people drawn into pyramid schemes just sharing their nudes for pocket change
I think it should be legal, with extra protections for the workers to protect them from exploitation and abuse. Unfortunately though, our entire economic system is exploitative, so I’m not sure if it would ever entirely be by choice that somebody turned to prostitution, though labor itself is never entirely by choice. I only work at my job because I have to, not because I really want to. A worker selling their body to perform legal labor for money is on par with a person selling their body for another’s sexual gratification. Making it illegal just makes it worse for the workers, since they’re obviously going to do it anyways and won’t get any protections from the law.
Sex doesn’t always have to be for love, equating it with love is something religious people have forced on the world to get over their own religion-induced guilt over the whole thing. Bonobos have a crazy amount of sex and use it for all sorts of social interactions, it’s something animals do to feel good and relieve stress. There’s instances of other primates even engaging in prostitution as well, where they trade sex for food, and prostitution is one of, if not the oldest job among humans.
No matter what happens, so long as humans exist, they will want to fuck how they like. Its natural for a product of evolution to do it, the taboos against it exist only in our minds (aside from age limitations and informed consent; we still need to be rational) The more it gets stigmatized the worse it’ll get for people not already on top of the social heap.
it should be criminalized and it shouldn’t be financially compulsory for the desperate
