How is that 'fine'?
I would like to see a future where someone doing sex work to make ends meet (or even as a freely chosen profession!) is not ostracised for it. Sex is part of society whether you want it or not, and so is paying for sexual acts.
Some cultural norms are outdated, but prostitution is still degrading and dangerous for those practicing it, especially for the women; who may not be doing so willingly, prostitution being the main incentive for human trafficking. And the online medium doesn't change that by much.
Some people may be willing to pay for sex, some people are willing to pay for many other things or activities that should be or are illegal.
When it becomes fine, it will be worth no more than someone coming to mow your lawn, and probably less than that.
Why though? It is an interesting issue when you look closer. For an individual, it's more obvious - I wouldn't like to be with a prostitute because of possible hidden diseases and lack of trust - but there is no way of telling how many sexual contacts my new partner had, whether paid for or not.
But I wouldn't have any problem working with an ex-pro in the same company or team, they would be just a colleague like all the rest, and I can't imagine any adult making any immature comments about the past of any colleagues on my team.
EDIT: brace for the lawn mowing cartels led by ex human trafficking gangs. On a more serious note, there is so much criminality involved in that field precisely because it's illegal and lucrative. You remove that and you remove a lot of abuse.
Consider the sex workers who deal with mentally or physically disabled adults. Most people have sexual urges, and those who are unable to participate in society in the usual way of addressing their urges with a romantic partner or a one-night stand still have them. There are a good number of very professional sex workers out there who can provide these people with sex (often with specific expertise for the relevant handicaps) and generally significantly improve the wellbeing.
Are those sex workers doing something they shouldn't be doing?
A large amount of those people are very young, at an age where you don't really pick your options solely on their super long term consequences.
Most people are going to be "stupid" in their early adulthood, failing and adjusting is a big part of it. Unfortunately, some of those decisions will stick more than others and sex work is very sticky (zing).
Would you rather be flipping burgers all day for 30k or would you rather take a few nudes every week and make 300k?
It seems the main complain is that it brings the prices down due to competition from eastern europe.
degrading: no. I've met prostitutes who very much like their work and find it empowering
dangerous: ...yes, because it's illegal and they don't have access to proper legal protection.
And they will continue to be if there are never any consequences.
Stop bailing people out of problems they make for themselves and people will start learning to not make those problems.
Human beings are not stupid machines who see others put their hand in the fire, getting burned, then they put their own hands in the fire get burned, and then keep doing it over and over again.
Most will stop when they see others get burned, others still will stop when they get burned, and a small minority will stop once there is no hand left to burn.
Sex is in all (?) human cultures viewed as most intimate and private expression of civilized love. It is also how we teach our kids about sex. Pornography and prostitution serve only our primal desires which goes against all this. Does it really surprise you that society will shun people that partake in these things? To me it is obvious as day.
You are asking a binary question for which there isn't a binary answer. Better to ask are those sex workers doing something they will get a pat on their backs for from other members of society? In a way a builder, chef, firefighter, and even a prison guard would.
OF is like the wet dream of a drug dealer or whoever else with a baby momma and some kind of scam/fraud/counterfeit operation.
I can only imagine that the negative perception of prostitution as "selling" your body is coming from mainstream religions which are the great society moralizer.
Yes, and this seems to be a discussion of whether people want it or not. I don't think paid sex acts ruin the world. Some people probably need it in place of real intimacy, for their own mental health. I still think it's generally scummy and unproductive. Then again, I think all sorts of businesses can be described that way. Snake oil has been killing it for as long as commerce has been around. Another example: if you go around gutting productive companies to line your own pockets, e.g. buying & dismantling competitors to stop competition, I see that as a greater moral failing than baiting lonely people with sex appeal.
It's common that people forget or fail to understand that business is a way to cooperatively shape life into something desirable, and instead see it as a way to win at others expense.
Somehow it's mainly the ones who sells their body and not the ones who buy them who get punished.
Buying is more often voluntarily than selling.
The same is true for their clients but they don't get the same treatment.
Drug dealers are also part of society, yet we still frown upon them.
Why? Especially compared to e.g. advertising/marketing? At least in the former case, all parties to the transaction are there voluntarily, for an honest, mutually beneficial exchange of value.
Probably because its not the same at all. Getting naked and spreading your legs is neither as productive nor difficult as serving your country. Neither should it have the same social status.
Beautifully put!
> Sure, prostitution is shameful and sinful and whatnot
Only according to some. Imo it's much more immoral to work in fossil fuels or the police/military (where you abandon morals to execute orders).
Haven't some OF creators come out admitting they were pressured into it, or at least doing it more than they'd like.
We don't want people to hurt themselves, because we have humanity and because they become a drain on society.
I find it hard to be that black and white with phenomenons like OF, that emerge from a mix of societal and technological advancement.
There are grey zones and not everyone is fortunate enough to be taught to be responsible. Not everyone can go through life without feeling desperate and resort to doing things they would not be proud of.
We should try to educate and protect people instead of pointing internet fingers at them.
I think we're seeing things in different frameworks, and I'm considering the end result more important than the principles here. If you don't accept that some seemingly individual decisions have a cumulated effect on society long-term, and that shaming is the only mechanism to make changes here, there really is no discourse possible.
- the Spanish inquisition
- jihad/crusades
- guns
- PFAS
- agent orange
- iron maiden (not the band, the torture device)
- the atomic bomb
Well the same could be said of social media, mobile phones, netflix binge, computer games (although I don't agree with the violence part). So why single out sex then?
I can't say, I have never lived as a Bonobo.
In principle I agree.
We have a society praising a soldier for killing and risks losing limbs and life (basically selling his body) during military service, but demonizing a sex worker.
This society needs to take a good hard look in the mirror. We have people admonishing sex work and marijuana use, while its most "successful" members are in arms dealing, fossil fuels, workers exploitation (amazon), and gambling with the livelihoods of people (banks/wall street).
And this explains how drug problems solved themselves hundreds of years ago. Good thing we've all decided to stop doing debilitating drugs after seeing the consequences of addition in the past!
In stable families and societies, women use sex as control (power) over men. Younger women who sell sex are undermining that power structure. That is why they must be punished.
Another way to look at in economic terms: Female sex is a scarce resource. Female selling transactional sex is commoditizing this resource. In general, people don't like their valuable service getting commoditized.
We have different moral compasses, I guess. To me, obeying military orders (which often result in killing people) is neither productive, nor difficult (as a big part of thinking/initiative is replaced by blindly following orders). Military personnel basically outsource a large chunk of thinking and assessing good/bad to a "higher power". In a way, that's very easy and comfortable life for a specific type of people: all higher order judgments are deferred to higher ups in the military chain. Besides, I wouldn't say military personnel are "serving" their country more than, say, plumbers, electricians, railway workers, postal service, healthcare workers, or, even sex workers.
> Neither should it have the same social status
I disagree. The fact that somebody who has no other skills and initiative but to be a death machine/robot blindly following orders, doesn't warrant them to be a hero, and sure as hell doesn't qualify them to a high social status in my book. And, at least to me, calling military service "productive" is just plain hypocrisy. Their only function is to either destroy things during war, or sit around looking menacing when there is no war.
Imo, money spent on weapons and the military could be better spent to build more social housing, solve healthcare problems, etc.
As a married person in balancing my finances I always then half it and then subtract 20 percent of my pretax income to find what's truly mine after liabilities to my spouse. This makes me explicitly aware of the true cost I pay, and if god forbid i am divorced i have already mentally written off most my wealth and home I painstakingly singlehandedly built stick by stick over a period of years as not actually mine.
Prostitution causes a real problem here as it throws a bone in the resource extraction from male to female by making the consumer more informed on costs up front.
We don't give high social status to killers, thugs, murderers and hired assassins, but when it's institutionalized killing, (which is the military) that's okay? The fact that an "official" gives the word, and the victims are not citizens of your country doesn't make the military be less about killing.
There also is nothing "productive" about paying for salaries, equipment and training to a bunch of grown men in the anticipation that you have to send them to do violence to your bidding.
If the military was not under the veneer of "official", wrapping it in an "institution" and all the language of "serving your country", we'd not been able to distinguish between military, militia and armed thugs.
Yet, our society at large reveres them as some heroes and they are mainly socially acceptable.
I bet that if we had a "Department of pleasure", with ranks, hierarchies, rules, promotion paths, etc, sex workers wouldn't be as marginalized as they are now. In fact, in many civilized countries, prostitutions is both legal and taxed, and less stigmatized than it is in the US, who are too puritanical/religion influenced in their views to want it to be otherwise.
I disagree. First and only rule of nature is might makes right, and being capable of dishing out the most violence (and hence also least likely to be the victim of it) is very “productive”. It is a huge contributor to the purchasing power of the US dollar, which is a referendum on the stability and productivity of US society.
For example, the oceanic transportation routes around the world are kept mostly safe and humming along because of militaries enforcing it.
Why do you inherently distrust a former sex worker? What about sex work is distrustful? Do you think prostitutes have a habit of not delivering after payment or something?
It's better to have a future where people don't have to do SW to make ends meet
A future where more people get forced into sex work because of economic reasons is not desirable. Consider the diseases, conflict with cultural norms, potential for rape and abuse
Sex should be freely given. "Free laborers" aren't freely giving their labor, they're forced to for economic reasons
For example Google is abusing their position by feeding a stream of right-wing and related stuff to my mother because she clicked a Trump video a friend(?) sent her so that she watches more of this stuff, gets more negative emotions, and continues to spend her time on their site. Trying to regulate these things is terribly hard and whatever idea you come up with, the folks at big tech will find a way to go around them.
In an ideal world, 100% yes.
In our world, where every now and again a crazy power-hungry dictator appears and wages a war against a weaker country and is killing civilians - unfortunately it's a comfort we can't afford.
No, if you sell sex, lots of societies will punish you. Selling or renting your body otherwise -- which a very large share of jobs involve just as much as sex work does -- is otherwise lauded.
> Thats fine, societies have all sorts of norms we all need to learn.
Lots of norms that societies have or historically have had would be better eliminated. That something is an existing norm isn't an argument in favor of it being a norm.
Considering the risk are bodily harm, there is some similarity to the risks of bodily harm that some sex workers take, and far more frequently, than soldiers. STDs, violent guys, etc etc.
> but for hard work
Do sex workers not work hard (pun potentially intended)? I don't see society praising them for their hard work and the risks they take.
With the risk of being political, I see nothing "defensive" or moral about the military, even in the most advanced nations that are supposedly paragons of human rights.
Take the "dictator attacks weaker country" narrative. The NATO defensive alliance fits this narrative by providing weapons and military training to weaker Ukraine so it can defend itself against the aggression of bigger Russia. On the other hand, the same defensive alliance has no scruples to providing weapons to Israel so it can wipe out and cause immense suffering and casualties to Palestine, a weaker nation.
Which brings me to my conclusion that there is nothing inherently moral about the army, it's just a blunt instrument to do the government's bidding. Hence, I don't see military as our "protectors", but as the government's institutionalized thugs. I also don't see a reason for them to be lauded for their actions, as their actions are often immoral and sinister. I am talking things like the military secrets Assange unveiled, or the illegal treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo, or the sometimes indiscriminate bombings of civilians to hit 1 potential target.
And since they are not protecting me but the government's interests, I don't see a need to thank them for their service more than I see the need to thank bouncers at a disco I don't own for theirs.