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Do you approve sex work? Why or why not?

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.

168 comments
  • 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.

  • Friend of mine used to be a removed. She says it has been the most fulfilling and fun job she has ever had. She got to meet many interesting people. And she also has a lot of funny stories to tell.

    It was also fun for her that she could get tax breaks for underwear and other sexy clothes.

  • I think it should be legal and regulated. It's a service that people want and others are willing to fill. We just need laws to protect all parties, particularly the workers.

    "Selling is legal. Fucking is legal. Why isn't selling fucking legal?" -George Carlin

  • I approve of sex work, but I don't approve of the abusive madams and pimps of the world. Usually, they are the problem. Protection should come in a different way.

  • Do I approve of sex work?

    So, yes, sorta, mostly, but I don't think it's straight forward.

    For one, sex work is a very broad category that ranges from selling feet pics to having sex to which you wouldn't otherwise consent with strangers. So under that large umbrella of "jobs wherein you assist someone with getting their rocks off in exchange for money" there's a lot of variation and differing considerations for the impacts on the workers and the clients.

    So I guess I approve of sex work in the general sense that I approve of any service industry labor that doesn't intrinsically harm the worker or the consumer. But on the other hand, sex work, particularly having sex, and even stuff short of having sex, bares some higher risk than your average behind-the-counter job. There's risks of violence, disease, and emotional or psychological harm, some of which is higher because of illegality or stigma, but some of which is higher simply because of the intrinsically intimate nature of sex. And sure, there is something kinda squicky about commodifying human intimacy.

    But on the other hand, the demand is there (not like I don't consume porn), so the supply will always follow to meet it. So best you can do is ensure that whatever labor sex workers do is as safe as possible, and that the people who do the labor do so freely (to the degree possible in a society that's still capitalist).

  • Approve of? I guess. The problem isn't the sex work, it's the way sex workers are treated.

    I think making and keeping it illegal, and thus unregulated, is the dumbest damn idea possible for the subject. Totally boneheaded.

    Is it something that I would consider a good career even if it was legal? Nope. People suck. And people tend to suck the most with hormones going crazy in their bodies, and sex is one of those things that makes all kinds of chemicals flow. So, seems like a difficult, demanding job under the best of circumstances.

    Would I hire a sex worker for myself? Ignoring that I'm happily monogamous, it's unlikely I would for sex. I can see myself hiring a temporary cuddle buddy if I was single, and might do so if I end up a widower some day.

    Depending on which jobs you count as sex work, I've known anywhere from a few to dozens of women in the field. Strippers, escorts, phone sex workers, and happy ending masseuses. Nothing but respect for them. Even dated a couple of strippers back in the day. One I was with for long enough to have discussed marriage some day

  • Sex work is legal here, and I approve of it. It's hard work and I have a lot of respect for the people who do it.

  • Work is work.

    Is sex work selling your body? Is doing masonry carpentry or road fixing work anything less than that?

    Is sex work ethical? Is working for a weapon manufacture ethical?

    I think the point on sex work is a different one: exploitation. That is wrong and should not be allowed or tolerated. But is it avoidable?

    The focus should not be on the sex workers tough, but on the clients. The sex workers will always be there as long as there is demand for them.

    So, yes, give sex workers the opportunity to work in a safe and not abused environment, so that it can be a choice like any other work. Which means, legalize, regulate, and so on.

  • My approval is irrelevant. People do it, and people pay for it, so it deserves all the same respect and rights as any other work. No one's value comes from my opinion of what they do to pay the bills, and it is not my place to tell people what sex "should" be.

  • Edit3: improved wording a bit, and added info below; forgot to add this edit


    Legalize and regulate.

    I share this view with other issues our society faces as well.


    Edit: forgot why.

    Why:

    Sex work as well as drugs will never be outlawed or enforced fully; looking at drugs, it is used as an excuse to jail the working class for slave labor as well as other things when you follow the money.^[[1] The Wire - Daniels Follows the Money | 01:34 | https://youtu.be/9PaBt441FBQ]

    Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.^[[2] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-13/]

  • If someone is willing to do something I don't want to do and get paid for it, yea, I think it's work.

168 comments