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Do you approve sex work? Why or why not?

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.

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  • This is where a good ol' "hate the game, not the player" applies.

    I have no judgement of the people who do it to make money. Any issue I have is with the economy and culture that drives some to do it to survive when they wouldn't otherwise choose to.

    Your point about money shouldn't be the purpose... but some people, especially women, are stuck where sex work is their best paying option. It's not their fault.

    In a perfect world where no one is forced to do any particular labor to survive, when consent is given 100% of the time, and everyone's safe, I have zero issue with sex work from any angle. In this imperfect world, my issue is with the system and not the individuals working in the industry.

    • Yes. All the issues with sex work come from cultural and systemical issues. For example that it's very opaque for people outside of the industry, the stereotypes you have to deal with, people judging you constantly or it's not illegal everywhere.

      And not to say there's not some fucked up shit happening in the industry.

      I think the argument should be the same like with drugs: it's generally good, but it can be a problem and just for the transparency and oversight we need to make it legal everywhere but well regulated. That's my opinion.

  • I have no stake in anything sex related, but I've known others which can be described as insatiable. If they are willing and able to do that for of work, then what's the harm?

  • It's a type of entertainment. As long as the people involved are of legal age and gave consent... I don't see a problem with it

  • I approve of it in that it's legitimate work, unlike being a landlord, and lots of vulnerable people end up doing it as the only method of supporting themselves, as well as a lot of single moms trying to deal with making an income and parenting, etc. I would not disparage anyone doing it. Would I worry about their emotional and physical health and safety doing it? Yes. We have a sex workers collective drop-in center in my city who make efforts to try to help keep them safe, such as testing, condoms, etc, which is great. But I can't help but wonder how someone's mental health would be affected by just being a glorified blow up doll. There was an Ask Reddit once about what people saw on porn sets, and someone who worked on one said all the girls seemed really fake and unhappy and vacant emotionally, and that concerns me. I would not want anyone hurt by doing this work is my point, but I don't object to them doing it of course. Just please take care of yourself!

    Edit to add: last weekend my church took a potluck to the local park where there is a small tent encampment of unhoused folks and invited them to eat with us, which they did, which was nice, and although they were shy we all talked a little, and some of them were clearly sex workers from what they talked about. One had what I think was scabies on her skin, and that's the kind of thing that worries me.

  • Personally i am ok with sex being for money, as long as its a choice. Nobody should be forced into sex work. One can say that work by definition is exploitation but if one has multiple work options and they choose sex work as a line of work, i am ok with it being an option.

  • Conceptually I have no problem with it, but in practice a lot of people feel like they "should" or "have to" become sex workers out of desperation for money. That can seriously ruin your life. Work under capitalism is inherently unethical, but sex work especially so.

  • There are costs beyond the physical.

    I agree with you that intimacy shouldn't be for money.

    The sexually-transmitted infections ( I cannot understand how the modern population isn't 50+% infected with life-damaging infections, nowadays, and maybe it is, given how disinformation & "marketing" have completely replaced the value of correct-information that journalism used to have ) seem likely to rule the lives of both porn-industry participants & those who use porn as their frame-of-reference for deciding their own lives.

    Getting the torquie out from the sex-work industry, however, de-criminalizing it, getting the pimps & organized-crime out of it, to make it safer for those who ( for whatever reason ) work in it, would require some serious restructuring of our cultures.

    You've read that in other apes sex is traded by females for nutrition?

    Male hoarding of rights/food/power/safety, making female trading of their intimacy for a portion of what the males had possessed as their "rightful exclusive possession", extends well beyond humans.

    The thing is, we're supposed to be upright, not rationalizing pack-behavior, but instead dismantling it from us, making us all we can be.

    That didn't happen, in the last few millenia.

    It's possible that humankind will earn it, now ( The Great Filter, if survived, will produce this result, in about a century ).

    but the prejudice is sooo deep..

    You know that there is a story in the Abrahamic religions' Book of Genesis, about woman eating of "the fruit of the Knowledge of Good & Evil", which means MORALITY?

    & sharing this eating with man?

    Wasp-researchers in Panama ( from Exeter & Bristol universities ) discovered that altruism is generalized-mothering, among wasps.

    Buddha Gautama stated that this is the case, 25 consecutive centuries ago: altruism is generalized mothering. The Buddhist phrase "all our kind mothers", in referring to ALL other continuums/souls, is rooted in this.

    That the Abrahamic-religion men twisted a statement in their own scripture, in order to change it from meaning that women/mothers ate of morality, & shared it with men,

    TO women committed the "original sin", & it cannot ever be revoked, & punishing/abusing women is now inherently-valid..

    & holding that gaslighting for millenia..

    Do you have any idea how fundamental the sex-racism is, in our religions & laws?

    What culture/country holds that raising children is real economically-required-and-valid work?

    Here in North America, that's a sick joke: raising children is .. treated as parasitism.

    The male apes who hoard wealth, forcing female apes into prostitution for sustinance..

    There's waaay too much of that, in our cultures.

    Remove the need,.

    That must come 1st.

    Letting people do that if they want to, but cut criminality out from it, completely: criminalize pimping, human-trafficking, certainly, hard-line, but decriminalize sex-work that doesn't harm anybody.

    ( no protection against infections is harming people: protection ought be legislated, same as in any hazardous work )

    do everything one can to prevent people younger than 21yo from doing it ( because brains aren't fully-developed until about then, which is the same reason that setting the legal-drinking-age to 21yo so significantly reduces deaths on the roads: younger people don't consider "no" to be as meaningful as people with older brains do ).

    Put care in place for people who've been "turned into commodities" through abusive relationships, to get them out from that devaluation, instead of just letting the industry use their lives, & pretend that that's OK..

    etc..

    Really, living-wage legislation would cut into the "need" for sex-work, significantly.

    Oh, & I've read that when sex-work is suppressed, rapes & domestic-violence both go up, so there's some displacement going on, between the categories, that way..

    It isn't a simple thing, & I wish "commerce" & intimacy were so completely distinct that nobody would ever consider a Venn diagram showing intersection of the 2 categories, but .. the actual world doesn't work right..

    _ /\ _

    • The knowledge of good and evil, id est, morality, is the knowledge of cooperation, since that is a force multiplier against the elements (and parasites, predators, famine and germs).

      The notion of women as equals that deserve opt-in consent is very new in western society, and neither the Hebrews nor the Hellenic nor Roman cultures acknowleged their autonomy, hence a woman's virtue was protected either by her husband or male relatives.

      As for rationalizing behavior, these days we leave teens to their own devices, but scorn young women for their sexual activity, and don't address sexual frustration of young men at all (which informs the rise of the alt-right and rampage killings in the United States), in fact the war boys our school districts churn out are the base of today's Republican party.

      So we humans have the capacity to be rational, but it is very limited, serving to intervene regarding the threat of nuclear holocaust, but not to interfere with the threat of global ecology collapse. We can more easily visualize and accept the end of society than the end of capitalism, of transactional culture and dominance hierarchy.

95 comments