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.
Do you not believe in casual, not romantic sex?
Yeah i forgot about casual thingy. Maybe i should edit my post to include that, but the idea of money being involved is not something i’m comfortable with (yet? - i’m keeping my mind open for this discussion)
It’s not for you to be comfortable about unless you’re planning on paying or getting paid for it. That’s like someone who paints their miniatures and agrees to paint the miniatures of a friend not feeling comfortable about money being involved, because he’s doing that for other reasons, but there are professional miniature painters.
Anything you do for fun you’re likely to be uncomfortable charging for, but you need to remember that that’s not your job, and regardless of what your job is there’s a good chance that someone out there likes to do the same thing for fun and would feel uncomfortable charging people for it.
My point is money should not be the purpose.
Take this and apply it literally every aspect of western culture. It seems like you personally have strong feelings about how you think sex should be, but there are many, many people who disagree. We live in a society, I say mind your own business if someone’s doing something you don’t like that also doesn’t affect you
We live in a society
Found the Joker.
Baybeh
Office workers also sell their bodies.
Builders sell their bodies too.
Sex work is no different than any other line of work.
Yes but those jobs require at least an apprenticeship. There’s no training to being a whore.
If both sides can choose who to engage with, would that sway you? It doesn’t necessarily have to have the sweetness of intimacy or romance to it, it can be a fantasy and a means to an end.
What is your purpose, trololo? I’d really like To know.
It’s isn’t for me or anyone else to approve or disapprove of what others do for a living. If they aren’t hurting anyone, it’s none of anyone’s concern.
The choice/situation blends in with every occupation so as long as no aggression or wrongful leverage is involved.
Adults have the abillity to engage in free enterprise, as long as all parties involved consent I see no issue.
Regarding sex, the only times you get to have oppinions about another persons sex life is…
…when you are part of it.
…when it involves underage people.
Why should money be a taboo reason to have sex? You don’t get to pick and choose what motivation other people have for sex.
You don’t have to engage with this type of enterprise if you don’t want to, so leave other’s alone.
In general, prostitution will allways happen, you can try whatever laws you want, but you can’t stop it. The only thing prohibition acomplishes is to deny sex workers the protections they need to stay safe.
Outlawing prostitution is the same as outlawing drugs, it doesn’t fix the problem, it just makes it unregulated…
This is the right answer.
While I agree with your argument that prohibition has seldom made anything better, the problem with prostitution is that it often does not happen voluntarily. While the transaction itself might still appear to be, in the background there are dire lives and more often than not human trafficking and extortion.
Germany has tried establishing sex work as “real” and regulated work for voluntary self-employed persons, including healthcare and consulting services. In the end this lead mostly to a steep increase in effectively illegal prostitution, as pimps used cover-constructs. Consequently forced prostitution esp. from eastern Europe flooded the marked with dirt-cheap offerings.
There is no easy solution for this. I believe that as with everything that happens within isolated milieus the only way to effectively tackle this problem is to reach out directly to the affected persons on a broad basis. But this is laborious and costly…
You raise some very good points, I don’t want to pretend to have all answers.
Sex work is vulnerable work, and much depends on all parties involved earnestly waning to make and keep it safe.
As I was typing this, I thought that since we can’t trust the private sector with this, what about forming a government agency to deal with licensing and care of sex workers.
But I quickly realized that the organizational issues are just part of the issues, there have been many, many examples of administrators abusing their position.
There is no quick fix for this, the one thing I can think of is a cultural shift to raise the status of the work, then it could be a way forward, but this takes time.
Or if it’s not consensual, we should care about that too.
You generally implied this but it’s worth repeating.
Very true!
Thank you for bringing that to light.
I also condiser passive participants to be part of the activity and get to have a say.
Stuff like exhibitionism, don’t have sex in public view since that forces everyone in view to take part in your activity, even if only passively.
If you feel like money is a corrupting factor then don’t hire a sex worker.
For my part, they’re some of the chillest people I’ve gotten to know, and they’re not hurting anyone just by their existence.
Not to mention that literally every action that even tangentially ostracizes or criminalizes sex work has horrifying blowback against victims of human trafficking and against sex workers in positions of vulnerability.
The Craigslist purge for example led to waaaaaaaay more dangerous working conditions for sex workers since it removed one of the few tools they had to reliably vet possible clients.
There’s literally no approach to sex work other than just letting them fucking be that doesn’t end up causing exponentially more harm to completely innocent people than could ever morally justify doing anything except just letting them fucking be.
Do I “approve” of sex work? It’s not my place to either approve or disapprove of what other people do with their time, their money or their bodies. The question is loaded to provide justification for your moral outrage.
I think sex work is more honorable than many lawful professions. It’s really unfair that prostitutes have higher rates of workplace violence than insurance sales.
Maybe fair is the wrong word.
Are you suggesting folks working at insurance companies should experience any workplace violence? It’d be better if both experienced as close to zero as possible.
Not encouraging violence against anybody. Just observing that some businesses routinely treat their customers worse than prostitutes treat theirs, and that courtesy isn’t always reciprocal.
In germany sex work is a normal regulated job like any other. You are insured, receive vacation days, etc. It is accepted here as completely normal work like any other. Because it is.
I was once in a brothel with a friend. While he was in the room with a lady, I talked to the others and asked why they were doing this job. The answer was “I like dicks” and “Its fun and pays very well”.
To be honest, the ladies seem to enjoy their work more (and earn a lot more) than any job I’ve had in my life.
I think within a capitalist system it is going to exist regardless of how illegal you make it so it should be made legal so that it can be more thoroughly regulated. However, I don’t believe anyone should have to sell their body to make a living no.
So while I disagree with prostitution as an industry because of how it commodifies people (especially women) I don’t think making it illegal within a capitalist society is a solution that helps anyone. Ultimately I would hope for a society in which prostitution would never be necessary for someone to meet their needs, one where love could be free but that isn’t a realistic goal at the moment
I’m pretty sure prostitution isn’t exclusive to capitalist countries
There are two main “career paths” here:
- Those that willingly choose sex work.
- Those that are pressured into sex work.
Imo, the former is perfectly fine (because everyone involved is consenting). The latter is problematic and the actual problem we need to solve.
So many people conflate the two and assume that all sex work is exploitation. All mixed in with the implicit sexism that says women shouldn’t have any autonomy over their own body and sexuality.
It’s a pretty high percentage.
But it’s a pretty high percentage for similar reasons to illegal pot sales funding terrorists or gangs/cartels. The legal status puts it way more in the purview of organized crime.
I mean, is it a high percentage? Feels like the kind of thing that you could fudge figures either way.
And yeah, we need to empower sex workers and give them legal and health support.
In the context of women being literal sex slaves, even 5 or 10% would constitute a high percentage that gave regular purchasers a reasonably high chance of encountering one. (I wasn’t intending to play that semantics game, but it’s worth noting regardless.)
I think it’s pretty high. There are legal places that have some safeguards in place, but in most of the world there’s just nowhere for a woman to say “I’d like to try sex work” and get an opportunity to do so. It’s inherently the people on the fringes of society, the runaways with nowhere to go who end up reliant on a predator, the people addicted to drugs that have no way to get their next fix, the people trafficked. Even the “high class” stuff, because there isn’t any legitimate entry point, is relying on tactics like calling it a modeling gig and then propositioning the models, and there’s an inherent element of coercion* to that as well.
*Coercion isn’t the perfect word choice but I’m blanking on a better one. Even if the intent isn’t explicitly to manipulate the women, the result is a lot of wild emotional swings, then a pitch when you’re still under their influence. And we’ve seen examples of people taken overseas and having their passports taken away, even by an NFL team. It definitely happens at a far more frequent level than we should be comfortable with.
I also know that male prostitution is a thing, and “women” isn’t comprehensive. But it’s mostly women.
I agree with pretty much everything you’ve said. I’ve just seen “it’s a high percentage” to be a dogwhistle for “all sex work is inherently exploitation so we should ban it.”, so apologies for assuming.
5-10% is far too high, yes. I don’t know if I’d agree with that figure (it really depends on what you consider sex work, tbh), but exploitation is a serious problem that needs fixing.
Yeah, I rubber stamp it all.
