511–520 of 654 posts
I am fucking sick and fucking tired of people interfering with the free choice of individuals in any effort to "fix" society and "help" people. Lawmakers and advocates, have some epistemic humility and acknowledge that your own perspective may be mistaken. Not everything is oppression. Not every activity is injustice. Sometimes, people just fucking disagree.
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I do wonder how long until they start banning amateur porn subs like gonewild, they facilitate cam girl advertising there with no controls for age or trafficking status.
I doubt reddit is happy about the popularity of porn on their site in general. Look at /r/all with the NSFW filter off and it's like 10% porn. That can't be good when they're trying to attract advertisers. I agree it won't be long until they start cracking down on it, probably using possible child pornography or sex trafficking as an excuse.
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Great, like the trade is going to suddenly end. All they've achieved is 'out of sight, out of mind.' I'm quite annoyed about this, both because it affects numerous friends of mine who are sex workers and are now scrambling to find alternatives to working on the street, where they're far less safe, and on a more pedestrian level because I met my wife on a Craigslist date years ago. Life is too short to make excuses fo…
> Life is too short to make excuses for stupid behavior. Like meeting strangers on the internet and buying/selling sex for money? If it was legal, it could be better regulated, and they could operate with more safety...but it's not legal. While I'm in favor of decriminalizing adults engaging in adult behavior, I don't believe anyone goes into selling sex with a healthy attitude towards sex. They're typically victims…
Readers of HN
1. Would you move to Nevada to work in your spare time as a legal prostitute? It's all the benefits of being an Uber driver, but with much better per-hour pay, no vehicle lease, and relatively no upkeep costs. You get to chose the clients you service, but you have service. To offset the pain of moving, in addition to the money you make as a prostitute, you also get a sizable pay-raise for your day job.
2. Do we start to encourage women to move to Nevada to work as prostitutes, with campaigns similar to STEAM campaigns? Not everyone can get a six-figure tech job, so the money and self sufficiency that affords is a good alternative to a low-paying entry-level position.
3. Your teenage child tells you they have decided to be a prostitute to save-for and pay for college. You've put away enough money for them, but they refuse to take it, and instead want to earn their way. Do you encourage them? What if you didn't have any money saved up? Would you support their decision?
My point of view isn't to demonize those who have gone into prostitution now, in the past, or in the future, but recognize that it's not a choice that pretty much any of us would make for ourselves, nor the ones we care about.
Wow! I met my wife just over 7 years ago there, and our 2nd kid is due in a few months. Hard to believe that the personals section is gone.
Since I'm a relatively old guy, I'll tell you how it used to work. Before cell phones, online dating and apps, the way people met people was through friends, or at work, or god forbid, randomly approaching a stranger and introducing oneself, usually at a nightclub or bar, but sometimes at a supermarket or cafe. Rejection happened in one's face publicly in front of other people!
Met my first wife at college, the "old school" way. Met my current wife through OKCupid (after seeing another girl I was dating at the time using it).
I knew more about my second wife before I'd ever messaged her. Saves a lot of wasted effort simply basing the book on its cover.
This is not surprising, but sad. Years ago, i was dragged (i was the only engineer in the local office) into a whitehouse (or maybe it was state department, i can't remember) sponsored working group on online sex trafficking. The non-profits dedicated to fighting this, while seemingly well-intentioned, were completely and totally unwilling to see any other perspective or try to find shared ground. It was scorched ear…
In defense of the "scorched earth approach or nothing" folks: from my perspective... it's a completely and totally human response to faceless, blameless, unapproachable (from their perspective) perpetrators and facilitators of systematic abuse and exploitation of innocent and vulnerable people. If you've ever felt frustrated at an IVR system for routine tasks such as banking, restaurant reservations, canceling a gym…
Because if they just knew, if they just understood, if they just had a little human empathy and sympathy for the pain and suffering... Why then they'd take all their money and smart people and Solve the Problem! That this is perhaps an excessively simplistic view doesn't occur to people who fervently believe that it's simply a matter of making the useless arrogant dweebs do the right thing.
Instead, it's scorched earth with good intentions. My heart aches for the wonderful people saving lives out there. For their deep frustration, and for the purity of their beliefs and intentions. Yet, it's perhaps abstractly possible that empathy and good intentions might be subtly different from good policy.
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In defense of the "scorched earth approach or nothing" folks: from my perspective... it's a completely and totally human response to faceless, blameless, unapproachable (from their perspective) perpetrators and facilitators of systematic abuse and exploitation of innocent and vulnerable people. If you've ever felt frustrated at an IVR system for routine tasks such as banking, restaurant reservations, canceling a gym…
Great, like the trade is going to suddenly end. All they've achieved is 'out of sight, out of mind.' I'm quite annoyed about this, both because it affects numerous friends of mine who are sex workers and are now scrambling to find alternatives to working on the street, where they're far less safe, and on a more pedestrian level because I met my wife on a Craigslist date years ago. Life is too short to make excuses fo…
While I agree that the current measure is overblown, I do understand where the people behind the legislation are coming from.
Say I'm in the US and happen to run a mailing list about some programming language or whatever. Someone posts an off-topic message that promotes prostitution with sex-trafficking victims. The message passes spam filters and is redistributed to the mailing list subscribers. Am I now criminally liable for facilitating this, as the mailing list operator?
If so, shouldn't CL be shutting down everything entirely?
If I'm not liable, on the other hand (that is to say, I have an "off topic defense"), then why can't that apply to CraigsList; they can just say that anything of that sort is off topic. At the very least they could keep the "strictly platonic" category where that sort of promotion is off topic.
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Implying that there is some uptick in people who are "allowed to treat the prostitutes disrespectfully" in well-regulated societies is intellectually disingenuous. To quote @Illniyar: "Legalization is far from perfect but abuse in Nevada brothels is much lower than as street walkers." Assumptions are...well, you know the saying.
Fair enough. Thank you for the reply and insight. My point is, there are more people now openly able and willing to approach prostitutes who think "shut up and do what I say because I'm paying you [you low life worthless being who has to sell you body to make a living]". I'm not saying all people who use or are okay with prostitution think this, just that the supply of people who think this and act this way now find…
What does this have to do with the discussion at hand? Between this comment and the one in which you attempted to feign credibility by making up a series of numbers that had no reference to back them, you’re not really saying much.
I could similarly argue that legalized food service increases a server’s exposure to people who think that they are worthless because they have to serve food for a living. If your point is that some percentage of people are assholes who look down on others and that more people means more assholes overall, then this is already well understood. How this clarifies the topic at hand or in any way furthers the discussion is missing.
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In defense of the "scorched earth approach or nothing" folks: from my perspective... it's a completely and totally human response to faceless, blameless, unapproachable (from their perspective) perpetrators and facilitators of systematic abuse and exploitation of innocent and vulnerable people. If you've ever felt frustrated at an IVR system for routine tasks such as banking, restaurant reservations, canceling a gym…
> That said, I really wish that I could come forward with a solution to the online sex trafficking problem. Start by legalizing prostitution and removing the black market. That won't end all trafficking, but will end a lot and will make it much easier to go after the remaining illegal black market as it's now been separated from the legal market. Comment about how people who don't learn are doomed to repeat history h…