Why are sex workers forced to wear a financial scarlet letter? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why are sex workers forced to wear a financial scarlet letter?

#131

Post by _jal » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 2:02 PM UTC

adrr wrote: post #77

giantg2 wrote: post #42

"It also establishes a precedent, allowing private companies to set opaque, moralizing, and arbitrary censorship terms without oversight." Yes, this is done with other things as well. On one hand, I think that the free market would create payment processors willing to work with the groups rejected by others. On the other hand, it seems that many financial things are set by international organizations, which the proce…

Having built a neobank. It’s fact that pornography is intertwined with sex trafficking, organized crime, revenge porn and other illegal activities. Regulators crack down on financial institutions if they are caught providing services for illegal activities.

Yeah, and it is a fact that cartel and authoritarian statist money laundering is intertwined with banking. See just about any story about Deutsche in the last decade.

I've worked with sex-related sites before. And you're right that there are sleazy people in that industry. But it really isn't hard to distinguish, especially when you can see their payment stream.

Without moralist obsessions with sex, nobody would care.

Re: Why are sex workers forced to wear a financial scarlet letter?

#132

Post by wallscratch » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 2:02 PM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #128

I investigated this a few years ago in Australia. Sex work is legal in Australia, kinda. It is legal to exchange sexual services for money, but supporting and assisting such a transaction is illegal. So a landlord who rents a property to a sex worker is breaking the law. A payment processor who processes the card transaction is breaking the law, and so on. There are some clauses around managing establishments that ba…

I’m confused — why can’t the sex workers just claim to be independent masseuses or something else innocuous like that?

Re: Why are sex workers forced to wear a financial scarlet letter?

#133

Post by confidantlake » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 2:02 PM UTC

aliqot wrote: post #114

Workaccount2 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think where the ship runs aground is that sexual things are treated as intrinsically amoral, because people feel its amoral. However, that feeling is no more legitimate than "green is the best color" (because my brain tells me it's the best). Edit: Just want to add - Homosexuality has the same illogical hurdle. It feels immoral to many people, so therefore it must be immoral. People are largely unable to separate t…

Because free sex makes disease and unwanted children, disease and unwanted children cause/suffer-from problems, disease and problems hurt society. This isn't just moral puritanism, it's for good. Promiscuous sex and many partners irreversibly negatively influences a person's pair-bonding ability at a chemical level, this destroys the family unit and does not benefit the empowered singles and divorced 'pair-couples' w…

Teaching safe sex is what prevents disease and unwanted children, not moralizing about sex.

There are plenty of well adjusted people who are either in open relationships or have no desire to be in relationships. Being kind and treating people with respect is what strengthens families.

Re: Why are sex workers forced to wear a financial scarlet letter?

#134

Post by a-user-you-like » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 2:03 PM UTC

classified wrote: post #18

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of your stance, yes, this is a serious article and has been actively debated for several decades now. And it has also lead to a huge amount of cognitive dissonance.

America seems to be more backwards on anything sex-related than Victorian England.

“Backwards”

I suppose if all your daughters wanted to be whores you’d be a good chap and send them on their way with a box of biscuits.

Re: Why are sex workers forced to wear a financial scarlet letter?

#135

Post by fknorangesite » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 2:04 PM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #128

I investigated this a few years ago in Australia. Sex work is legal in Australia, kinda. It is legal to exchange sexual services for money, but supporting and assisting such a transaction is illegal. So a landlord who rents a property to a sex worker is breaking the law. A payment processor who processes the card transaction is breaking the law, and so on. There are some clauses around managing establishments that ba…

> it almost forces sex workers onto the street or into brothels (which often take a huge chunk of each transaction)

Exactly. It makes sex work more dangerous, not less.

Re: Why are sex workers forced to wear a financial scarlet letter?

#136

Post by zajio1am » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 2:04 PM UTC

NoraCodes wrote: post #95

zajio1am wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's how society operates: work or starve It is more like how biology operates.

What on earth does that mean? That it's biologically impossible to give other people food?

That means that someone have to work to make the food that is given to other people. So get food, someone has to work. If there is no food, someone starves. Society can just redirect who is working and who is starving.

Re: Why are sex workers forced to wear a financial scarlet letter?

#137

Post by ChadNauseam » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 2:04 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #90

roenxi wrote: post #3

Crypto is an option here. Seems like a pretty good fit for what the sex workers need.

Crypto is even worse, for both customers and sex workers. A wad of cash is virtually untrackable and can be protected, crypto asset flows are by definition completely public, and the government already has the tools (both legal frameworks and the technology) to associate crypto accounts with identities.

monero and tornado cash are crypto, but payment flows through them are pretty difficult to trace.

Re: Why are sex workers forced to wear a financial scarlet letter?

#138

Post by pessimizer » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 2:04 PM UTC

Kiro wrote: post #66

Among Swedish feminists and the left, sex work is completely unacceptable and prostitution is pretty much equated with rape. Is this not true for other countries?

Swedish feminists make different arguments, based on the inevitably gendered nature of the work and the asymmetry of sex discrimination. They make feminist arguments.

The US does not, because they wouldn't work. The average angry political American thinks that bigotry against men is at least as prevalent as bigotry against women, and thinks that institutions have conspired with each other to advance women ahead of men.

Even American feminists think that there's no element of a woman's condition in the world that can't be equally applied to anyone who identifies as a woman. Very American, if the conditions of women are a state of mind that can be corrected or experienced based on how you identify, it's basically a "law of attraction." Women can think themselves out of (or into, if they have penises) the female condition. I'm pretty sure Kanye said something about the reason for slavery being that black people identified as slaves. It's that same sort of inversion of control and blaming the victim.

Radical feminists have a more coherent perspective. It's not one that I can agree with in many aspects, but it's one that's always worth discussing.

Re: Why are sex workers forced to wear a financial scarlet letter?

#139

Post by a-user-you-like » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 2:04 PM UTC

matthewmacleod wrote: post #15

a-user-you-like wrote: post #2

Quoted post unavailable.

If you have something to say, it would be more effective to just say it , rather than pose vague, unanswerable rhetorical questions that rely on us being able to read your mind.

To say that whoring is immoral? Are you advocating for more whoring in society?

Re: Why are sex workers forced to wear a financial scarlet letter?

#140

Post by BlargMcLarg » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 2:05 PM UTC

lkslkdjfsl wrote: post #68

micromacrofoot wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legitimizing the industry helps make cases of coercion more obvious, as people gain more legitimate means to report things without self-incrimination. Physical laborers rent out their bodies in a way that often causes permanent damage. It's literally degrading their bodies. Some construction workers live with chronic pain for their entire lives. There's a psychological component as well, which is more vulnerable in s…

> but there are no shortage of people who also end up with psychological damage from their jobs outside of sex work Not to labour the point but: cf Soldiers. Men can take the emotional and physical toll but women can't? edit: just to expand on this, talk to people who have been on military tours about the horrors of draging dead bodies (that they might have killed) from the road side, the pain of loosing friends, bei…

Not sure if you're intentionally stopping before the obvious elephant in the room.

The army has always been glorified as a country without soldiers is free pickings. It's practically a necessity, as current day tensions show.

Sex work isn't a necessity. Worse, regarding prostitution and porn, most of it's clientele remains secretive to avoid shame. Even if sex was considered a necessity, the stigma alone would prevent individuals from persuing services.

The fact you specifically discriminate between men and women gives it away (women can be soldiers, men can be sexworkers). We consider both the purity of women and the willingness for men to sacrifice themselves and be assertive as virtues. Now turn it around and you have your answer as to the status quo for almost our entire existence across the entire globe.