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

thewalrus.ca

291–300 of 511 posts

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

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 preven…

It's not hard to argue that sex is a necessity. There are physical mechanisms that create a desire for sex in most humans. I'm sure just about any therapist would attest to the impact of sex on mental health (both positive and negative impacts). Being gay used to be taboo and shameful too, it still is in many places... but this is changing. Sex work is already a little less taboo in places where it's regulated. Socie…

Sex isn't a necessity the same way geopolitically showing you'll fight back the moment someone decides to invite your country is. Laws and mandatory drafts reflect this.

Despite being recognized as a necessity in many countries (mine included), you won't get subsidy or sexual assistance as an otherwise capable individual. For obvious reasons, this affects guys the most (the problems for women come after, generally). You'd need a really severe case for governments to make the wet dream of specific circles come true. The equivalent of your country's leader being at gunpoint by an opposing invading army.

If your country gets attacked, you bet mandatory draft will be reinstuted ASAP and executed. It's obvious, just look at Ukraine and Russia.

It's not the same. Actions speak louder.

That's not to mention, sex usually isn't the only thing lacking, making sex work a horrendous substitute or even exasperating the problem.

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

#292
post #272

The most troubling thing, that is somewhat observable in today's threads, is that ostracizing sex work is almost entirely normalized. People favor legal structures analogous to Don't Ask Don't Tell. This tees up a system of cascading effects: - Sex workers must now navigate a very fluid monetary system. Sex workers must be paid in cash, Bitcoin, etc. Then they have to somehow represent this money to the federal gover…

>ostracizing sex work is almost entirely normalized

100%. One of the universal curses people throw at each other is implying that someone's mother is a prostitute, or that they are a product of extramarital sex, implying the promiscuity of the mother. This all is hand-in-hand with the implied comtempt towards women of course.

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

#293
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ostracizing sex work has become fully normalized, so unfortunately people read this and immediately think, "Why not pretend to be someone else?", "Why not just do other illegal things (like tax evasion)?"

> has become fully normalized I don’t think this is a new phenomenon at all. I would guess it’s the norm through much of history.

[deleted]

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

#294
post #272

The most troubling thing, that is somewhat observable in today's threads, is that ostracizing sex work is almost entirely normalized. People favor legal structures analogous to Don't Ask Don't Tell. This tees up a system of cascading effects: - Sex workers must now navigate a very fluid monetary system. Sex workers must be paid in cash, Bitcoin, etc. Then they have to somehow represent this money to the federal gover…

The OP appears to be mostly talking about porn, but your points seem to be mostly addressing prostitution.

Prostitution has long considered an disreputable and undesirable activity, and it along with other types of sex work are often tightly coupled with involuntary exploitation. A lot of the stuff that you're criticizing derives from attempts to continue to legally discourage prostitution while preventing the legal system from further punishing women who are being exploited.

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

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this. Why is it destructive to society to provide an easy way for people to get laid if they need to?

Precisely because it feeds the destructive attitude that the "get laid" impulse is a sort of mechanical need that can be cleanly isolated from the "find a long-term partner" impulse. Sex work for someone who wants to get laid is like cigarettes for someone who wants to lose weight - it'll work (nicotine is a reasonably strong appetite suppressant), but at what cost? Imagine you met someone who says "yeah, I used to r…

It sounds like none of my or your business. Neither of us has any legitimate interest in them other than do they rob anyone? Do they burn down houses? Do they perform at some job and pay taxes? If they spend all their money on prostitutes, it's no more your business than if they spend it all on video games or cars or rare stamps.

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

#296
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

- A condom won't prevent diseases or unwanted children. - Open relationships do not strengthen "families".

Condoms (and other forms of birth control or protection) seem much more effective than conservative morals at preventing diseases and unwanted children. Take a look at teen birth rate [1] (as a proxy for unwanted or at least unplanned pregancies) and HIV diagnosis rates [2] per US state. The trend seems pretty clear: conservative, religious states do worse at these metrics than liberal, more secular states. There are of course more variables than that, but at least religion and traditional family values don't seem to be helping very much.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/teen-births/teenbi... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/257734/us-states-with-hi...

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

#297
post #272

The most troubling thing, that is somewhat observable in today's threads, is that ostracizing sex work is almost entirely normalized. People favor legal structures analogous to Don't Ask Don't Tell. This tees up a system of cascading effects: - Sex workers must now navigate a very fluid monetary system. Sex workers must be paid in cash, Bitcoin, etc. Then they have to somehow represent this money to the federal gover…

>ostracizing sex work is almost entirely normalized 100%. One of the universal curses people throw at each other is implying that someone's mother is a prostitute, or that they are a product of extramarital sex, implying the promiscuity of the mother. This all is hand-in-hand with the implied comtempt towards women of course.

> 100%. One of the universal curses people throw at each other is implying that someone's mother is a prostitute, or that they are a product of extramarital sex, implying the promiscuity of the mother. This all is hand-in-hand with the implied comtempt towards women of course.

How so? Not all women are prostitutes.

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

#298
post #118
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 probably have as wide a range of opinions on any given topic as any other kind of feminist. Also: "the left," a fraught and increasingly fluid concept.

Yes, generalizations can never be made and truth does not exist.

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

#299

> Despite a user base of over 130 million, OnlyFans has failed to attract venture capital I don't get why that's a problem? They already built their platform, it works, they're the gold standard and they have a massive paying userbase! Why do they need VC money? Why would you want to dilute your stock rather than just build with your already existing, sizeable revenue stream?

It's not a problem now, but in a strictly rational economy a company that was so obviously going to acquire a massive paying userbase should have had no issue finding investors back when it would have been useful.

Adult content hosting sites face some unique (read expensive) challenges relating to both scale and content moderation. It's not like you can just run videos through a nudity detector to stop your servers from accidentally hosting terabytes of kiddie porn.

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

#300
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ostracizing sex work has become fully normalized, so unfortunately people read this and immediately think, "Why not pretend to be someone else?", "Why not just do other illegal things (like tax evasion)?"

> has become fully normalized I don’t think this is a new phenomenon at all. I would guess it’s the norm through much of history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_prostitution
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