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?

#331

Post by zmgsabst » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 3:54 PM UTC

echelon wrote: post #271

vorpalhex wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think conservatives are attempting to endanger sex workers - they believe sex work is fundamentally risky and leads to abuse. There is no safe way to do sex work that doesn't result in problems. Therefore they believe it should be discouraged and made illegal, the same way many progressives believe firearms should be illegal since they are dangerous. Tribal groups are alive and well, and even if you dislike y…

Many religious conservatives aren't worried about the safety of sex workers. They believe the act is sin and shouldn't be tolerated in any context. Nevermind the fact that many religious historical figures were themselves prostitutes. Many conservatives, regardless of religion, believe sex work damages the traditional nuclear family structure. This is similar to the Roman decadence argument. Many liberals believe sex…

Removing taboos around drug use has at best mixed results in, eg, Seattle and Portland.

Perhaps there’s a reason that past societies invented the taboos to begin with.

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

#332

Post by bambax » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 3:54 PM UTC

a-user-you-like wrote: post #177

pjc50 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot the /s tag.

Hah, except that you get more of what you subsidize. Besides being immoral, it’s destructive to society.

For some time now it seems moral / christian crusaders are invading HN. All those accounts have very low karma (sometimes even negative) and insist on "values" and "morals".

I wonder if it's the result of a concerted effort or the inevitable consequence of HN becoming mainstream.

It's probably the latter, but it's pretty annoying.

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

#333

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 3:55 PM UTC

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #291

micromacrofoot wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).…

[deleted]

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

#334

Post by thehappypm » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 3:56 PM UTC

x86x87 wrote: post #330

thehappypm wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s really good for crime.

You know what is also good for crime? Dollars! Everyone takes then. Even worse they are harder to trace. Do you see anyone wanting to ban the dollar or claim that it's good for crime?

Maybe I should have been more specific: cyber-crime. Ransomware is a perfect use case for crypto.

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

#335

Post by tablespoon » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 3:57 PM UTC

gautamdivgi wrote: post #305

tablespoon wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Isn’t prostitution essentially porn without the cameras? Why ostracize legal prostitution? If porn is allowed, prostitution should be too. Yes, there are issues of exploitation and licensing. They are at both places - maybe less for porn because it’s not as much in the shadows. Bring sex work out of the shadows. Just normalize it.

> Isn’t prostitution essentially porn without the cameras? Why ostracize legal prostitution? If porn is allowed, prostitution should be too.

IIRC, porn would be illegal, except the performance aspect gave it First Amendment cover. It might also be significant that porn seems to have traditionally involved a 3rd party paying two people to have sex, so that's arguably not prostitution. It's probably arguably illegal prostitution if one person pays another to sex with them and films it. You can't videotape an illegal act to make it legal.

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

#336

Post by npteljes » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 3:57 PM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #297

npteljes wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Curses don't try to be true, they are to express frustration, or to hurt someone's feelings.

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

#337

Post by tenebrisalietum » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 3:57 PM UTC

gautamdivgi wrote: post #305

tablespoon wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Isn’t prostitution essentially porn without the cameras? Why ostracize legal prostitution? If porn is allowed, prostitution should be too. Yes, there are issues of exploitation and licensing. They are at both places - maybe less for porn because it’s not as much in the shadows. Bring sex work out of the shadows. Just normalize it.

No post body was provided.

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

#338

Post by lostgame » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 4:00 PM UTC

rtkwe wrote: post #259

charles_f wrote: post #201

> 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 would have been useful early to pay for hosting. OF may not exist today if not for the great de-porning of Tumblr that happened about a year after they started as a business.

The Tumblr de-porning was the single most SMH business moment I may have heard of since Yahoo’s previous worst business move ever of not buying Google. I mean - my God…

Yahoo may very well be the single dumbest major tech company in history.

Just…blunder after blunder after shitty decision. Watching its history is almost the definition of seeing a slow motion train wreck. It’s almost impressive.

With regards to Tumblr - I can’t imagine what potential business decision could’ve been worth what they had to know was suicide. Why make the acquisition and then kill your user base? It’s not like they didn’t know. That’s probably one of the single biggest wastes of $1b I’ve seen. Why buy it to knowingly, fully intentionally, throw it down the toilet? So baffling.

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

#339

Post by npteljes » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 4:02 PM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #321

staticassertion wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because no one's throwing around "your father is a prostitute" as an insult.

> Because no one's throwing around "your father is a prostitute" as an insult. There's all kinds of things that people insult men/fathers for that they wouldn't use for women/mothers (e.g. strength, financial success, etc). It's just gender roles, not generalized contempt for women (and going that far is probably just politically motivated exaggeration).

I think the contempt is there, because we're talking about someone's parent, and for some reason, all cultures (that I know of) picked the mother as the one being out of line. As in, when there's someone that's out of line, that has to be the woman. If this would be random, or balanced, we'd curse at others like your father is a deadbeat, or that your father's sperm is weak, and therefore you are weak, or things like that. Yet that just doesn't come up much.

Edit: I do get your point though. It's not as straightforward as I implied. In fact I think that it's a complex, interwoven system, which comes up unfair for everyone. But I do observe a general hatred toward women, and if something like this curse comes up, I can't help but think that the two are in connection.

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

#340

Post by reilly3000 » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 4:02 PM UTC

staticassertion wrote: post #310

tablespoon wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Because no one's throwing around "your father is a prostitute" as an insult.

True. In fact we’ve made televised “I’m not the father” dancing into a national pastime.

The patriarchy mentality our norms are built upon includes blaming women for everything ‘wrong’. Women are blamed for premarital sex. Men are celebrated for their scores. Women are paid less yet have less leisure time. They are the first to blame if anything goes wrong with children, including just bringing them into public spaces. Men aren’t expected to be responsible parents, and usually aren’t primary caregivers. Women are the butt of jokes, and are constantly told they aren’t funny. Some men are actively campaigning to make women property again. Women are forced to give birth for anyone that inseminates them without exception in many jurisdictions now.

Not all women are sex workers, but the fact is that female sex workers (sex entrepreneurs?!) are generally disrespected by patriarchs and their women. That internalized distain comes out in a variety of ways, but quite materially as well (ie bank policy and regulations). Male sex workers are envied by other males. “I’d love that job”.