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.
Basically half the US thinks this way and votes this way. If you are a conservative and upset at my comment, understand the people you vote for SIGNIFICANTLY support the religious nuts.
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.
I don't agree. A society where prostitution is welcomed and celebrated is very different than one where it's not, and it's entirely reasonable for me to say I'd like to live in the second kind of society. You mention cars, so I'd point to muffler mandates as a good analogy - an un-muffled car won't rob anyone or burn down your house, but because they're loud and annoying they've been prohibited.
There's a libertarian ethos that says anything between two consenting adults is the their business. I'm more and more skeptical not just of that principle but the self awareness of the people who purport to support it. I know that the choices I think are correct may not be - either for myself, for everyone or for any particular person. For that reason I don't think that anyone should run my life or that I should be t…
> "What you're doing is crazy. Why would you do that to yourself? Why would you let someone do that to you? Why would you do that to another person?" People who want to amputate perfectly healthy limbs and/or submit themselves to cannibalism are some of the first things that come to my mind here. Most of us would probably agree there should be a line somewhere , especially considering the potential of undiagnosed men…
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…
That is easily the most wildly inaccurate categorization of conservative positions on sex work I have ever, and am ever likely to, encounter. Conservatives (in the US anyway) view sex work as grossly amoral and sex workers as sub-human and a threat to the community. Collectively they don't give a flying fuck at a rolling donut about sex worker safety, they just want it banned outright through any means necessary.
Framing something in moral terms breeds desire for punishment.
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…
What is "funny" is that this view is held by two very different groups of people.
- Moralist conservatives which despise sex work and sex workers for ideological and religious reasons
- Progressives which think it's degrading and negative that somebody is forced to sell their sex to survive (which is a noble thought), and therefore think banning sex work will help that goal (we all know how that went wrt drugs...)
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.
Go read Foucault's "A history of sexuality". He spends the whole world debunking the idea that the victorian's were especially sexually prudes.
He spends the majority of the work trying to figure out why modern people are still convinced that the victorian's were uniquely prudish. He thinks this belief is deeply connected to many other strange sexual beliefs.
I think Foucault is frequently overrated but at least volume 1 of a history of sexuality is pretty neat.
That is easily the most wildly inaccurate categorization of conservative positions on sex work I have ever, and am ever likely to, encounter. Conservatives (in the US anyway) view sex work as grossly amoral and sex workers as sub-human and a threat to the community. Collectively they don't give a flying fuck at a rolling donut about sex worker safety, they just want it banned outright through any means necessary.
Opinions vary. Certainly many people, not just conservatives would think that sex work is immoral. I don't believe I've ever met someone that believes sex workers are subhuman, that reeks of hyperbole. The perception of sex work as a threat to community is probably wider spread still, in its current form it certainly isn't conducive to safety for anyone involved. Overall, you're simply setting up a strawman that poor…
Prostitution has been legal in Amsterdam since 2000, so a good percentage of the current sex workers were born into that world. Has someone done a case study on the long term effects?
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…
Just like with drugs, we see what prohibitionism brought us: it didn't solve the problems it set out to solve, and created new ones.
Hah, except that you get more of what you subsidize. Besides being immoral, it’s destructive to society.
My point is that the "war on drugs" approach is pretty ineffective while at the same time inflicting significant collateral damage. It already is underground, and it already is almost illegal in most jurisdictions. (Actually criminalizing the exchange of valuable consideration for sex hits the problem that things that look suspiciously like it are endemic in hetero dating and "giving money to your tinder date for a t…
You’re skipping the moral problem. The road to hell is paved with utilitarians.
In the far left in the States it's considered work, and something that should be well regulated and safe. The center left/centrist (Democrats) position is more split. Some folks think it's a bodily autonomy issue and others think it's degrading. Feminist opinion is likewise split. But most feminists I know tend to fall in the, "if it's consensual, it should be protected and regulated work. You shouldn't fear going to…
Where "it's just work" often breaks down is when you get to the question "if someone can take a sex work job but chooses not do, can they get unemployment".
How's that different from refusing to work in a coal mine?