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

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

#491

Post by Brian_K_White »

Volundr wrote: post #466
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there can be a rigid distinction between "I don't want to see that" and "actual harm". We can presumably agree that it would be wrong if Google put up posters of naked women all over the office, and that the EEOC is right to prohibit such things as a hostile work environment. But what "actual harm" could you point to beyond the fact that the posters are offensive and people don't want to see them? I und…

The harm in your example is that by putting up these posters of naked women being valued only for their body, you send the message that that is how women are seen here. A woman is likely to feel she is at risk of being objectified the same as the women you've put on the wall as literal objects. I'm confused what the analogous harm is to you when two adults have consensual sex behind closed doors where you can't see o…

Who said consentual sex causes any harm? I'm arguing the opposite.

The argument that women will interpret the posters as a message that they are seen as objects is potentially interesting, but then what about all the women who work at modelling agencies and ad agencies and actual sex related businesses?

The argument that women will feel threatened because the posters will cause the men to attack them, or even just low level menace them, is saying that men are helpless reacting animals and are not responsible for their actions, which is the same argument as saying women are responsible for rape by not dressing badly enough.

These theoretical posters are simply and merely inappropriate for facililitating the work being done in most workplaces. They are unwelcome but it's merely because they are a distraction and an annoyance. It doesn't cause any sort of harm that can justify any legal consequences.

There is no argument for making them illegal, and in fact they're already not because there are tons of businesses where such images are central to the business. The same image will be interpreted as porn in one room while it's just the businesses product on the wall at countless clothing manufacturers. So the image itself can not be said to posess any intrinsic harm or evil.

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

#492

Post by bandie91 »

npteljes wrote: post #292
_ktx2 wrote: 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.

"son of a b_tch" implies "son of an adulterer/fornicator"

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

#493

Post by throwaway4aday »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #383
throwaway4aday wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It reeks of hyperbole you say? I invite you to attend services at the Southern Baptist church of your choosing and then try bringing up the topic of sex workers after services. Depending on where you attempt this you might make it to your car under your own power. Your claim that I'm advancing a strawman argument here strongly suggests to me that you may not have a solid grasp on conservative attitudes on this topic.…

You said, and I quote:

> Conservatives (in the US anyway) view sex work as...

You did not specify Southern Baptist church members, which I am sure form a part of the entire set of conservatives in the US but do not solely comprise it. I'm also sure that Alabama doesn't consist of 100% conservative leaning people nor do I believe that all of its conservatives share the same opinions. Please try to think clearly, I don't have time to correct all of your statements.

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

#494

Post by throwaway4aday »

thundrio wrote: post #357
throwaway4aday wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'd be interested to know, it's worth reading up on.

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

#495

Post by bandie91 »

npteljes wrote: post #339
tablespoon wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

cursing someone's mother not their father shows exacly the opposite attitude to women (mothers) to me: since the offender presumes people are more loving to their mothers than fathers, therefore expects that maledicting the mother hurt more.

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

#496

Post by forgetfreeman »

throwaway4aday wrote: post #493
forgetfreeman wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It reeks of hyperbole you say? I invite you to attend services at the Southern Baptist church of your choosing and then try bringing up the topic of sex workers after services. Depending on where you attempt this you might make it to your car under your own power. Your claim that I'm advancing a strawman argument here strongly suggests to me that you may not have a solid grasp on conservative attitudes on this topic.…

You said, and I quote: > Conservatives (in the US anyway) view sex work as... You did not specify Southern Baptist church members, which I am sure form a part of the entire set of conservatives in the US but do not solely comprise it. I'm also sure that Alabama doesn't consist of 100% conservative leaning people nor do I believe that all of its conservatives share the same opinions. Please try to think clearly, I don…

From the parent:

"I don't think conservatives are attempting to endanger sex workers - they believe sex work is fundamentally risky and leads to abuse."

Having established that you don't refute my claim that (at minimum) large portions of the conservative constituency take a militantly hard line on the topic of sex work that puts us a lot closer to "well, I knew this guy once who claimed to be a conservative that also said this thing once" than "the conservative position on sex work is X". If you insist I can absolutely compile a list of links of everything from "religious leaders" to pundits and politicians openly railing against sex workers. Your sassy banter doesn't impress.

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

#497

Post by daniel-cussen »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #470
daniel-cussen wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I talk why I never will in part III. Dude I'm a Roman Law hero, I just won my 34th street fight, I'm taking the stairs now because I see too many smiling faces on the elevator, I was scouted many times and eventually actually went to get photos taken--I was a straight model, and the tallest model at all the castings. Nobody ever talks about this black hole. No man has ever--apparently--come forward first of his own a…

I don't mind reading walls of text. Why kind of mitigation costs $25000? This is something maybe I'm unaware of. (Also are there a lot of street fights where you live? I'm not sure I could handle that myself)

If you get accused of Rape and get a trial, it costs $25000 for the lawyer. A lawyer quoted me that when I asked, post-lynching, when I finally got counsel like 11 years later. That's the price! Guess the price of college has been going up a bit fast! And by the way, financial aid won't cover that. Lawrence Lessig put it best when I asked him to help me lawyer up, "it's a rich kid school." Although in that case it's no better, there's extortion, feminist professors with hundred million dollar diamonds hidden in their house they covetously look at. Billionaires kid? You don't want this hitting the papers right? And like they specialize in getting the billionaire father to doubt his son. They got my father doubting me screaming why did you harass her and I told him a tiny bit of the evidence to get him to stop threatening me. And he instantly went and told the dean, which meant I couldn't tell my own father any of the disgusting wanton slut evidence I had way too much of.

Yeah there's lots of street fights here. So one way of communicating it is I used to wear flip flops but after two aggressions (one of them rape extortion) I hate myself for having backed down on--strictly because I was wearing flip-flops--I never wore flip-flops again. I like running shoes, those are much better. Dude never wear uncomfortable shoes not even to meet the President of Russia. Suit yeah but with sneakers. Of course! Once you get whacked, you never go back!

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

#498

Post by pas »

BirAdam wrote: post #243
pas wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why will it get worse? what's the model that predicts this?

It will get worse because the US federal government will not be able to pay debt service indefinitely. This will either mean a lowering of interest rates and acceleration of both inflation and debt accumulation (merely delaying the collapse of the dollar system) or US federal default which will collapse the dollar system. When dollars quit flowing to the states in return for federal program enforcement there will be…

The spectrum between yaay everything is amazing and the dollar system collapses is ... pretty big.

"U.S. interest costs won’t rise catastrophically in the short term, and there’s not really a reason to expect interest rates to stay high for decades. Furthermore, inflation will itself erode some of the national debt, reducing long-term interest costs relative to GDP."

"Right now, interest payments haven’t even begun to rise as a percent of tax revenue, and one big reason is inflation. Interest rates are set in dollar amounts, and inflation increases the number of dollars in the economy, meaning that tax revenues increase in dollar terms as well."

+ debt rollover

"the weighted average duration is only about 4 years." (so about half of the debt has to be renewed in about 4 years)

"The Fed currently predicts that it will start cutting rates in 2023. And markets expect this to happen too."

https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/us-government-debt-is-not-... [sorry paywall]

"a growing surplus of savings worldwide."

https://www.fullstackeconomics.com/i/70962695/aging-populati...

> end of empire

that's unlikely though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKVQDUQR8I4

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

#499

Post by vorpalhex »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #383
throwaway4aday wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It reeks of hyperbole you say? I invite you to attend services at the Southern Baptist church of your choosing and then try bringing up the topic of sex workers after services. Depending on where you attempt this you might make it to your car under your own power. Your claim that I'm advancing a strawman argument here strongly suggests to me that you may not have a solid grasp on conservative attitudes on this topic.…

I actually grew up in a Southern Baptist church, worked in it for a few years and still ocassionally interact with that community.

First of all it's a diverse community, both in skin color and in national origin. Second, I have never seen any member of that group do any worse than engage in debate. That you "might not make it to your car" is such hilarious hyperbole that it's bordering on satire.

That sex work is dangerous, leads to the abuse of women and often times is associated with sex trafficking is their view. They will tell you that. Some of the people, at least from my families church, were sex trafficking victims. Many of them help support and house battered women, help provide rape counseling on a weekly basis, and otherwise certainly have at least anecdotal reasons for their beliefs.

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

#500

Post by Volundr »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #491
Volundr wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The harm in your example is that by putting up these posters of naked women being valued only for their body, you send the message that that is how women are seen here. A woman is likely to feel she is at risk of being objectified the same as the women you've put on the wall as literal objects. I'm confused what the analogous harm is to you when two adults have consensual sex behind closed doors where you can't see o…

Who said consentual sex causes any harm? I'm arguing the opposite. The argument that women will interpret the posters as a message that they are seen as objects is potentially interesting, but then what about all the women who work at modelling agencies and ad agencies and actual sex related businesses? The argument that women will feel threatened because the posters will cause the men to attack them, or even just lo…

> Who said consentual sex causes any harm? I'm arguing the opposite.

The comment I'm replying to is. They are arguing that prostitution is somehow harmful to them and should be banned. I'll note the analogy of a poster on the wall of ones workplace is pretty poor, unless someone is advocating that prostitutes should be manning the hallways of Google. If you don't want to be exposed to prostitution it's easy to avoid. If you don't want to be exposed to the decoration of your place of work it's a lot harder.

> The argument that women will interpret the posters as a message that they are seen as objects is potentially interesting, but then what about all the women who work at modelling agencies and ad agencies and actual sex related businesses?

You mean the women who signed up for this line of work voluntarily rather than walking into their software engineering job and finding these posters on the wall? I think there's a clear differentiation between the two. Google probably shouldn't decorate it's offices with graphic images of say, people being operated on, I think that'd arguably be just as hostile a work environment. That doesn't mean that every surgeon is being abused.

> So the image itself can not be said to posess any intrinsic harm or evil.

Agreed the harm is not in the inherit to the image. As with many (most?) human interactions, context matters.

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