Going undercover as a sex worker

That stereotype largely only applies to Catholic priests, not Catholics. Also, to my knowledge, it's not a stereotype largely taken serious but is more of meant as a sly joke. Usually involving a choir boy in some way. Largely to mock the Churches cover-up of the issue years back.

>I believe the way to counter "lumping people together, generalizing and stereotyping" or othering is precisely to point out the flaws in logic and call it bigotry and hatred when you see it.

I don't know the statistics regarding this specific issue in a larger context (ie: Muslim Grooming Rings) and only saw the single article regarding the rather massive case not too long ago. But let's talk stereotypes and historical (and modern) facts.

Stereotypes happen because by-and-large they are true. It's how they form. Sure, there are the exceptions to the stereotype but few people speak in a manner as to make exclusions when exclusions are relatively rare compared to the blanket statement [^].

Why are "all Muslim's terrorists"? Because Islamic extremists are the most popularized, militant, and active terrorist groups. In my lifetime, I've never once heard of a modern-era Christian terrorist group. (Does "God Hates Fags" count?)

Even the Crusades, the closest thing to "Christian Extremists" that I can think of, was the reaction to a Jihad launched by a new Sultan (as was the norm of the time). The emperor of Constantinople requested help from the other Christians in western Europe because of Muslim aggression.

The Jihadists hadn't expected to meet such a large force - and when the Crusaders took back their lands they pushed back even harder. Political muckery and unheld promises turned the Crusaders largely against the people they originally set out to help, which is main reason for the divide between Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox to this very day. The demonization of the Crusades as a "black stain on Christian history" only came about in the 18th or 19th century (I forget which) because somehow it turned into a largely offensive war rather than a largely defensive war because the history behind it wasn't being taught.

Every single terrorist group I can think of off-hand, from Africa to the Middle East is a group comprised of self-declared Muslims [0]. Reading the Qur'an also shows the extremists are the "proper Muslims", like it or not. Selective choosing of which passages to follow are how you get the 'nice' Bible and the 'nice' Qur'an. Both books are full of evil that simply gets ignored because it is more convenient or "doesn't apply to people of our time" or "was the norm. in the past".

In our increasingly "liberal and tolerant" western world we're turning a blind eye towards issues because it would be "racist" to point to history or "intolerant" to call something what it is. A children's cartoon illustrates this perfectly [1]. What makes it all-the-worse is it is increasingly impossible to try and defend these positions or point to history. Nobody[^] wants to be a called a racist/sexist. So much as pointing to statistics or trying to explain why a position is wrong (ie. wage gap) is impossible. Defending such a position makes you a sexist and you don't want to be a sexist do you?

It's a form of societal control through coercive punishment (how many people have lost their jobs for making a possibly-sexist/racist comment now?) If you can't make people think like you, you can at least silence them. You trying to blanket everything as bigotry or hatred makes you part of what I see as the problem. Not everything is bigotry, not everything is racist, and pointing to history and statistics as backing for why a certain belief is held does not make one bigoted.

[0] Super-majority are Islamic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_designated_terrorist_g...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUdHA5liNec

[^] Nobody wants to be a racist or sexist, except the people that don't fit that stereotype. Just proving a point here about blanket statements. Do we usually exclude such people when making a statement like this? No.

What I meant was, it seems to me that these evil practices are far more culturally accepted in these places compared to an average Western culture. And I think there are reasons for that other than mere poverty. People have lived in poverty throughout history, throughout the world. Poverty is essentially universal. But selling one's own children into sex slavery is not. Plenty of people living in poverty still have strong moral values.

> Evil is an intuitive but ultimately ineffective concept. These behaviours are harmful both to the individual and to society at large. They unilaterally violate the personal liberty and human rights of the victim. That's why we consider them evil, not the other way around.

Respectfully, I think this is a narrow view. There are other cultures which place much lower value on personal liberty and individual rights, but would still consider such practices abhorrent. Now you are right that these behaviors do violate personal liberty and rights, and so to us, that is another reason why they are wrong. But there are groups who have little concept of personal liberty and rights, yet would never consider such a thing acceptable.

In fact, this is part of the problem: here we have people divided into two groups, geographically at least. One group can exploit the other--with no cost to its own society. These evil men get on a plane, have their fun, and return home, thousands of miles away, leaving their wake of destruction far behind.

And the families of these exploited children do not care about their children's personal liberty or rights. They sell them and then shut the door in their faces when they return. To them, it's acceptable to dispose of one family member to get a few dollars that the rest of the family can use.

> That's why we consider them evil, not the other way around.

I don't think it is a one-way function. Violating personal liberty and individual rights are innately evil. If this were not so, then whether they were evil would only depend on whether you valued personal liberty and rights. If you don't--and many people don't!--then they would not be considered evil. And this is exactly what we are seeing here.

You can go to them and try to convince them that they are harming optimal social interactions, but why should they care? To them, the people being harmed are not even part of society. They are...no better than animals.

Maybe what I'm trying to say is that, what is considered "natural" is irrelevant. People can "naturally" behave one way or another, depending on how they were raised, genetic disorders, mental illnesses, brain injuries, etc.

What matters is right and wrong, good and evil. These behaviors are not merely suboptimal--they are innately wrong. They are not wrong because they are inefficient--they are wrong because they are wrong. (Yes, circular, unless you want to go into the sources of morality. And ultimately that is probably required.)

The reason I want to emphasize that is that defining evil by harm to society is completely relative. If you exclude someone from society, then whether something harms them no longer matters, and then it would no longer be evil. And then when you try to tell someone to stop doing it, they look at you funny and say, "Why?"

Utilitarianism and relativism lead to tyranny. If something works, and the victim doesn't count, then they aren't a victim, and it isn't wrong. And for the people on the safe side of the line, without external, absolute moral values, they have no reason to change their behavior.

"O faithful! Why do you say one thing and do another? It is most hateful to God that you do not practise what you preach" (61: 2-3) -- the holy Quran

“Don't do unto others what you don't want others to do unto you.” -- Confucius

(Couldn't Quote from the Bible for the lack of knowledge in it.)

Of course, not every country is the same, not every scenario is the same, and thus we can't say that the choice some German families made after WWII and those single mothers in the Philippines are making the same kind of choice, are they?

Make no mistake - the vast, VAST majority of sex workers in the world are being exploited. Sometimes it's in the form of violence and coercion to continue the job. Sometimes it's due to unfair social and economic pressure on a vulnerable demographic. Sometimes it's just plain-old sexism, misogyny, humiliation, degradation, etc that's taken for granted as part of the career, which some workers have more agency in allowing, while others that have to take whatever abuse comes their way.

For the most part, my friends who are sex workers and enjoy the work are people who have unlimited choice: stable, single, educated, white, middle-upper-class women who could probably get any job they wanted, and choose this career and their clients.

My friends who are sex workers and don't enjoy the work have effectively no choice in the matter, either because they don't have an effective education, they have an inability to get other regular work, are destitute, have no social support structure, or have emotional or psychological disorders. And these are the people who are not being pimped out or sold for slavery.

But I probably don't know what i'm talking about, because I didn't write a master's thesis on it.

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