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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?

#101

Post by Workaccount2 »

hackeraccount wrote: post #56

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…

I think where the ship runs aground is that sexual things are treated as intrinsically amoral, because people feel its amoral. However, that feeling is no more legitimate than "green is the best color" (because my brain tells me it's the best).

Edit: Just want to add - Homosexuality has the same illogical hurdle. It feels immoral to many people, so therefore it must be immoral. People are largely unable to separate their lizard brain instincts from logical analysis. So we end up with gays being stoned to death.

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

#102

Post by atoav »

horsestaple wrote: post #39

Quoted post unavailable.

> I would argue that renting out your body in the most intimate way is very different from most jobs.

A coal worker or someone working a similaily harsh job is also renting out their body in ways that might ultimatly proof to be far more destructive to their lives. Whether someone can perform a sexual act for money or not is on a base level purely a question of personal preference. Just like some people enjoy acting or being on stage and others don't. The question is if you are forced into doing it or under which conditions you have to do your work. For sex workers it is pretty clear that their working conditions are coupled to how accepting society is of that job. If it is basically criminalized, you will have criminals run the business hidden from society. If you have it accepted and strictly regulated, there might still be criminals, but the individual sex workers have a greater agency in how, when, with whom they work.

Puritan religious ideas in that context are powerful if you believe in them, but meaningless if you don't. Sexuality comes in many forms and not everybody feels a strong connection between sexuality and love (which is e.g. why many sex workers would rather have sex with someone than kissing them).

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

#103

Post by rayiner »

Sakos wrote: post #88
rayiner wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm beginning to wonder though if there isn't some space short of stopping a person from doing something That’s why moral norms exist in every human society. Most people need some sort of support from society to make good decisions for themselves and their families. It’s no different than how an exercise or diet regimen is easier to stick to if you do it along with other people to provide support and yes shaming if…

Society? You're painting an awfully broad brush. I absolutely think it should be regulated because of the reasons you name, but it's mainly particular demographics that want sex work banned, and generally these demographics don't actually care about the well-being of sex workers (re: provably negative consequences for sex workers in previous situations where such work was made illegal or otherwise deregulated and pun…

The “particular demographics” who want to ban prostitution include “the majority of women.” https://www.vox.com/2016/3/11/11203740/prostitution-legal-me...

Women oppose legalized sex work at higher rates than men, because they’d be the ones who would encounter social pressure to do sex work in tough economic circumstances if it became normalized.

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

#104

Post by uneekname »

LatteLazy wrote: post #13

We're really seeing a counterrevolution around sex and sexuality. From Row vs Wade to crackdowns on pornography to this, America is getting back to its puritanical roots...

Yes 100%. The U.S. has a scary apparatus of control and oppression directed at women, queer, LGBTQ+ folks. Even in the age of the internet, it feels like we take more steps back than forward...

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

#106

Post by Kye »

duxup wrote: post #52
horsestaple wrote: post #39

Quoted post unavailable.

Yeah I'm a bit curious about this too. I recall some studies showing even just folks at strip clubs enduring a lot of emotional pain and etc. Is it the job, is it the folks who take those jobs? I don't know but I'm skeptical about "It's simply a job." kind of blanket deceleration. Human sexuality is hardly like typing on a keyboard or etc... I don't buy into just declaring it like any other job. Granted I don't care…

>> "I recall some studies showing even just folks at strip clubs enduring a lot of emotional pain and etc."

So it's retail work with better pay.

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

#108

Post by derbOac »

LatteLazy wrote: post #13

We're really seeing a counterrevolution around sex and sexuality. From Row vs Wade to crackdowns on pornography to this, America is getting back to its puritanical roots...

I don't want to push back too much against what you're saying, but this is a bit complicated, at least in the US, I think?

First, some of the stuff like Roe v Wade I think is more the result of political strategy than public opinion. If the electoral college were eliminated, for example, and US political process were more representative, you'd see very different patterns over the last couple of decades. I'm not all that surprised to see studies showing that Americans misunderstand the opinions of their peers on many topics, because of a discrepancy between political representation and public opinion. Basically electoral college and senate politics, combined with gerrymandering, has distorted certain things somewhat.

Second, my sense is this is a bit of rose-colored glasses with regard to looking at the past. Anyone who looks back at the politics around the AIDS crisis, and remembers the congressional hearings around music lyrics (!) might be a little reluctant to characterize things like porn financing controversies as a norm regression. Onlyfans leveled porn distribution in a way that previous years didn't have to deal with, so to some extent this is just the same-old blocs responding to new technology. I also think to some extent this is more due to hard cold financial risk modeling than the article admits -- I don't think it's all of it, but some of it (the article implies, for instance, that all those chargebacks are due to regrets rather than, say, it being a common charge with stolen credit information; I'm sure it's a bit of both but the latter possibility isn't really acknowledged at all in the piece, even if to refute it).

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

#109

Post by giantg2 »

dylan604 wrote: post #69
giantg2 wrote: post #42

"It also establishes a precedent, allowing private companies to set opaque, moralizing, and arbitrary censorship terms without oversight." Yes, this is done with other things as well. On one hand, I think that the free market would create payment processors willing to work with the groups rejected by others. On the other hand, it seems that many financial things are set by international organizations, which the proce…

>On one hand, I think that the free market would create payment processors willing to work with the groups rejected by others. These already exist and are sometimes known as "high risk" processors. They charge a lot more for the privilege of accepting payments for what industry has deem high risk transactions due to larger rates of chargebacks. Typical examples are paid subscription to a porn site, but then the card…

"They charge a lot more for the privilege of accepting payments for what industry has deem high risk transactions due to larger rates of chargebacks."

If they're doing lower volume and dealing with higher costs related to chargebacks, then it seems it would make sense they charge more. What is it, like 3% vs 6% or worse?

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

#110

Post by RunSet »

josephcsible wrote: post #107

Why doesn't the argument "private companies can do whatever they want, so if you don't like being arbitrarily banned by the incumbents, then start your own bank and payment processor" apply here?

By way of answer, a cautionary tale:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_dollar_(private_curren...

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