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Do you approve sex work? Why or why not?

cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/18475086

I’m not against those who work for sex, but the idea to earn for a living doesn’t seem nice. IMO, sex should be for 2 people (or more for others who prefer polyamory) who wants to be intimate/romantic with each other. My point is money should not be the purpose.

jimmydoreisalefty , (edited )
@jimmydoreisalefty@lemmy.world avatar

Edit3: improved wording a bit, and added info below; forgot to add this edit

Legalize and regulate.

I share this view with other issues our society faces as well.

Edit: forgot why.

Why:

Sex work as well as drugs will never be outlawed or enforced fully; looking at drugs, it is used as an excuse to jail the working class for slave labor as well as other things when you follow the money.^[[1] The Wire - Daniels Follows the Money | 01:34 | youtu.be/9PaBt441FBQ]

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.^[[2] constitution.congress.gov/…/amendment-13/]

WatDabney , (edited )

I don’t believe that my approval or anyone else’s is at all relevant.

My position is that there’s only one person who has the right to decide whether or not it’s acceptable to trade sex for money, and that’s the person entering into the trade. Assuming that all other contractual requirements are met - they’re of legal age and acting of their own free will and so on - it’s just as much their right to trade sex for money as to trade ditch digging or code writing or coffee brewing or meeting taking for money.

(edited for clarity)

TheBananaKing ,

Sex work is work.

The people that do it deserve respect, and all the social and legal protections that attach to any other kind of work.

Your own preferred attitude to sex isn’t the point.

Funkytom467 ,
@Funkytom467@lemmy.world avatar

But should it be work?

Should we really have a society where selling your body is an opportunity to make money.

For instance, it imply that some poor women are gonna take it regardless the consequence, just because it’s the best alternative to pay the bills.

I can barely tolerate the physical straining we put on some workers. Sex work’s consequences are unacceptable to me in that same sens, sometimes worse.

So sure, no matter your opinion we should respect them, and not incriminate them!

And of course not all sex work is the same… to be acceptable it just requires better conditions. It can’t be something you choose out of need.

Subtracty ,

Regulations would help, but create their own hurdles.

Funkytom467 ,
@Funkytom467@lemmy.world avatar

True and tested.

The best help is probably indirectly having better social policies overall. Although never perfect, the best we are the lesser the problem.

AgentRocket ,

selling your body

i hate that phrasing to describe sex work. no one is “selling their body”, as they are still in control of it. sex workers provide a service, same as a masseuse or hair stylist (except their service involves genitals) and it should be treated as such.

Otherwise one could argue that all (physical) labour is “selling your body”

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

For instance, it imply that some poor women are gonna take it regardless the consequence, just because it’s the best alternative to pay the bills.

How is this principally different from a poor person taking any shitty job to pay the bills? Like garbage collector or similarly unpleasant/disrespected jobs. The system always forces poor people to settle for shitty jobs. Sex work is not the issue there, the system is.

TheBigBrother , (edited )

It have side effects on the people who do it: yes, I don’t give a flying fuck about it: yes

xmunk ,

Absolutely, as long as there is safety and security for all parties involved. Consent must be obeyed by clients and both the clients and employees should be required to supply current STD screens as well as having a safe location for the work.

toomanypancakes ,
@toomanypancakes@lemmy.world avatar

I’m of the opinion that if you don’t want people performing sex work, you should be enacting measures to improve people’s quality of life to where that’s not their only option. The workers themselves should have legal protections and be permitted to perform their job like any other worker is.

I suspect some people would prefer that as a regulated option anyway, and they should be defended in their choice to do so. Sex work is work.

TheTechnician27 ,
@TheTechnician27@lemmy.world avatar

Moreover, if you don’t want people doing sex work, then you probably especially don’t want people to be forced into doing sex work. But that’s precisely what happens when you criminalize it: you make it so that the only way the demand can be satisfied is through a shady black market where trafficking is orders of magnitude more likely to take place, and you make it orders of magnitude more difficult for victims and witnesses to go to the authorities to report it.

memfree ,
@memfree@lemmy.ml avatar

I generally agree with you, but it is so complicated. I read a piece in The Nation a few years ago (written 2019) and whenever I see a question like this I have to dig it up. Sex workers in Spain applied to become a union (OTRAS, for short, full name basically means “the other women") and were approved in August 2018. Here are a few snippets:

After OTRAS was legalized, its two dozen or so members—who include women and men, both trans and cisgender—quickly found themselves engulfed in a national controversy. Prominent activists, academics, and media personalities swarmed social media under the hashtag (“I’m an Abolitionist”) to denounce what they saw as basic exploitation masquerading as the service economy. The union’s opponents argue that in a patriarchal society, women can’t be consenting parties in a paid sexual act born of financial necessity. They liken sex work to slavery, hence their name: “abolitionists.”

OTRAS calls this abolitionist opposition “the industry.” “They live really well off of their discussions, books, workshops, conferences, without ever including sex workers,” Necro says. “We’re not allowed to attend the feminist conventions.” OTRAS accuses “the industry” and the government—the two loudest arms of the abolitionist camp—of racism and classism, and is irked by their claims to feminism. “A government that refuses to guarantee the rights of the most vulnerable, poorest women with the highest number of immigrants? How is that feminist?” Borrell bristles. “We’re the feminists, the ones fighting for their rights.”

While advocates for legalization argue that it will make sex work safer, abolitionists counter that it could instead endanger women who, unlike the members of OTRAS, did not choose to enter the profession on their own. Abolitionists frame their anti-prostitution stance around the issue of human trafficking, specifically for prostitution. They argue that regulating sex work will simply allow traffickers to exploit women under legal cover.

“The trafficked women have no papers, so if police raid a club, the women have no choice but to say they’re there because they want to be,” says Rocío Nieto […] Once law enforcement is out of earshot, Nieto says, “none of the women tell you they want to be there. None of them tell you they want to do that work.”

A handful of smaller radical-left parties also back OTRAS, as well as one unlikely ally: the right-wing Ciudadanos party, known for its harsh anti-immigration stance, among other more traditionally conservative postures. “Experience shows us that when the State refuses to regulate, the mafias make the rules,” the party’s press corps wrote me in an e-mail.

CrimeDad ,

No, I don’t approve of any work. All work should be abolished, including sex work.

65gmexl3 OP ,
@65gmexl3@lemmy.world avatar

Yes, all work should be crime. Thanks dad

shalafi ,

If you want the benefits of society you must contribute. Put your money where your mouth is and go start a hippy commune somewhere.

Work as much or as little as you like! Benefit from the fruits of your own labor! Don’t ask for a steel ax or nylon tent though. Such goods require an industrial society.

cyberpunk007 ,

Sure, I don’t see why they should be treated any different than anyone else. I think the problem is the stigma around sex in general, and for that I blame religion.

iquanyin ,

yes. why? because regardless of my opinion, when you make it illegal you make things worse for everyone. that goes for drugs, for people moving about on the earth, and all other such things.

finley ,

All workers deserve respect. Labor is our means for survival in the modern world, the base good everyone trades for their livelihood.

Regardless of the type of work, all workers deserve respect. Ya gotta eat.

HubertManne ,

im a believer in victimless crimes legalization but I do think it should come with big regulation and not just to collect taxes. Advertising should be restricted to the adult establishments (in other words they should all only be able to advertise at their own places so no billboards on the road but walk into a liquor store and it will be all over once your inside). health and safety should be paramount (both johns and hookers should be regularly tested. hookers monthly and doctors should be able to give one a card to say they show no stds after testing on such and such a date you can get once a year). There should be regulation that establishments cannot have over a 20% and can't charge anything additional if they do take a cut.

mo_lave ,

Yes.

I used to think it’s impossible for a human to “want” sex work and default to the idea that it is inherently exploitative. Don’t get me wrong, there is sex work. But if that part is not present and they are willing to work there, what right do I have to stop them?

southsamurai ,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Approve of? I guess. The problem isn’t the sex work, it’s the way sex workers are treated.

I think making and keeping it illegal, and thus unregulated, is the dumbest damn idea possible for the subject. Totally boneheaded.

Is it something that I would consider a good career even if it was legal? Nope. People suck. And people tend to suck the most with hormones going crazy in their bodies, and sex is one of those things that makes all kinds of chemicals flow. So, seems like a difficult, demanding job under the best of circumstances.

Would I hire a sex worker for myself? Ignoring that I’m happily monogamous, it’s unlikely I would for sex. I can see myself hiring a temporary cuddle buddy if I was single, and might do so if I end up a widower some day.

Depending on which jobs you count as sex work, I’ve known anywhere from a few to dozens of women in the field. Strippers, escorts, phone sex workers, and happy ending masseuses. Nothing but respect for them. Even dated a couple of strippers back in the day. One I was with for long enough to have discussed marriage some day

lordnikon ,

Work is Work an it should be safe for everyone. Can you imagine the good they could do if that field expanded to Sex Therapy/Counseling. Where they could really help people with sexual disfunction and self esteem.

desentizised ,

They often say it’s the oldest business in the world. Which might not be relevant to how we should treat it as a society today, but what seems obvious to me is that when you de-facto criminalize and discourage something the working conditions are going to suffer.

There probably isn’t a place in the world where it isn’t practiced yet we love to pretend like we’re somehow past that. Not sure how much of that is based in religion and how much is just us being in denial of our own biology-based desires in a secular modern society. Either way it is hurting people who are just as entitled to making a living as anybody else.

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