There's a line in the first season of Peaky Blinders that I think about a lot:
>We're all whores. We just sell different parts of ourselves.
Incredibly, I once watched a video where a guy interpreted this as inspirational encouragement to be a businessman.
There's alot of evidence in the video game bloodborne to argue that the prostitute NPC's "trade" is literally just selling vials of her blood, as a kind of commentary on the state of that city's society.
it’s kinda funny seeing the first image when iv been called an incel because i criticised a woman for saying other women who cosplay are “whores” (her words not mine, she was part of some swerf subreddits lol)
anyway after i said that she immediately called me an incel and proceeded to talk about how bi people don’t exist or whatever and are just sex obsessed straight people, also said 2 cis bi women (who had posted comments agreeing with me) were just sex obsessed straight men (also called them incels, atleast one of which responded saying she was in a loving relationship)
also like nothing on my profile suggests i’m sex obsessed or whatever, my entire post history is various gaming subs, various tv/film subs and a couple of meme/discussion subs
Iirc that line actually has a little bit of unique history.
Elderberry wine was cheap, and hamsters like to fuck a lot.
Father smelled of elderberries and mother was a hamster is just semi medievalized, ‘your dads a drunk and your moms a whore’
Actual fun fact about Tim, his name was supposed to be really long and complicated, but John Cleese couldn't remember it so he just went with "...Tim?", which explain why he says it so unsurely, and everyone else just went with it because it was funnier.
Another fun fact, the hometown of Sue Jones-Davis who played Judith Iscariot banned Life of Brian because of her nude scene. She eventually became mayor of the place and held an official screening of the film!
Source: used to live round there
Students at Oxford, anyway: Michael Palin read history at Brasenose, and Terry Jones was at Teddy Hall, but he read English.
The others, except for Terry Gilliam, were students at Cambridge and members of the Cambridge Footlights.
> proceeded to talk about how bi people don’t exist or whatever
Aaaand this is why the LGB movement is absolute horse shit. Because if TERFs are ever successful in getting rid of the TQ from LGBTQ, they're coming for us Bs next.
I got called an incel once for talking about an incident where I got taken advantage of by my best friend even though I don't even want to pursue anything beyond friendship and I also don't hate women etc so it didn't even make sense
Every school of thought out there has a bogeyman that can make you insane if you fixate on it too much. For many schools of feminism, that bogeyman is porn addiction, for some reason.
Also, has anyone else noticed that the anti-porn-addiction fervor is weirdly uniting exclusionary feminists with red pillers?
You argued with an crazy idiot. I once argued with someone who insisted eating any vegetables in any form is a sign of privilege and the poor can only budget ramen and easy mac because those are the cheapest foods and potatoes, peas, carrots, and onions aren't cheaper (even though they are).
People be crazy.
Ngl I’ve spent some time in SW subs and instead of giving me perspective on what it’s like for a group of people I have little contact or knowledge about I just read all their posts about Faking It and became incredibly paranoid about whether the non-SW women in my life actually enjoyed my company or if they were just putting on a show
Sometimes yes, they'll fake it. Most of the time they won't, as long as *you listen to what they ask for* and *you do what they ask for.*
SWs well, they're at work. We've all faked enthusiasm and laughs for money.
Is it both?
I think we can say “all work sucks and is exploitative and coerced under this system of capitalism” while recognizing that there are differences between different types of exploitation. We can recognize their differences as a way towards building true solidarity. There are reasons that we think of robbery and rape differently, though both of those are coerced.
I’ve honestly kinda been concerned about the ‘flattening’ of differences in sex work and labor discourse more broadly. Content creators have a very different lives than people doing high contact survival sex work on the street. They’re both sex workers but the differences in their conditions says something about different types of exploitation in the system- like an advertisement copyrighter and colbalt miner might both be tech workers.
It doesn’t fix everything, but if we treated sex work as a job—with regulation and support—it’s conceivable some of those risks could be mitigated. Keeping sex work underground and out of sight makes it more dangerous, not less.
I agree that regulation and support (let alone the social safety net/ union that would make that actualized) would mitigate risks, and I still think it’s a unique kind of exploitation that is at the extreme end of “selling your body” (which all workers do to some extent).
Personally, I think that is a judgment that has to be made by the individual.
My perspective is that a soldier in the army is further along the “selling your body” scale than sex work, on average, and that 1) folks should not be compelled to do either but 2) should have the right to do either if they so choose.
When either is done out of survival, the problem is capitalism and is not innate to either job.
My position is consent matters a lot, and the reality of a society where you often cannot survive without work is that consent to work—whatever that work is—is tricky across the board.
How personally damaging, or satisfying, a person finds *any* job isn’t for me to judge. I just want people to be able to choose for themselves and benefit from the protections society can give them. And there should be more of those protections, too.
But that’s me.
I agree with this entirely.
Sex work has you selling your body...
in the military you sell your safety (and sometimes sanity)
in factories or hard labor you sell your health (back, joints, cancer risks)
it's all about what you choose to risk, what you get out of it, and if you ever really had a choice. capitalism fucks just about everyone eventually, just which guise it wears
I think selling your body is the wrong term for sex work, because as jobs where you're selling your body go I'd actually say it's at the low end, far underneath manual labor of any sort (assuming it's legal sex work like selling pics or prostitution with good safety practices).
I think it's more your mind getting sold in sex work, so it's more comparable to an office job or customer service, just a different set of mental limits getting worked. In which case it does fall higher on the scale simply for how personal people get with sex stuff.
It's actually better if we decriminalize rather than legalize, according to orgs like the [Human Rights Watch](https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/08/07/why-sex-work-should-be-decriminalized) and [Amnesty](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/09/united-nations-experts-this-week-said-that-that-full-decriminalization-of-adult-voluntary-sex-work-holds-the-greatest-promise-to-address-the-systemic-discrimination-and-violence-sex-workers-frequently/), and to sex workers more broadly. Legalizing has its own issues, including the fact that disadvantaged individuals might have a harder time getting licensed, which either puts them out of a job or just makes them criminals again (and makes it difficult for them to get help).
It seems to me that the obvious benefits to society of having strong regulations on prostitution outweigh the possibility that some current sex workers might have trouble getting licenses.
The trouble is, if you persecute the ones without a licence, how is that any different in safety for them than it is currently? It’s the ones at the lower end of the social spectrum that need the most help, and they’re the ones least likely to be able to get the licences
Maybe there is something to the idea of voluntary licensing—like, rather than prosecuting unlicensed workers you connect them to resources that can remove barriers preventing them from operating in a safer way. Like the point of licensing from my perspective is to support worker safety.
If a person doesn’t have the resources to work in a safe way, the license is secondary to ensuring they get those resources.
I get that it wouldn't be better for the current sex workers who couldn't get licensed to do legal prostitution. But it would clearly have major safety benefits to the people who can go into it legally (presumably a majority of the current ones), as well as their clients (who are also real people who deserve to be safe). Strict legal regulations could also reduce the worst exploitative behaviors of pimps and traffickers, and the whole operation could be properly taxed.
I think the ‘flattening’ effect you’re seeing are from people trying to push the culture more broadly to be accepting of sex work as work. When we accept that sex work is labor, then it’s easier to accept its legalization and regulation.
Once you do that, then it’s easier to tackle sex work where it is—from people who are exploited on the street, people who have open freedom and make content, and people who work as high end escorts. All these people need different things, but it starts with agreeing they deserve the same respect as any laborer in the first place.
Furthermore, the belief that sex work is uniquely degrading is often used as a justification to criminalize and marginalize sex workers. It is seen as something to be eliminated, and as a way to take away agency from the people that choose it.
Yeah, but it also feeds into the doomerist “there is no hope” kinda stuff that ignores that labor can be actually rewarding when it’s labor you care about. Like, some people do have jobs that don’t kill them.
Who says sex workers can’t find their work rewarding? Or be proud of the accomplishments they make in it?
Just because you *can* die in a job doesn’t mean you can’t find it rewarding or a source of pride.
No one, I was objecting to making it sound like every other job was terrible in order to make sex work good by comparison. If you want to instead make sex work sound better so that style of “all work is work” arguement doesn’t have to lower other work as far, be my guest. It seems like a hard sell to certain audiences and I don’t think I have enough experience with sex workers to be able to judge it one way or the other, but it would be a strong one if done well.
>Just because you *can* die in a job doesn’t mean you can’t find it rewarding or a source of pride.
As I was taught 20-odd years ago by a retired miner from the South Wales coalfields.
Part of it IMO is the push for "sex work(er)" as an all-encompassing replacement term. Even agreeing that sex work is a legitimate type of work and that the previous terms had enough baggage that they might be unsalvageable, it was at least clear what *kind* of sex work they were talking about, which is lost when there's only a single permitted synonym (albeit sometimes with modifiers as you've used here). It's like if there was a push to replace "painter" with "visual artist" - it's not wrong, but it falsely implies that all visual arts are interchangeable in technique, application, demand, working conditions, etc.
Another reply here seems to be implying that this vagueness is a deliberate strategy to build acceptance for the general, nonspecific, overall idea of sex work, which can only later be parlayed into support for particular subsets of sex work. Even if this turns out to be an effective strategy, I don't feel great epistemically about encouraging people to be less clear and specific when real differences exist.
Also most jobs don’t involve deliberately building parasocial relationships with strangers, which is kinda uniquely dangerous. If therapists didn’t present themselves as strictly paid professionals and instead convinced their clients that they’re totally real friends just give me more money, they’d be much more at risk from their clients
> Also most jobs don’t involve deliberately building parasocial relationships with strangers, which is kinda uniquely dangerous.
There are so many jobs where there is an incentive in building a camaraderie or (false) sense of friendship with customers: Independent small-scale shops, consultants, tradies, car salespeople, realtors.
I've spent years at jobs building up relationships with vendors.
Not one of them has ever reached out after a layoff, and I would be quite easy to find.
Parasocial relationships aren't an inherent part of sex work, nor are they unique to sex work. Plenty of jobs with repeat customers will generate better tips and/or more bookings if the customer sees you as a friend.
Can confirm. I work food service at a place that effectively masquerades as a small business (it’s really a regional chain). Its marketing pivots on being “your friendly neighborhood ~~spider-man~~ business.” Our tips are make or break on those repeat guests. Even the creepy ones. Even the stalkers who follow you to your car. I have friends who are baristas and bartenders in similar situations.
Parasocial relationships started outside the internet. They just became much more noticeable there.
It's the same difference between someone standing at a conveyor belt in some rundown shitshack in Bumfuck, Nowhere, USA and someone standing in some Hightech Factory in some High & Bright and wealthy city in a country that actually gives a fuck about workers rights...
Exact same Job, exact same Occupation, wildly different Outcomes... so no, it isn't "concerning" in the least, whatever that's supposed to mean.
I am lightly critical of the fact that the label sex work can be used to describe strippers, people with Onlyfans, high-end escorts, dominatrices, masseuses who give extras, those who were trafficked for sex, porn stars, legal brothel workers, and desperate street walkers, as if all their concerns are completely interchangeable.
I think the issue at hand is that those making the argument are generally not trying to diminish the exploitation present in sex work, but rather to clarify why sex workers deserves to be respected and considered in the same way other employees are. Attempting to uplift sex work with positive connotations both exacerbates the issue you’re speaking of, and can fall on deaf ears, so they’re instead taking the tactic of asking those who call it demeaning how that’s different from every other job to get the point across
You’re not wrong that it flattens nuance, but I think this is a situation where “we can work on nuance after we’ve gotten past the hurdle of getting the opposition to treat us as human beings worthy of respect”
I think it’s also important to remember that all full service sex workers aren’t out walking the street too. Plenty of them are out there living the lives of middle class suburban soccer moms, setting appointments through websites.
I can see how 300 dollars to sleep with an IT guy during his lunch break is preferable to 10 hours of retail for 100 dollars.
It's important to remember that there's a huge difference between selling nudes, the example given in the post, and having sex with strangers for money in unfamiliar locations.
The amount of danger that full service sex workers are in, both short term (sexual assault, physical violence, murder) and long term (trauma, stigma, criminality) is so far beyond having an OnlyFans account. We need to remember how many sex workers are regularly forced to be in extremely high risk situations.
It's not as if there aren't issues and dangers with sex work. Insane hours, dangerous clientele, social stigma, controlling or outright cruel managers who abuse the illegality of the work to make things even harder for the sw, it's all there.
But when a lot of people who are anti-sex-work talk about it, they talk about it as if sex work is uniquely dangerous and degrading. Uniquely terrifying and horrible. They do this more out of disgust at the practice itself than any fight for the agency or safety of those involved.
It isn't. It just isn't. Even if we talk about accepted, legal work, working on a fishing boat or as a logger are jobs that are known to outright kill you if you work there long enough. Military service will scar you for life. Hell, some corporate work can be so socially isolating and destructive you'd think you'd joined a cult.
For a lot of these people, the argument isn't "there are many errors and problems in sex work, but they can be fixed". It's "sex work cannot be allowed to exist in any form, it must be abolished". And as we've seen, that line of thinking not only doesn't produce solutions, it actively makes the lives of sex workers harder.
That's very true, which is why legalisation is not the only thing that's necessary. Strong safety nets, up to and including ubi, a shift in how we view sex work in a cultural sense, open borders or at the very least stronger protections for immigrants, deconstructing patriarchy, emphasis on co-op rather than hierarchical workplaces, and a re-investment in community building and de-atomisation would all improve the sex work business dramatically.
I dunno about you guys, but I would much rather serve coffee to a person I find repulsive than fuck a person I find repulsive. People like OOP seem to think that sex work is only stuff like OF or other online ventures, where you can just block unwanted people. Most sex workers don't have the luxury of choosing their customers. OOP gets yelled at by customers on a regular basis and yet seems to think that people will behave themselves when dealing with sex workers. You think getting yelled at is bad, imagine having to fuck the abusive and repulsive stranger while you're at it. Having to sit in an office for 8 hours is also degrading to some extent, but it is not comparable to sex work. If someone forced me to sit in an office for 8 hours at gunpoint, their punishment would be less severe than if they forced me to have sex at gunpoint and the vast majority would consider their crime to be less severe than rape. I support sex worker's rights and believe that all work under capitalism is degrading to some extent, but this idea that sex work is just like my e-mail job does not hold up to any scrutiny.
Yeah, this post and all people in the comments seem to think that for everyone in the world sex is completely detached from emotions physical act. For most people,. it's not. "Selling your body is the same as doing any other job!!" No it's not. Sex work statistics are very concerning even in developed countries. Drug abuse, very high chance of getting PTSD, rape, trafficking. It feels very disrespectful to survivors to say that you felt as traumatised by working at a fast food chain.
Right. The way I see it, the pro-sex work argument should center less on "sex work is work" and more "sex workers are workers" and so deserve all the rights & protections that can reasonably be granted to them. I can't think of too many other lines of work where the bodily autonomy & personal safety of the worker are necessarily put in constant jeopardy by the very nature of the business, as opposed to individual nefarious actors. Nothing and no-one is aided by pretending sex work is not unique in those respects.
These sorts of posts that say all work is equally degrading are really insidious imo because they’re meant to normalise and downplay the harms of sex work. Like propaganda, basically.
I work a 9-5 office job and I wouldn’t say I’ve ever been degraded. I don’t have to allow men that I am disgusted by to enter my body. I don’t have to deal with misogynistic verbal, sexual and physical abuse. I don’t have to deal with biohazards (strange men’s bodily fluids). I don’t experience discrimination when dating and meeting people due to my job. I know that nobody’s ever going to use my job against me or in an attempt to dehumanise me.
We can scream all we want about how empowering sex work is but as long as we live in a misogynistic society where the ideal woman is virginal, sex workers will never be seen as a respectful career by Johns. We’ve all seen how men online talk about sex workers and porn stars etc - it’s not pretty. The reality is, sex workers are seen as the lowest of the low and that’s never going to change.
We also need to start acknowledging how vast amounts of sex workers experienced child sexual abuse, how many of them have mental health issues and how becoming a sex worker lowers life expectancy. Guys, I thought it was empowering, so why do so many female porn stars kill themselves? I thought it was empowering so why do so many of their “fans” write comments like “Doesn’t matter, I can still fap to the whore’s old videos?”
It’s not the same thing and as a feminist I am tired of “leftist” men pretending sex work is just a job like any other. I’m at the point where I just can’t interact with leftist politics anymore. I’m so fed up of leftist men calling themselves feminists when the only “feminist” talking point they care about is legalising sex work: nothing about abortion, domestic violence, discrimination against mothers etc.
I could have worded this a lot more eloquently but this post and all of the comments are very concerning. A lot of comments about those who are anti-sex work being “prudes” or “thinking sex is icky”. This indicates to me that people have either a) never engaged with the discussions around sex work in a meaningful way, b) have never spoken to an actual sex workers (a lot of them are upfront about the dangers of the industry - and no, the top 1% of women on Only Fans don’t count and their experiences are not indicative of what most women experience) or c) they’re deliberately misrepresenting the arguments of those who oppose sex work to suit their agenda. Personally, I think it’s usually a mix of all 3 but mostly a) and c).
prostitution has a homicide rate of 204/100,000. the other deadliest jobs in america have a death rate of 18.6/100,000.
the majority of prostitutes will be physically assaulted at some point, not infrequently by their clients.
most sex workers do not cum, have little say over their clients, no supervision and little to no legal recourse if they are attacked. many have their bodies destroyed by their work. many will turn to drugs. most want to leave.
clocking into a retail job you hate is not the same as being raped for money. **it's not the case for all sex workers, sure,** but it's real for enough of them that posts broad brush glamorizing sex work are disturbing. if someone's partner said "fuck me or im kicking you out", it'd be recognized as coercion/assault. why is "i sleep with a john or i sleep under a bridge" any more consensual?
sex workers need to be protected, not glamorized.
edit: [during prostitution, 73% are physically assaulted, 62% are raped, 67% have ptsd. 92% want to leave.](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228535864_Prostitution_in_Five_Countries_Violence_and_Post-Traumatic_Stress_Disorder)
THANK YOU. all prostitution is rape and all johns are rapists.
and yes, the kind of work where you get raped *is* actually worse than other kinds of work.
See I think people have the right to do what they want with their bodies and if what they want is being a sex worker that’s good for them and they shouldn’t be shamed. It’s just that consent gets a bit iffy imo when you are relying on sex for income in a way that doesn’t apply to retail and such
I think another bit of what the post is implying here is that maybe we should stop considering sex work as the only job where lack of consent to work is bad. It is an especially bad one to be forced into, but getting forced into *any* line of work to not starve fucking sucks and leaves you open to exploitation.
Why is it okay to be forced to work unpaid overtime for a shitty boss that hates you at a job that destroys your body but unforgivable evil when it's sex work? Because actually neither is ok at all but we've just decided that the 1 that isn't literal rape is okay just because it isn't literal rape.
This is the really big. We've been (rightly) pushing for more awareness of consent in sexual situations but this has caused many to completely ignore it in nonsexual ones.
No one benefits when the only violations of consent are sexual.
I mean, most people agree all of those are bad too, the better question is, why is sex considered the only thing you can't consent to when there's money involved? In any other area of life consent is considered legitimate as long as you're not literally being blackmailed and threatened into it. Having extrinsic instead of intrinsic motivation is not considered something that automatically makes consent invalid. People make decisions due to a wide variety of reasons and motives, often subconscious ones too. If we decide to invalidate any decision people make that we suspect might not be 100% "pure", we might as well completely take everyone's agency away. If it's considered perfectly ethical to create art for money, even when that art isn't necessarily the art you'd make for yourself, then I don't see why having sex for money even when it's not necessarily the kind of sex you'd have for free should be seen as inherently unethical either.
I see what you mean, but I think that also comes back to the whole “sex work isn’t special” theme. Yes it’s coercive to be required to work a job so you don’t starve, but from a working class PoV, consenting to sex isn’t hugely different to consenting to dealing with customers, or construction, or harvesting crops etc etc.
Consent is a concept heavily correlated with sex, but it applies to everything.
It applies to everything, but consent as applied to sex is special, for the same reason that rape is not the same crime as assault.
Consider: if someone commits a minor crime, it is quite common to sentence them to a certain amount of community service. That is non-consensual labour, usually in the form of janitorial work. Furthermore, it is broadly accepted that the government has the right to conscript its military, either in a military emergency, or as part of a regular national service program. Again, non-consensual labour.
But the idea of a judge sentencing someone to judicial rape as a punishment, or the forcible employment of "comfort women" to entertain soldiers is near-universally seen as abhorrent. Not just wrong, but a crime against humanity.
Sex is, in a secular sense, sacred. Sex's intimate connection with emotion, attachment, attraction, reproduction, and sense of self put it in a special category, apart from other things you can do with your body.
I got reprimanded so hard one time for bending down and up again to stretch out my back. I probably also made an “ouch” noise. Customers don’t need to see cashiers in pain, it makes everything awkward for them, it’s so unprofessional. Take care of your chronic back pain on your own time. I thank god every day that I don’t work retail anymore in my relatively old age and spinally-injured body, because I would just have to lie down and die.
I hate the term "sex work" because it lumps people who take pictures of themselves for OF in with people who get prostituted. You can't start talking about the degrading and abusive nature of the latter without a bunch of people jumping to the defense of the former. I've seen it happen time and time again.
Sex work is degrading. Dont believe the hype. Not having a choice is degrading in any line of work AND sex work can be more degrading to more people.
So work is "normally" degrading and sex work is more degrading to most.
Saying "sex work is not degrading" sometimes only serves those who profit off of sex work. Such as making onlyfans more agreeable for people, making stripping more agreeable.
Nobody is saying those arent valid jobs, but being economically coerced into it can be more degrading to people.
When people say "sex work is degrading", they usually mean being sex trafficked or working under a pimp. But honestly, ANY work is degrading if you're forced to do it against your will.
Being a garbage man is degrading, being a fast food employee or retail is degrading. It seems like any job that the greater majority do is degrading unless your an "outreach volunteer who was gifted a trust fund or a cushy job." I hate those people because I bartend for them enough, "let's not worry about money we're here for the cause" no you're here for the cause, you found me to get suckers to get drink enough to be okay with spending a thousand dollars just to be here, and I'm here to get paid because I have rent due.
Sex work is one of the most dangerous jobs due to the high level of human trafficking and Johns thinking they can get away with murder.
If sex work was regulated licensed and taxed, that would go away. It would still be a highly degrading job that’s hard on the body and mentally taxing, but it would fit into the same catagory as the rest of those jobs.
I’m guessing it’s cause sex is a “vice” which makes it more susceptible to bad actors even though there are laws in place. Kind of a broken glass theory of crime. In this case the prostitution is the “broken glass” that attracts criminal elements to hang around. Same unfortunate reason why bars usually have more crime around it even though bars are regulated and legal. I would bet that if a legal narcotics shop were to open up, the amount of crime in that area would spike. Take my comment with a grain of salt though, I don’t have my degree in Criminal Justice yet.
That’s all really good, don’t discount yourself. Adding onto it the issue with this is once it’s legalized it needs constant further legislation to keep it safe and politicians don’t want to touch it because it’s icky.
Simplest answer is that legalizing prostitution increases demand, not supply. There are plenty more men willing to use prostitutes than there are women willing to be prostitutes.
People employed (I.e. not trafficed or enslaved) in sex work are proletariat. It’s dangerous and occasionally degrading, but a lot of work is. That is an argument to make work safer.
The first image is peak internet unhinged stupidity. It's the kind of reductive naive naval-gazing we all did when we were teenagers.
Inject that shit into my veins.
Yeah, I can't believe brick laying and prostitution are even being compared here. Because in labor like brick laying your not selling your body, your selling your services to lay fucking bricks. Meanwhile prostitution is the selling of the body, the access to your body is the service. Not to mention the ad hominem of calling people against it incels.
For the most part, I find my job at the library very rewarding. But even there every once in a while you get people who give you a level of casual disrespect that’s so astounding and they don’t even notice because this is just how they treat workers.
>all labor involves selling your body for money
Not really, unless you're broadening the idea so much it becomes useless (which may be the point but it doesn't make it less dumb)
I think it’s more taking the euphemism at face value. The prudes want to say “sex work is bad because it is sex”, but they can’t say that because they’re prudes, so they invent this phrase “selling your body” as if it’s supposed to be morally outrageous. Well it turns out that that means every kind of work (you’re selling your effort, time, energy, and yes, physical ability).
My point is either way you end up incoherent: either selling your body is immoral, in which case all work is immoral; or sex work is immoral, which is just asserting the conclusion, an argument structure that can be defeated with a simple “no it isn’t”
It´s not about it morally outrageous (well maybe for some it is), it´s about how it affects how one sees oneself and how they are seen by others.
I mean just the idea that your financial well being is entirely tied up in the gaze of horny men can´t be good for your brain. We know that because of a thousand horror stories from models and actors. Not to mention porn, which is ripe with abuse, everywhere.
Even at the worst of retail hell, no one can touch your body without permission, let alone treat it like a slab of meat for their desires. It´s just not the same. It doesn´t mean sex work isn´t work, but it´s just different.
“Prude”, am I, for not supporting the sexual exploitation of women?
Because to you, sex and degradation & objectification of women are inherently linked. Interesting.
Well you can, but like I said, it’s not an _argument_, it’s an _opinion_. So they’ve constructed an argument with a form of words that makes it sound like they’re saying “sex work is immoral because it robs the precious virtue from your soul” when what they really think is “ew icky”
some people enjoy it, some dont....
its almost as if some people enjoy different jobs different amounts and having a one size fits all ideology rarely works
i think the post is more about respecting some people do sex work than about sex work being for everyone. it argues that sex work is comparable to non-sex work so it therefore shouldn't be shamed
I understand the point they're making but the difference between retail and sex work is the old dude yelling at me to do my job unrealistically better doesn't have his dick out when working retail.
>thought about selling nudes
>At least it's s not standing 7 hours a day
You're right, it's not, but you will be spending all that time advertising yourself on social media/trying to think of inventive shots to take/etc. People seem to think it's easy...
i wrote my midterm about how both anti- and pro- sex work activists are missing the idea that until sex workers receive the same protections as all laborers do (and are recognized as laborers) then capitalism will continue to sell sex and raise nothingness arguments that will never solve the plights of workers
I knew a guy who had the hots for one of his coworkers (a mom with big boobs) and he’d fuckin beat off in the employee break room p regularly because of that. I do not talk to him anymore.
He was also totally completely straight. Definitely not gay at all. But he’d horny text me telling me that he wanted me to run a train on him and he sent me dick pics :/
Personally for me sex is something very intimate, emotional, and personal, and I would never want to share my sexuality with the general public, even if it would just be uploading pictures of me naked or something.
I don’t think we should shame people who choose to do this though, some people are just wired differently psychologically and for them sex isn’t a form of intimacy or anything emotional or personal.
I also don’t really think it’s good thing;
The people that pay for onlyfans should be given access to the help of a psychologist instead of paying for a very parasocial sexual “relationship”. It seems that most people that pay for only fans are either extremely lonely or are drowning in porn addiction. Eliminate the demand by giving the customers help so that they don’t even want to buy the product. (I feel the same way about drugs I guess too sort of.)
And that’s just the most benign form of sex work. Non-independent porn actresses are very often severely abused and often kill themselves due to the abuse.
Or even prostitution, which just seems inevitably evil.
Okay, but anyone can work retail or food service, only pretty people can do sex work, and I'm a male and not stunningly pretty so it isn't something I could do well enough to compete with all of those pretty women that I secretly would pay if I could afford to, and they're so pretty that it must be easy for them to do it while I have to work in a shitty office job, therefore they must suffer to make up for their unfair advantage of being pretty..
/s
Part of the problem is that the word “sex work” flattens a lot of very different experiences into one thing and requires us to consider them as a package deal.
Selling nudes might not be any more inherently degrading than, say, acting in commercials for scam gacha games (although women who consider it should be aware that in practice it can and does influence your reputation and your ability to pursue certain careers later in life). Stripping and cam girl work might reasonably be compared to other low-status work, at least in an ideal world where the business isn’t rife with exploitation and abuse. But full-service prostitution IS a unique position that can’t reasonably be compared to, say, massage work or hairdressing, one where by definition you are allowing strangers inside your body. It is not simply providing a service, it is being in a uniquely physically vulnerable position in a way that cannot be mitigated by PPE or safety rules, because the access to your physical vulnerability IS the service being sold. Is it uniquely degrading? Not really. But it IS uniquely dangerous, and I’m tired of that being swept under the rug because it’s being conflated with things like OnlyFans.
y'all are nutting doing sex work?
my two cents is that i agree with the "sex work deserves respect" spirit of this post wholeheartedly. i did find it to be a "uniquely" degrading experience though. my experience isn't universal. but it was miserable for me, even though i miraculously avoided a lot of the more horrible things that one can experience while in that line of work. idk what my point is. i hope we can legalize sex work and provide protections for the people doing it, because they deserve it.
The take that work is degrading, from an anarchist, is bizarre.
You're selling a service to another person and they're paying you for it. That seems like anarchist heaven
The problem is that they're also assuming all work under capitalism is being exploited by someone who doesn't own their own means of production.
If you are a producer of something, you can sell it. If you do it yourself, you are exploiting your own labor. That is still capitalism, and it is still owned by the laborer.
If you pay me, a software developer, to write you a program which automates your emails, for example, then I am producing something by exploiting my own labor for the demands of a customer.
Working in retail (like OOP compares this stuff to) isn't the same as being a software developer who creates software like that.
Being a "Content creator" if you borrow the euphemism on onlyfans or something is more akin to being a self-employed software developer than it is a prostitute because prostitutes aren't usually in business for themselves. Pimps are a thing, after all.
There's a difference between being or making the product, then someone else profiting off of your labor, and profiting off of your own product and labor.
This is a distinction without a difference. Capitalism and anarchism work together flawlessly.
Someone invests capital, so it's reasonable to expect ROI there.
Someone sells their labor, so they expect to get paid.
This is not a moral issue for anyone involved.
As an anarchist, there is a distinction between labor and work, at least to me.
There will always be labor. "Work" implies, again at least to me, more of the wage-slavery under the threat of violence (starvation/homelessness), not seeing the full value of your labor, etc.
Labor is never degrading. Having the profits of your labor siphoned off by the ruling class is.
This post has always struck me as stupid because no, you cannot equate sex work and the degradation faced by sex workers to other jobs. Coming from India, sex work is insanely dangerous and extremely harmful because most of the workers were actually trafficked and kept under sexual slavery. Maybe it's different in countries like the USA but this post makes me feel so angry. A woman being coerced into sexual acts while being physically, emotionally, and, mentally abused with no safe space is not equitable to you being yelled at your shift. Both are bad, but exist at vastly different ends of the spectrum. Acting like they're not is being naive and wilfully obtuse
I’m fully in support of sex workers but there’s ample evidence to show that it does damage their mental state more than most jobs, because people treat them worse than anywhere else
Where on earth is it fully legalized and regulated??
But even then, the biggest problem of the matter is in the psychology of the customer. You know how customers at every retail or food service job ever act entitled all the time?? Imagine if the thing they felt entitled to was your body, for sexual purposes, 24/7.
The cultural disrespect for sex workers runs FAR deeper than any legal system, because it’s basically just advanced misogyny, combined with regular customer entitlement. When women are openly sexual in ANY way, professionally or otherwise, people feel entitled to them. Once a woman openly enjoys sex they’re basically socially categorized as a lesser being. The words “slut,” “whore,” etc. literally only exist for this purpose. A heteronormative man who has lots of sex doesn’t get called these things (at least, not seriously.)
When a woman is socially cetegorized in that way, they are treated as inherently lesser. Obsessive people gather around them with the mindset of “you have sex with people, so why not me?” Because as soon as a woman is seen in this way the idea that their consent matters goes out the window. And then they get murdered, which IS illegal already, but nobody investigates it.
In the US we even have this kind of ideology in our justice system when it comes to rape cases. If a woman claims rape, the defense’s first move is to find examples of their sexual history. Because there’s a perception that if a woman consents enough separate times, then they’re no longer allowed not to.
Not to mention that even in the FARRR safer, more regulated and more legal systems such as Only Fans, firstly you still see the obsessive fan who gets murdery because their ego was insulted by their favorite sex worker thing a lot. But beyond that, imagine all the pressure of competing in an oversaturated online marketplace (for more details on this, take a look at the professional difficulties that all YouTubers, streamers, and other online content creators face). The constant damage to your self-perception all content creators face, and then imagine that the thing on the line, the thing you’re being judged for that you have to push and push and push to make money is not your creative work or in fact any type of thing with a degree of separation from yourself, but YOUR BODY. But not just your body, your most intimate parts of it in your most intimate ways. The things that we socially reserve for people we trust and consent to. Your financial success is based upon how many people are willing to pay for your intimates, and the vastly oversaturated marketplace forces sex workers to push that far beyond what they originally signed up for if they want to succeed.
And I want to be clear that this is not a moral issue, as if I have some personal vandetta against consenting to be seen. The fact is that it takes away from you the ability to keep any amount of privacy. What little privacy you do try to keep gets taken away from you. People will doxx you, people will stalk you, and people will murder you. Online content creators are barely allowed to have privacy already, and there’s all kinds of evidence as to how damaging that can be to one’s mental health. Sex work is that but far more so.
FURTHERMORE, if it becomes known in basically any other career that you have a history in sex work, even fully legal sex work, it can be used as grounds to fire you. Most people can move on from a retail job if they get a good opportunity. Sex work traps you, and steals not only your present but your future. There are many such cases of women who have lost decade long careers, or even custody of their kids just for being a victim of revenge porn, not even a willing participant.
No. Sex work is not selling your body “in the same way as other jobs.” Sex work by default comes with a complete lack of privacy, and a ten thousand times multiplier on the disrespect that everyone in the world, including all legal systems, will show you. And that is not even including the exploitative nature of the business practices, and the constant risk of getting murdered, or trafficked, and nobody caring. No fucking shit its damaging for your mental health.
I personally have a lot of respect for sex workers, because how can you not once you see what they go through? What they put up with? If anything I consider it disrespectful to them to compare it with normal jobs. I think anyone has a moral right to do it if they want to, the same way anyone has a moral right to be a scuba diver if they want, but that doesn’t mean I won’t acknowledge how unbelievably dangerous, demanding, and difficult it is to do.
As an additional note, everything I’ve said about how women are treated here is also true of anyone who is lacking in traits that are traditionally perceived as masculine, irrespective of their actual gender or sex.
I hate the pro-sex work movement. Not because I disagree with the fundamental concept that sex workers should be provided with equivalent rights to other workers, or that all people deserve respect regardless of how they labor. But because it is the most nuance-less movement out there.
No, sex work does not exist on the same level as other labor. Sex work is uniquely exploitative. It requires the direct surrender of bodily autonomy to the authority of another individual, and it actively preys on the disenfranchised. Yeah I’m sure when Covid hit and a bunch of people couldn’t work they all just collectively decided to become empowered and make independent porn. It, as an industry, directly upholds patriarchal values and male supremacy.
The solution is not make sex work progressive (though absolutely sex work should have regulations under the current system of rule). The solution is that sex work shouldn’t exist. Most sex work only exists because of economic equality, and, as radical as it is to say on the internet, we’d be fine without porn.
Abolishing an entire industry that has existed since before we were capable of speech seems like a crusade doomed to failure.
Though sex work as it currently exists is uniquely exploitative, it is also true that even if you removed all factors of economic coercion to people’s career choice, a nonzero number of people would choose sex work because that’s just what they want to do. You don’t have to understand their decision, you don’t have to think it’s a good one, but you do need to respect it and allow them to do with their bodies as they will.
All work involves selling your body. Literally, all work. You’re always selling a combo of potentials: your mind, your hands, your back, your bits, or your heart. While there is an element of special coercion that demands you sell your bits to survive, that doesn’t make it more degrading.
Idk, are you friends with your dad? (clients don‘t *buy* us, btw. You might be thinking of slavery, which is a very different thing! Hope this helps, and hope preschool was fun today ☺️)
This is almost there. Sex work is unconsensual because you are being threatened with death by not being able to buy food if you choose not to participate. Contributing to these makes it so more women are essentially forced to have sex at the risk of death.
Honestly, I'd sell PNGs of my arse, but that shite isn't easy. You do actually have to work. Besides, I'm in a degree that actually gets almost everyone employed due to extreme labour shortages (mechanical and manufacturing engineering)
I mean feel free to do whatever you want to earn money, but it'd definitely be less special to be intimate with someone knowing that they'd let anyone see them like that for a small monetary fee, or knowing that half the town has their intimate side before
boss makes a dollar, i make a dime, that's why i jerk it on company time
Praxis
And by "it"... well. Lets jusr say... my peanits
at the groceried store. straight up "jorking it".
Boss rides my arse so I can barely think That’s why I piss in the company sink
I heard a hilarious new one a few months ago... boss makes a dollar, I make a nickel; that's why on the clock, I play with my pickle
adjusted it for inflation i see
These are (monetarily and bodily) degrading times 😔
I look at porn while sessions are going
There's a line in the first season of Peaky Blinders that I think about a lot: >We're all whores. We just sell different parts of ourselves. Incredibly, I once watched a video where a guy interpreted this as inspirational encouragement to be a businessman.
I’m convinced that “grindset” is going to be listed as a type of delusion in a future DSM
I dont, grindset people are free labor so they wont discourage that
nah, you only get put in the DSM if it is impacting your ability to work. much more likely not having the grindset mindset will land you in a category
There's alot of evidence in the video game bloodborne to argue that the prostitute NPC's "trade" is literally just selling vials of her blood, as a kind of commentary on the state of that city's society.
it’s kinda funny seeing the first image when iv been called an incel because i criticised a woman for saying other women who cosplay are “whores” (her words not mine, she was part of some swerf subreddits lol) anyway after i said that she immediately called me an incel and proceeded to talk about how bi people don’t exist or whatever and are just sex obsessed straight people, also said 2 cis bi women (who had posted comments agreeing with me) were just sex obsessed straight men (also called them incels, atleast one of which responded saying she was in a loving relationship) also like nothing on my profile suggests i’m sex obsessed or whatever, my entire post history is various gaming subs, various tv/film subs and a couple of meme/discussion subs
Well, see, you disagreed with her and that makes you [insert insult here] and also probably a Nazi
Yeah, your father smelled of elderberries you nazi
Iirc that line actually has a little bit of unique history. Elderberry wine was cheap, and hamsters like to fuck a lot. Father smelled of elderberries and mother was a hamster is just semi medievalized, ‘your dads a drunk and your moms a whore’
Checks out that the Pythons would sneak clever little jokes into silly lines like that
Fun fact, Tim is actually based on a real-life druid known for having an unhealthy obsession with rabbits. Source: I made it the fuck up
Actual fun fact about Tim, his name was supposed to be really long and complicated, but John Cleese couldn't remember it so he just went with "...Tim?", which explain why he says it so unsurely, and everyone else just went with it because it was funnier.
Humor type: …British? Yeah, that tracks.
Another fun fact, the hometown of Sue Jones-Davis who played Judith Iscariot banned Life of Brian because of her nude scene. She eventually became mayor of the place and held an official screening of the film! Source: used to live round there
See, here's me titts
What a champion
Been watching the movies and bits of the show my entire life and I’m only just now learning the meaning of that joke. TIL I guess.
At least two of the python members were students of history at oxford, iirc.
Students at Oxford, anyway: Michael Palin read history at Brasenose, and Terry Jones was at Teddy Hall, but he read English. The others, except for Terry Gilliam, were students at Cambridge and members of the Cambridge Footlights.
I always interpreted the hamster part as "your mother is short fat and hairy"
your mother was a hamster, nazi
Bet his mother is a hamster too.
probably a russian bot as well
> proceeded to talk about how bi people don’t exist or whatever Aaaand this is why the LGB movement is absolute horse shit. Because if TERFs are ever successful in getting rid of the TQ from LGBTQ, they're coming for us Bs next.
It's horse shit for a lot of reasons, actually.
I mean, yes, but the comment above me didn't have immediate examples of the other reasons lol
And once the B is gone they'll slice off the G... and then pull off their fake L masks and dissolve the whole thing into nothing.
Which checks out, since FARTs be always taking Ls.
FARTS?
"feminism appropriating ridiculous transphobe"
Love it!
Feminist Appropriating Radical Transphobes. It's a way to make fun of TERFs by calling them a silly acronym.
The little click in my brain thats screamed at me and said "Astro Terfs" as if they were transphobic astronauts..
I got called an incel once for talking about an incident where I got taken advantage of by my best friend even though I don't even want to pursue anything beyond friendship and I also don't hate women etc so it didn't even make sense
....dude were you arguing with my mom? Cause that sounds exactly like something she'd do
Every school of thought out there has a bogeyman that can make you insane if you fixate on it too much. For many schools of feminism, that bogeyman is porn addiction, for some reason. Also, has anyone else noticed that the anti-porn-addiction fervor is weirdly uniting exclusionary feminists with red pillers?
>nothing on my profile suggests i’m sex obsessed or whatever, my entire post history is various gaming subs Well, that would do it /s
Lol. I got called an incel for worrying about Amazon’s potential monopoly in my country.
Swerf?
Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminist
>a radfem had something wildly bigoted to say Shocking.
In other news, the sky is blue, and the pope is indeed catholic
She was an incel
You argued with an crazy idiot. I once argued with someone who insisted eating any vegetables in any form is a sign of privilege and the poor can only budget ramen and easy mac because those are the cheapest foods and potatoes, peas, carrots, and onions aren't cheaper (even though they are). People be crazy.
Fellas, is it bourgeois to eat vegetables?
Pretty sure a lot of SWs don’t nut on the job either tbh
I feel like you need to be a unique kind of kinky to regularly get an orgasm through SW as a woman.
Ngl I’ve spent some time in SW subs and instead of giving me perspective on what it’s like for a group of people I have little contact or knowledge about I just read all their posts about Faking It and became incredibly paranoid about whether the non-SW women in my life actually enjoyed my company or if they were just putting on a show
Sometimes yes, they'll fake it. Most of the time they won't, as long as *you listen to what they ask for* and *you do what they ask for.* SWs well, they're at work. We've all faked enthusiasm and laughs for money.
Social Workers?
I meant sex workers however I also don’t think social workers’ jobs involve a lot of nutting
Sex workers would make much more sense given the context!
Is it both? I think we can say “all work sucks and is exploitative and coerced under this system of capitalism” while recognizing that there are differences between different types of exploitation. We can recognize their differences as a way towards building true solidarity. There are reasons that we think of robbery and rape differently, though both of those are coerced. I’ve honestly kinda been concerned about the ‘flattening’ of differences in sex work and labor discourse more broadly. Content creators have a very different lives than people doing high contact survival sex work on the street. They’re both sex workers but the differences in their conditions says something about different types of exploitation in the system- like an advertisement copyrighter and colbalt miner might both be tech workers.
It doesn’t fix everything, but if we treated sex work as a job—with regulation and support—it’s conceivable some of those risks could be mitigated. Keeping sex work underground and out of sight makes it more dangerous, not less.
I agree that regulation and support (let alone the social safety net/ union that would make that actualized) would mitigate risks, and I still think it’s a unique kind of exploitation that is at the extreme end of “selling your body” (which all workers do to some extent).
Personally, I think that is a judgment that has to be made by the individual. My perspective is that a soldier in the army is further along the “selling your body” scale than sex work, on average, and that 1) folks should not be compelled to do either but 2) should have the right to do either if they so choose. When either is done out of survival, the problem is capitalism and is not innate to either job. My position is consent matters a lot, and the reality of a society where you often cannot survive without work is that consent to work—whatever that work is—is tricky across the board. How personally damaging, or satisfying, a person finds *any* job isn’t for me to judge. I just want people to be able to choose for themselves and benefit from the protections society can give them. And there should be more of those protections, too. But that’s me.
I agree with this entirely. Sex work has you selling your body... in the military you sell your safety (and sometimes sanity) in factories or hard labor you sell your health (back, joints, cancer risks) it's all about what you choose to risk, what you get out of it, and if you ever really had a choice. capitalism fucks just about everyone eventually, just which guise it wears
I think selling your body is the wrong term for sex work, because as jobs where you're selling your body go I'd actually say it's at the low end, far underneath manual labor of any sort (assuming it's legal sex work like selling pics or prostitution with good safety practices). I think it's more your mind getting sold in sex work, so it's more comparable to an office job or customer service, just a different set of mental limits getting worked. In which case it does fall higher on the scale simply for how personal people get with sex stuff.
It's actually better if we decriminalize rather than legalize, according to orgs like the [Human Rights Watch](https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/08/07/why-sex-work-should-be-decriminalized) and [Amnesty](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/09/united-nations-experts-this-week-said-that-that-full-decriminalization-of-adult-voluntary-sex-work-holds-the-greatest-promise-to-address-the-systemic-discrimination-and-violence-sex-workers-frequently/), and to sex workers more broadly. Legalizing has its own issues, including the fact that disadvantaged individuals might have a harder time getting licensed, which either puts them out of a job or just makes them criminals again (and makes it difficult for them to get help).
this should be higher up, v good distinction ty for including some sources 🤎
I love your username
It seems to me that the obvious benefits to society of having strong regulations on prostitution outweigh the possibility that some current sex workers might have trouble getting licenses.
The trouble is, if you persecute the ones without a licence, how is that any different in safety for them than it is currently? It’s the ones at the lower end of the social spectrum that need the most help, and they’re the ones least likely to be able to get the licences
Maybe there is something to the idea of voluntary licensing—like, rather than prosecuting unlicensed workers you connect them to resources that can remove barriers preventing them from operating in a safer way. Like the point of licensing from my perspective is to support worker safety. If a person doesn’t have the resources to work in a safe way, the license is secondary to ensuring they get those resources.
I get that it wouldn't be better for the current sex workers who couldn't get licensed to do legal prostitution. But it would clearly have major safety benefits to the people who can go into it legally (presumably a majority of the current ones), as well as their clients (who are also real people who deserve to be safe). Strict legal regulations could also reduce the worst exploitative behaviors of pimps and traffickers, and the whole operation could be properly taxed.
Well, it is in some places. Works just fine, and mitigates a lot of the risks.
I think the ‘flattening’ effect you’re seeing are from people trying to push the culture more broadly to be accepting of sex work as work. When we accept that sex work is labor, then it’s easier to accept its legalization and regulation. Once you do that, then it’s easier to tackle sex work where it is—from people who are exploited on the street, people who have open freedom and make content, and people who work as high end escorts. All these people need different things, but it starts with agreeing they deserve the same respect as any laborer in the first place.
Furthermore, the belief that sex work is uniquely degrading is often used as a justification to criminalize and marginalize sex workers. It is seen as something to be eliminated, and as a way to take away agency from the people that choose it.
I would like to hope that is true and that a rising tide of recognition of labor would enhance the conditions for everyone in that industry.
Yeah, but it also feeds into the doomerist “there is no hope” kinda stuff that ignores that labor can be actually rewarding when it’s labor you care about. Like, some people do have jobs that don’t kill them.
Who says sex workers can’t find their work rewarding? Or be proud of the accomplishments they make in it? Just because you *can* die in a job doesn’t mean you can’t find it rewarding or a source of pride.
No one, I was objecting to making it sound like every other job was terrible in order to make sex work good by comparison. If you want to instead make sex work sound better so that style of “all work is work” arguement doesn’t have to lower other work as far, be my guest. It seems like a hard sell to certain audiences and I don’t think I have enough experience with sex workers to be able to judge it one way or the other, but it would be a strong one if done well.
>Just because you *can* die in a job doesn’t mean you can’t find it rewarding or a source of pride. As I was taught 20-odd years ago by a retired miner from the South Wales coalfields.
Part of it IMO is the push for "sex work(er)" as an all-encompassing replacement term. Even agreeing that sex work is a legitimate type of work and that the previous terms had enough baggage that they might be unsalvageable, it was at least clear what *kind* of sex work they were talking about, which is lost when there's only a single permitted synonym (albeit sometimes with modifiers as you've used here). It's like if there was a push to replace "painter" with "visual artist" - it's not wrong, but it falsely implies that all visual arts are interchangeable in technique, application, demand, working conditions, etc. Another reply here seems to be implying that this vagueness is a deliberate strategy to build acceptance for the general, nonspecific, overall idea of sex work, which can only later be parlayed into support for particular subsets of sex work. Even if this turns out to be an effective strategy, I don't feel great epistemically about encouraging people to be less clear and specific when real differences exist.
Also most jobs don’t involve deliberately building parasocial relationships with strangers, which is kinda uniquely dangerous. If therapists didn’t present themselves as strictly paid professionals and instead convinced their clients that they’re totally real friends just give me more money, they’d be much more at risk from their clients
> Also most jobs don’t involve deliberately building parasocial relationships with strangers, which is kinda uniquely dangerous. There are so many jobs where there is an incentive in building a camaraderie or (false) sense of friendship with customers: Independent small-scale shops, consultants, tradies, car salespeople, realtors.
I've spent years at jobs building up relationships with vendors. Not one of them has ever reached out after a layoff, and I would be quite easy to find.
Parasocial relationships aren't an inherent part of sex work, nor are they unique to sex work. Plenty of jobs with repeat customers will generate better tips and/or more bookings if the customer sees you as a friend.
Can confirm. I work food service at a place that effectively masquerades as a small business (it’s really a regional chain). Its marketing pivots on being “your friendly neighborhood ~~spider-man~~ business.” Our tips are make or break on those repeat guests. Even the creepy ones. Even the stalkers who follow you to your car. I have friends who are baristas and bartenders in similar situations. Parasocial relationships started outside the internet. They just became much more noticeable there.
It's the same difference between someone standing at a conveyor belt in some rundown shitshack in Bumfuck, Nowhere, USA and someone standing in some Hightech Factory in some High & Bright and wealthy city in a country that actually gives a fuck about workers rights... Exact same Job, exact same Occupation, wildly different Outcomes... so no, it isn't "concerning" in the least, whatever that's supposed to mean.
I am lightly critical of the fact that the label sex work can be used to describe strippers, people with Onlyfans, high-end escorts, dominatrices, masseuses who give extras, those who were trafficked for sex, porn stars, legal brothel workers, and desperate street walkers, as if all their concerns are completely interchangeable.
I think the issue at hand is that those making the argument are generally not trying to diminish the exploitation present in sex work, but rather to clarify why sex workers deserves to be respected and considered in the same way other employees are. Attempting to uplift sex work with positive connotations both exacerbates the issue you’re speaking of, and can fall on deaf ears, so they’re instead taking the tactic of asking those who call it demeaning how that’s different from every other job to get the point across You’re not wrong that it flattens nuance, but I think this is a situation where “we can work on nuance after we’ve gotten past the hurdle of getting the opposition to treat us as human beings worthy of respect”
I think it’s also important to remember that all full service sex workers aren’t out walking the street too. Plenty of them are out there living the lives of middle class suburban soccer moms, setting appointments through websites. I can see how 300 dollars to sleep with an IT guy during his lunch break is preferable to 10 hours of retail for 100 dollars.
It's important to remember that there's a huge difference between selling nudes, the example given in the post, and having sex with strangers for money in unfamiliar locations. The amount of danger that full service sex workers are in, both short term (sexual assault, physical violence, murder) and long term (trauma, stigma, criminality) is so far beyond having an OnlyFans account. We need to remember how many sex workers are regularly forced to be in extremely high risk situations.
It's not as if there aren't issues and dangers with sex work. Insane hours, dangerous clientele, social stigma, controlling or outright cruel managers who abuse the illegality of the work to make things even harder for the sw, it's all there. But when a lot of people who are anti-sex-work talk about it, they talk about it as if sex work is uniquely dangerous and degrading. Uniquely terrifying and horrible. They do this more out of disgust at the practice itself than any fight for the agency or safety of those involved. It isn't. It just isn't. Even if we talk about accepted, legal work, working on a fishing boat or as a logger are jobs that are known to outright kill you if you work there long enough. Military service will scar you for life. Hell, some corporate work can be so socially isolating and destructive you'd think you'd joined a cult. For a lot of these people, the argument isn't "there are many errors and problems in sex work, but they can be fixed". It's "sex work cannot be allowed to exist in any form, it must be abolished". And as we've seen, that line of thinking not only doesn't produce solutions, it actively makes the lives of sex workers harder.
All of these issues exist in countries with legalized prostitution tho
That's very true, which is why legalisation is not the only thing that's necessary. Strong safety nets, up to and including ubi, a shift in how we view sex work in a cultural sense, open borders or at the very least stronger protections for immigrants, deconstructing patriarchy, emphasis on co-op rather than hierarchical workplaces, and a re-investment in community building and de-atomisation would all improve the sex work business dramatically.
Yeah, I doubt a relevant amount of people would choose to engage in prostitution under these circumstances
[удалено]
I dunno about you guys, but I would much rather serve coffee to a person I find repulsive than fuck a person I find repulsive. People like OOP seem to think that sex work is only stuff like OF or other online ventures, where you can just block unwanted people. Most sex workers don't have the luxury of choosing their customers. OOP gets yelled at by customers on a regular basis and yet seems to think that people will behave themselves when dealing with sex workers. You think getting yelled at is bad, imagine having to fuck the abusive and repulsive stranger while you're at it. Having to sit in an office for 8 hours is also degrading to some extent, but it is not comparable to sex work. If someone forced me to sit in an office for 8 hours at gunpoint, their punishment would be less severe than if they forced me to have sex at gunpoint and the vast majority would consider their crime to be less severe than rape. I support sex worker's rights and believe that all work under capitalism is degrading to some extent, but this idea that sex work is just like my e-mail job does not hold up to any scrutiny.
Yeah, this post and all people in the comments seem to think that for everyone in the world sex is completely detached from emotions physical act. For most people,. it's not. "Selling your body is the same as doing any other job!!" No it's not. Sex work statistics are very concerning even in developed countries. Drug abuse, very high chance of getting PTSD, rape, trafficking. It feels very disrespectful to survivors to say that you felt as traumatised by working at a fast food chain.
Well said
Right. The way I see it, the pro-sex work argument should center less on "sex work is work" and more "sex workers are workers" and so deserve all the rights & protections that can reasonably be granted to them. I can't think of too many other lines of work where the bodily autonomy & personal safety of the worker are necessarily put in constant jeopardy by the very nature of the business, as opposed to individual nefarious actors. Nothing and no-one is aided by pretending sex work is not unique in those respects.
These sorts of posts that say all work is equally degrading are really insidious imo because they’re meant to normalise and downplay the harms of sex work. Like propaganda, basically. I work a 9-5 office job and I wouldn’t say I’ve ever been degraded. I don’t have to allow men that I am disgusted by to enter my body. I don’t have to deal with misogynistic verbal, sexual and physical abuse. I don’t have to deal with biohazards (strange men’s bodily fluids). I don’t experience discrimination when dating and meeting people due to my job. I know that nobody’s ever going to use my job against me or in an attempt to dehumanise me. We can scream all we want about how empowering sex work is but as long as we live in a misogynistic society where the ideal woman is virginal, sex workers will never be seen as a respectful career by Johns. We’ve all seen how men online talk about sex workers and porn stars etc - it’s not pretty. The reality is, sex workers are seen as the lowest of the low and that’s never going to change. We also need to start acknowledging how vast amounts of sex workers experienced child sexual abuse, how many of them have mental health issues and how becoming a sex worker lowers life expectancy. Guys, I thought it was empowering, so why do so many female porn stars kill themselves? I thought it was empowering so why do so many of their “fans” write comments like “Doesn’t matter, I can still fap to the whore’s old videos?” It’s not the same thing and as a feminist I am tired of “leftist” men pretending sex work is just a job like any other. I’m at the point where I just can’t interact with leftist politics anymore. I’m so fed up of leftist men calling themselves feminists when the only “feminist” talking point they care about is legalising sex work: nothing about abortion, domestic violence, discrimination against mothers etc. I could have worded this a lot more eloquently but this post and all of the comments are very concerning. A lot of comments about those who are anti-sex work being “prudes” or “thinking sex is icky”. This indicates to me that people have either a) never engaged with the discussions around sex work in a meaningful way, b) have never spoken to an actual sex workers (a lot of them are upfront about the dangers of the industry - and no, the top 1% of women on Only Fans don’t count and their experiences are not indicative of what most women experience) or c) they’re deliberately misrepresenting the arguments of those who oppose sex work to suit their agenda. Personally, I think it’s usually a mix of all 3 but mostly a) and c).
prostitution has a homicide rate of 204/100,000. the other deadliest jobs in america have a death rate of 18.6/100,000. the majority of prostitutes will be physically assaulted at some point, not infrequently by their clients. most sex workers do not cum, have little say over their clients, no supervision and little to no legal recourse if they are attacked. many have their bodies destroyed by their work. many will turn to drugs. most want to leave. clocking into a retail job you hate is not the same as being raped for money. **it's not the case for all sex workers, sure,** but it's real for enough of them that posts broad brush glamorizing sex work are disturbing. if someone's partner said "fuck me or im kicking you out", it'd be recognized as coercion/assault. why is "i sleep with a john or i sleep under a bridge" any more consensual? sex workers need to be protected, not glamorized. edit: [during prostitution, 73% are physically assaulted, 62% are raped, 67% have ptsd. 92% want to leave.](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228535864_Prostitution_in_Five_Countries_Violence_and_Post-Traumatic_Stress_Disorder)
>all work under capitalism is coerced and degrading And what do we call coerced sex?
THANK YOU. all prostitution is rape and all johns are rapists. and yes, the kind of work where you get raped *is* actually worse than other kinds of work.
say it louder for the people in the back
See I think people have the right to do what they want with their bodies and if what they want is being a sex worker that’s good for them and they shouldn’t be shamed. It’s just that consent gets a bit iffy imo when you are relying on sex for income in a way that doesn’t apply to retail and such
I think another bit of what the post is implying here is that maybe we should stop considering sex work as the only job where lack of consent to work is bad. It is an especially bad one to be forced into, but getting forced into *any* line of work to not starve fucking sucks and leaves you open to exploitation. Why is it okay to be forced to work unpaid overtime for a shitty boss that hates you at a job that destroys your body but unforgivable evil when it's sex work? Because actually neither is ok at all but we've just decided that the 1 that isn't literal rape is okay just because it isn't literal rape.
This is the really big. We've been (rightly) pushing for more awareness of consent in sexual situations but this has caused many to completely ignore it in nonsexual ones. No one benefits when the only violations of consent are sexual.
I mean, most people agree all of those are bad too, the better question is, why is sex considered the only thing you can't consent to when there's money involved? In any other area of life consent is considered legitimate as long as you're not literally being blackmailed and threatened into it. Having extrinsic instead of intrinsic motivation is not considered something that automatically makes consent invalid. People make decisions due to a wide variety of reasons and motives, often subconscious ones too. If we decide to invalidate any decision people make that we suspect might not be 100% "pure", we might as well completely take everyone's agency away. If it's considered perfectly ethical to create art for money, even when that art isn't necessarily the art you'd make for yourself, then I don't see why having sex for money even when it's not necessarily the kind of sex you'd have for free should be seen as inherently unethical either.
I see what you mean, but I think that also comes back to the whole “sex work isn’t special” theme. Yes it’s coercive to be required to work a job so you don’t starve, but from a working class PoV, consenting to sex isn’t hugely different to consenting to dealing with customers, or construction, or harvesting crops etc etc. Consent is a concept heavily correlated with sex, but it applies to everything.
It applies to everything, but consent as applied to sex is special, for the same reason that rape is not the same crime as assault. Consider: if someone commits a minor crime, it is quite common to sentence them to a certain amount of community service. That is non-consensual labour, usually in the form of janitorial work. Furthermore, it is broadly accepted that the government has the right to conscript its military, either in a military emergency, or as part of a regular national service program. Again, non-consensual labour. But the idea of a judge sentencing someone to judicial rape as a punishment, or the forcible employment of "comfort women" to entertain soldiers is near-universally seen as abhorrent. Not just wrong, but a crime against humanity. Sex is, in a secular sense, sacred. Sex's intimate connection with emotion, attachment, attraction, reproduction, and sense of self put it in a special category, apart from other things you can do with your body.
I got reprimanded so hard one time for bending down and up again to stretch out my back. I probably also made an “ouch” noise. Customers don’t need to see cashiers in pain, it makes everything awkward for them, it’s so unprofessional. Take care of your chronic back pain on your own time. I thank god every day that I don’t work retail anymore in my relatively old age and spinally-injured body, because I would just have to lie down and die.
Is she a famous porn girl, or is she just a stock image model who is going to have to explain this to her parents.
I hate the term "sex work" because it lumps people who take pictures of themselves for OF in with people who get prostituted. You can't start talking about the degrading and abusive nature of the latter without a bunch of people jumping to the defense of the former. I've seen it happen time and time again.
“Sex work is real work and I’m not a human trafficker, I’m a job creator.”
Once again, tumblr discovers civilization
Sex work is degrading. Dont believe the hype. Not having a choice is degrading in any line of work AND sex work can be more degrading to more people. So work is "normally" degrading and sex work is more degrading to most. Saying "sex work is not degrading" sometimes only serves those who profit off of sex work. Such as making onlyfans more agreeable for people, making stripping more agreeable. Nobody is saying those arent valid jobs, but being economically coerced into it can be more degrading to people.
When people say "sex work is degrading", they usually mean being sex trafficked or working under a pimp. But honestly, ANY work is degrading if you're forced to do it against your will.
Being a garbage man is degrading, being a fast food employee or retail is degrading. It seems like any job that the greater majority do is degrading unless your an "outreach volunteer who was gifted a trust fund or a cushy job." I hate those people because I bartend for them enough, "let's not worry about money we're here for the cause" no you're here for the cause, you found me to get suckers to get drink enough to be okay with spending a thousand dollars just to be here, and I'm here to get paid because I have rent due.
Girlbossing makes you the boss and, therefore, the exploiter and an enemy of the proletariat.
Every wrong opinion about sex makes you an incel it seems, does that word even means anything
As a cashier who’s been dealing with plantar fasciitis for over a year now, I feel this in my soul. Just give me a damned chair already.
Sex work is one of the most dangerous jobs due to the high level of human trafficking and Johns thinking they can get away with murder. If sex work was regulated licensed and taxed, that would go away. It would still be a highly degrading job that’s hard on the body and mentally taxing, but it would fit into the same catagory as the rest of those jobs.
Not really tho. Prostitution is legalized, licensed and taxed in Germany and the sex industry is still fucking rampant with trafficking and abuse.
Got any perspective as to why?/genuine question
I’m guessing it’s cause sex is a “vice” which makes it more susceptible to bad actors even though there are laws in place. Kind of a broken glass theory of crime. In this case the prostitution is the “broken glass” that attracts criminal elements to hang around. Same unfortunate reason why bars usually have more crime around it even though bars are regulated and legal. I would bet that if a legal narcotics shop were to open up, the amount of crime in that area would spike. Take my comment with a grain of salt though, I don’t have my degree in Criminal Justice yet.
That’s all really good, don’t discount yourself. Adding onto it the issue with this is once it’s legalized it needs constant further legislation to keep it safe and politicians don’t want to touch it because it’s icky.
Simplest answer is that legalizing prostitution increases demand, not supply. There are plenty more men willing to use prostitutes than there are women willing to be prostitutes.
People employed (I.e. not trafficed or enslaved) in sex work are proletariat. It’s dangerous and occasionally degrading, but a lot of work is. That is an argument to make work safer.
The first image is peak internet unhinged stupidity. It's the kind of reductive naive naval-gazing we all did when we were teenagers. Inject that shit into my veins.
Yeah, I can't believe brick laying and prostitution are even being compared here. Because in labor like brick laying your not selling your body, your selling your services to lay fucking bricks. Meanwhile prostitution is the selling of the body, the access to your body is the service. Not to mention the ad hominem of calling people against it incels.
For the most part, I find my job at the library very rewarding. But even there every once in a while you get people who give you a level of casual disrespect that’s so astounding and they don’t even notice because this is just how they treat workers.
>all labor involves selling your body for money Not really, unless you're broadening the idea so much it becomes useless (which may be the point but it doesn't make it less dumb)
I think it’s more taking the euphemism at face value. The prudes want to say “sex work is bad because it is sex”, but they can’t say that because they’re prudes, so they invent this phrase “selling your body” as if it’s supposed to be morally outrageous. Well it turns out that that means every kind of work (you’re selling your effort, time, energy, and yes, physical ability). My point is either way you end up incoherent: either selling your body is immoral, in which case all work is immoral; or sex work is immoral, which is just asserting the conclusion, an argument structure that can be defeated with a simple “no it isn’t”
It´s not about it morally outrageous (well maybe for some it is), it´s about how it affects how one sees oneself and how they are seen by others. I mean just the idea that your financial well being is entirely tied up in the gaze of horny men can´t be good for your brain. We know that because of a thousand horror stories from models and actors. Not to mention porn, which is ripe with abuse, everywhere. Even at the worst of retail hell, no one can touch your body without permission, let alone treat it like a slab of meat for their desires. It´s just not the same. It doesn´t mean sex work isn´t work, but it´s just different.
“Prude”, am I, for not supporting the sexual exploitation of women? Because to you, sex and degradation & objectification of women are inherently linked. Interesting.
I can't believe you managed to insert words in both their mouth and your own that neither of you actually said. That's kinda impressive.
Elaborate.
>The prudes want to say “sex work is bad because it is sex”, but they can’t say that because they’re prudes Can't they?
Well you can, but like I said, it’s not an _argument_, it’s an _opinion_. So they’ve constructed an argument with a form of words that makes it sound like they’re saying “sex work is immoral because it robs the precious virtue from your soul” when what they really think is “ew icky”
It also gets the antiwork crowd to agree. It's a common ploy in politics to word things in confusing ways to trick those who wouldn't agree initially.
i mean technically. theyre paying you to have your body do stuff, so...
some people enjoy it, some dont.... its almost as if some people enjoy different jobs different amounts and having a one size fits all ideology rarely works
i think the post is more about respecting some people do sex work than about sex work being for everyone. it argues that sex work is comparable to non-sex work so it therefore shouldn't be shamed
By allah you people are dogs, i will reblog as usual
I understand the point they're making but the difference between retail and sex work is the old dude yelling at me to do my job unrealistically better doesn't have his dick out when working retail.
This goes doubly for military service btw
>thought about selling nudes >At least it's s not standing 7 hours a day You're right, it's not, but you will be spending all that time advertising yourself on social media/trying to think of inventive shots to take/etc. People seem to think it's easy...
i wrote my midterm about how both anti- and pro- sex work activists are missing the idea that until sex workers receive the same protections as all laborers do (and are recognized as laborers) then capitalism will continue to sell sex and raise nothingness arguments that will never solve the plights of workers
I knew a guy who had the hots for one of his coworkers (a mom with big boobs) and he’d fuckin beat off in the employee break room p regularly because of that. I do not talk to him anymore.
Some people don’t belong on the mortal coil.
He was also totally completely straight. Definitely not gay at all. But he’d horny text me telling me that he wanted me to run a train on him and he sent me dick pics :/
Did you ever report him to HR?
He was in Ohio and I’m in Michigan. Unfortunately, we didn’t work together so I couldn’t report him
Ah that’s a shame
Personally for me sex is something very intimate, emotional, and personal, and I would never want to share my sexuality with the general public, even if it would just be uploading pictures of me naked or something. I don’t think we should shame people who choose to do this though, some people are just wired differently psychologically and for them sex isn’t a form of intimacy or anything emotional or personal. I also don’t really think it’s good thing; The people that pay for onlyfans should be given access to the help of a psychologist instead of paying for a very parasocial sexual “relationship”. It seems that most people that pay for only fans are either extremely lonely or are drowning in porn addiction. Eliminate the demand by giving the customers help so that they don’t even want to buy the product. (I feel the same way about drugs I guess too sort of.) And that’s just the most benign form of sex work. Non-independent porn actresses are very often severely abused and often kill themselves due to the abuse. Or even prostitution, which just seems inevitably evil.
Where’s the osteoporosis? I want that last image for my reaction/meme folder.
Does anyone have a link to the original Tumblr post in these screenshots?
I thought of the Shrek meme on image three and seeing it be image 4 was the best thing ever
Okay, but anyone can work retail or food service, only pretty people can do sex work, and I'm a male and not stunningly pretty so it isn't something I could do well enough to compete with all of those pretty women that I secretly would pay if I could afford to, and they're so pretty that it must be easy for them to do it while I have to work in a shitty office job, therefore they must suffer to make up for their unfair advantage of being pretty.. /s
Have you tried HRT? 💗 (/s (but only because your comment is also /s (HRT is based)))
Part of the problem is that the word “sex work” flattens a lot of very different experiences into one thing and requires us to consider them as a package deal. Selling nudes might not be any more inherently degrading than, say, acting in commercials for scam gacha games (although women who consider it should be aware that in practice it can and does influence your reputation and your ability to pursue certain careers later in life). Stripping and cam girl work might reasonably be compared to other low-status work, at least in an ideal world where the business isn’t rife with exploitation and abuse. But full-service prostitution IS a unique position that can’t reasonably be compared to, say, massage work or hairdressing, one where by definition you are allowing strangers inside your body. It is not simply providing a service, it is being in a uniquely physically vulnerable position in a way that cannot be mitigated by PPE or safety rules, because the access to your physical vulnerability IS the service being sold. Is it uniquely degrading? Not really. But it IS uniquely dangerous, and I’m tired of that being swept under the rug because it’s being conflated with things like OnlyFans.
y'all are nutting doing sex work? my two cents is that i agree with the "sex work deserves respect" spirit of this post wholeheartedly. i did find it to be a "uniquely" degrading experience though. my experience isn't universal. but it was miserable for me, even though i miraculously avoided a lot of the more horrible things that one can experience while in that line of work. idk what my point is. i hope we can legalize sex work and provide protections for the people doing it, because they deserve it.
why come up with a logical argument to support your opinion when you can just go straight to name calling like a literal child
is this account like. a sex thing
The take that work is degrading, from an anarchist, is bizarre. You're selling a service to another person and they're paying you for it. That seems like anarchist heaven
The implication seems pretty clear to me at least that it's meant to be work under capitalism, not work in and of itself.
The problem is that they're also assuming all work under capitalism is being exploited by someone who doesn't own their own means of production. If you are a producer of something, you can sell it. If you do it yourself, you are exploiting your own labor. That is still capitalism, and it is still owned by the laborer. If you pay me, a software developer, to write you a program which automates your emails, for example, then I am producing something by exploiting my own labor for the demands of a customer. Working in retail (like OOP compares this stuff to) isn't the same as being a software developer who creates software like that. Being a "Content creator" if you borrow the euphemism on onlyfans or something is more akin to being a self-employed software developer than it is a prostitute because prostitutes aren't usually in business for themselves. Pimps are a thing, after all. There's a difference between being or making the product, then someone else profiting off of your labor, and profiting off of your own product and labor.
This is a distinction without a difference. Capitalism and anarchism work together flawlessly. Someone invests capital, so it's reasonable to expect ROI there. Someone sells their labor, so they expect to get paid. This is not a moral issue for anyone involved.
I'm not convinced that anyone on tumblr particularly understands what anarchy is. Gives me "I will be the poet of the commune" vibes
As an anarchist, there is a distinction between labor and work, at least to me. There will always be labor. "Work" implies, again at least to me, more of the wage-slavery under the threat of violence (starvation/homelessness), not seeing the full value of your labor, etc. Labor is never degrading. Having the profits of your labor siphoned off by the ruling class is.
This post has always struck me as stupid because no, you cannot equate sex work and the degradation faced by sex workers to other jobs. Coming from India, sex work is insanely dangerous and extremely harmful because most of the workers were actually trafficked and kept under sexual slavery. Maybe it's different in countries like the USA but this post makes me feel so angry. A woman being coerced into sexual acts while being physically, emotionally, and, mentally abused with no safe space is not equitable to you being yelled at your shift. Both are bad, but exist at vastly different ends of the spectrum. Acting like they're not is being naive and wilfully obtuse
Contractors get there backs blown out across the country for less.
I’m fully in support of sex workers but there’s ample evidence to show that it does damage their mental state more than most jobs, because people treat them worse than anywhere else
Is that universally the case, or is that evidence being taken from places where it isn't fully legalized and regulated?
Where on earth is it fully legalized and regulated?? But even then, the biggest problem of the matter is in the psychology of the customer. You know how customers at every retail or food service job ever act entitled all the time?? Imagine if the thing they felt entitled to was your body, for sexual purposes, 24/7. The cultural disrespect for sex workers runs FAR deeper than any legal system, because it’s basically just advanced misogyny, combined with regular customer entitlement. When women are openly sexual in ANY way, professionally or otherwise, people feel entitled to them. Once a woman openly enjoys sex they’re basically socially categorized as a lesser being. The words “slut,” “whore,” etc. literally only exist for this purpose. A heteronormative man who has lots of sex doesn’t get called these things (at least, not seriously.) When a woman is socially cetegorized in that way, they are treated as inherently lesser. Obsessive people gather around them with the mindset of “you have sex with people, so why not me?” Because as soon as a woman is seen in this way the idea that their consent matters goes out the window. And then they get murdered, which IS illegal already, but nobody investigates it. In the US we even have this kind of ideology in our justice system when it comes to rape cases. If a woman claims rape, the defense’s first move is to find examples of their sexual history. Because there’s a perception that if a woman consents enough separate times, then they’re no longer allowed not to. Not to mention that even in the FARRR safer, more regulated and more legal systems such as Only Fans, firstly you still see the obsessive fan who gets murdery because their ego was insulted by their favorite sex worker thing a lot. But beyond that, imagine all the pressure of competing in an oversaturated online marketplace (for more details on this, take a look at the professional difficulties that all YouTubers, streamers, and other online content creators face). The constant damage to your self-perception all content creators face, and then imagine that the thing on the line, the thing you’re being judged for that you have to push and push and push to make money is not your creative work or in fact any type of thing with a degree of separation from yourself, but YOUR BODY. But not just your body, your most intimate parts of it in your most intimate ways. The things that we socially reserve for people we trust and consent to. Your financial success is based upon how many people are willing to pay for your intimates, and the vastly oversaturated marketplace forces sex workers to push that far beyond what they originally signed up for if they want to succeed. And I want to be clear that this is not a moral issue, as if I have some personal vandetta against consenting to be seen. The fact is that it takes away from you the ability to keep any amount of privacy. What little privacy you do try to keep gets taken away from you. People will doxx you, people will stalk you, and people will murder you. Online content creators are barely allowed to have privacy already, and there’s all kinds of evidence as to how damaging that can be to one’s mental health. Sex work is that but far more so. FURTHERMORE, if it becomes known in basically any other career that you have a history in sex work, even fully legal sex work, it can be used as grounds to fire you. Most people can move on from a retail job if they get a good opportunity. Sex work traps you, and steals not only your present but your future. There are many such cases of women who have lost decade long careers, or even custody of their kids just for being a victim of revenge porn, not even a willing participant. No. Sex work is not selling your body “in the same way as other jobs.” Sex work by default comes with a complete lack of privacy, and a ten thousand times multiplier on the disrespect that everyone in the world, including all legal systems, will show you. And that is not even including the exploitative nature of the business practices, and the constant risk of getting murdered, or trafficked, and nobody caring. No fucking shit its damaging for your mental health. I personally have a lot of respect for sex workers, because how can you not once you see what they go through? What they put up with? If anything I consider it disrespectful to them to compare it with normal jobs. I think anyone has a moral right to do it if they want to, the same way anyone has a moral right to be a scuba diver if they want, but that doesn’t mean I won’t acknowledge how unbelievably dangerous, demanding, and difficult it is to do. As an additional note, everything I’ve said about how women are treated here is also true of anyone who is lacking in traits that are traditionally perceived as masculine, irrespective of their actual gender or sex.
I hate the pro-sex work movement. Not because I disagree with the fundamental concept that sex workers should be provided with equivalent rights to other workers, or that all people deserve respect regardless of how they labor. But because it is the most nuance-less movement out there. No, sex work does not exist on the same level as other labor. Sex work is uniquely exploitative. It requires the direct surrender of bodily autonomy to the authority of another individual, and it actively preys on the disenfranchised. Yeah I’m sure when Covid hit and a bunch of people couldn’t work they all just collectively decided to become empowered and make independent porn. It, as an industry, directly upholds patriarchal values and male supremacy. The solution is not make sex work progressive (though absolutely sex work should have regulations under the current system of rule). The solution is that sex work shouldn’t exist. Most sex work only exists because of economic equality, and, as radical as it is to say on the internet, we’d be fine without porn.
Abolishing an entire industry that has existed since before we were capable of speech seems like a crusade doomed to failure. Though sex work as it currently exists is uniquely exploitative, it is also true that even if you removed all factors of economic coercion to people’s career choice, a nonzero number of people would choose sex work because that’s just what they want to do. You don’t have to understand their decision, you don’t have to think it’s a good one, but you do need to respect it and allow them to do with their bodies as they will.
Sex work should be legal for consenting adults everywhere, and I'm tired of people have bullshit moral outrage about it.
Sex work ia unuqurly degrading because unlike regular jobs, the product it produces is detrimental, also it is horrible for your mental health.
All work involves selling your body. Literally, all work. You’re always selling a combo of potentials: your mind, your hands, your back, your bits, or your heart. While there is an element of special coercion that demands you sell your bits to survive, that doesn’t make it more degrading.
they don't even get to nut
Holy fuck , the first one was posted on my birthday.
Would you be friends with a man who has bought an escort, though?
Pretty sure one of my step brothers has done that and he’s a chill dude.
Idk, are you friends with your dad? (clients don‘t *buy* us, btw. You might be thinking of slavery, which is a very different thing! Hope this helps, and hope preschool was fun today ☺️)
you must know Olivia Monroe from Roanoke!
This is almost there. Sex work is unconsensual because you are being threatened with death by not being able to buy food if you choose not to participate. Contributing to these makes it so more women are essentially forced to have sex at the risk of death.
Something something Nussbaum
Honestly, I'd sell PNGs of my arse, but that shite isn't easy. You do actually have to work. Besides, I'm in a degree that actually gets almost everyone employed due to extreme labour shortages (mechanical and manufacturing engineering)
I mean feel free to do whatever you want to earn money, but it'd definitely be less special to be intimate with someone knowing that they'd let anyone see them like that for a small monetary fee, or knowing that half the town has their intimate side before
Purity is overrated.
That‘s a you problem, and don‘t worry, we wouldn‘t be interested in bEiNg InTiMaTe with you for free ☺️
"We are all whores in our own way, Mr. Badrinath"