Ask Lemmy

Legalize it, tax it, regulate it like any other job.

I'd not buy any, even when single.

I would consider selling before a lot of other jobs. Depends on the money really. Not much of a market for straight, average looking, men in their 30s however.

If you feel like money is a corrupting factor then don't hire a sex worker.

For my part, they're some of the chillest people I've gotten to know, and they're not hurting anyone just by their existence.

Not to mention that literally every action that even tangentially ostracizes or criminalizes sex work has horrifying blowback against victims of human trafficking and against sex workers in positions of vulnerability.

The Craigslist purge for example led to waaaaaaaay more dangerous working conditions for sex workers since it removed one of the few tools they had to reliably vet possible clients.

There's literally no approach to sex work other than just letting them fucking be that doesn't end up causing exponentially more harm to completely innocent people than could ever morally justify doing anything except just letting them fucking be.

It’s isn’t for me or anyone else to approve or disapprove of what others do for a living. If they aren’t hurting anyone, it’s none of anyone’s concern.

It's just work, and it's just as valid as any other kind of work. I 100% approve of people who are of legal age and mental capacity that willingly do sex work.

Sucking a dick or fucking someone for 100 bucks is no worse than someone doing construction work.

I don't work and I don't have sex so idk really, I don't feel like I'm the best person to ask about it

What is your purpose, trololo? I’d really like To know.

If both sides can choose who to engage with, would that sway you? It doesn't necessarily have to have the sweetness of intimacy or romance to it, it can be a fantasy and a means to an end.

I think sex work is more honorable than many lawful professions. It's really unfair that prostitutes have higher rates of workplace violence than insurance sales.

I think within a capitalist system it is going to exist regardless of how illegal you make it so it should be made legal so that it can be more thoroughly regulated. However, I don't believe anyone should have to sell their body to make a living no.

So while I disagree with prostitution as an industry because of how it commodifies people (especially women) I don't think making it illegal within a capitalist society is a solution that helps anyone. Ultimately I would hope for a society in which prostitution would never be necessary for someone to meet their needs, one where love could be free but that isn't a realistic goal at the moment

Yes and no. I believe that they are entitled to do whatever the hell they want for a living and are entitled therefore to workers protections and benefits. I do not however respect them at an individual level. So basically do what you want, just do it over there.

Fine. Let's set up a time, you show me what you can do, and I'll tell you if I approve.

It should be everywhere. As simple as buying a pack of cigarettes. For many is literally all the attention will get for the rest of our lives.

I wish it would be everywhere and legalized as much as buying a Pepsi at the market. It sucks to be a virgin.

Conceptually I have no problem with it, but in practice a lot of people feel like they "should" or "have to" become sex workers out of desperation for money. That can seriously ruin your life. Work under capitalism is inherently unethical, but sex work especially so.

Yeah, I rubber stamp it all.

There are costs beyond the physical.

I agree with you that intimacy shouldn't be for money.

The sexually-transmitted infections ( I cannot understand how the modern population isn't 50+% infected with life-damaging infections, nowadays, and maybe it is, given how disinformation & "marketing" have completely replaced the value of correct-information that journalism used to have ) seem likely to rule the lives of both porn-industry participants & those who use porn as their frame-of-reference for deciding their own lives.

Getting the torquie out from the sex-work industry, however, de-criminalizing it, getting the pimps & organized-crime out of it, to make it safer for those who ( for whatever reason ) work in it, would require some serious restructuring of our cultures.

You've read that in other apes sex is traded by females for nutrition?

Male hoarding of rights/food/power/safety, making female trading of their intimacy for a portion of what the males had possessed as their "rightful exclusive possession", extends well beyond humans.

The thing is, we're supposed to be upright, not rationalizing pack-behavior, but instead dismantling it from us, making us all we can be.

That didn't happen, in the last few millenia.

It's possible that humankind will earn it, now ( The Great Filter, if survived, will produce this result, in about a century ).

but the prejudice is sooo deep..

You know that there is a story in the Abrahamic religions' Book of Genesis, about woman eating of "the fruit of the Knowledge of Good & Evil", which means MORALITY?

& sharing this eating with man?

Wasp-researchers in Panama ( from Exeter & Bristol universities ) discovered that altruism is generalized-mothering, among wasps.

Buddha Gautama stated that this is the case, 25 consecutive centuries ago: altruism is generalized mothering. The Buddhist phrase "all our kind mothers", in referring to ALL other continuums/souls, is rooted in this.

That the Abrahamic-religion men twisted a statement in their own scripture, in order to change it from meaning that women/mothers ate of morality, & shared it with men,

TO women committed the "original sin", & it cannot ever be revoked, & punishing/abusing women is now inherently-valid..

& holding that gaslighting for millenia..

Do you have any idea how fundamental the sex-racism is, in our religions & laws?

What culture/country holds that raising children is real economically-required-and-valid work?

Here in North America, that's a sick joke: raising children is .. treated as parasitism.

The male apes who hoard wealth, forcing female apes into prostitution for sustinance..

There's waaay too much of that, in our cultures.

Remove the need,.

That must come 1st.

Letting people do that if they want to, but cut criminality out from it, completely: criminalize pimping, human-trafficking, certainly, hard-line, but decriminalize sex-work that doesn't harm anybody.

( no protection against infections is harming people: protection ought be legislated, same as in any hazardous work )

do everything one can to prevent people younger than 21yo from doing it ( because brains aren't fully-developed until about then, which is the same reason that setting the legal-drinking-age to 21yo so significantly reduces deaths on the roads: younger people don't consider "no" to be as meaningful as people with older brains do ).

Put care in place for people who've been "turned into commodities" through abusive relationships, to get them out from that devaluation, instead of just letting the industry use their lives, & pretend that that's OK..

etc..

Really, living-wage legislation would cut into the "need" for sex-work, significantly.

Oh, & I've read that when sex-work is suppressed, rapes & domestic-violence both go up, so there's some displacement going on, between the categories, that way..

It isn't a simple thing, & I wish "commerce" & intimacy were so completely distinct that nobody would ever consider a Venn diagram showing intersection of the 2 categories, but .. the actual world doesn't work right..

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Isn’t sex work illegal where I live (USA)? I would rather have a wife.

By the time we normalize sex work, automated alternatives will be available.

I am not saying holodecks will be invented soon, but if everyone had access to basically Star Trek like holodeckes, why would we need real prostitutes?