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Banning sex work is about as successful as banning drugs. All it usually does is lead to more misery for the sex workers. Which is entirely the intention, of course.
Let’s not forget the other side of the equation, a lot more people would try drugs if they weren’t illegal. Which is a good thing, because learning about them helps all of society.
My experience as an addict tells me more people trying drugs isn’t necessarily the best thing they can do for their lives IMHO.
I don’t know if it’s true that making drugs legal means more people try them. It might make sense in a certain sort of way but I’d like to see data before accepting it as truth.
As it seems to me, who hung around with a lot of drug users back in the day, as well as regular folks: most people who are interested in trying them can and will get their hands on it regardless of legality, sometimes easily. It’s about as low risk of a crime as there is. Those who aren’t interested, won’t, again regardless of legality. There will be edge cases where somebody will go “Ah what the hell, it’s legal now, why not” and toddle on over to their local dispensary for the first time but largely speaking anybody that wants to smoke weed or snort coke is probably already doing it.
Now what probably would change is the number of people on record using drugs, per capita, over the next few generations if it becomes normalized like alcohol has been. Which makes sense. But, counterpoint to that, in countries where they have legalized many drugs they still often have lower rates of severe addiction because they’ve generally also set up safety nets for those folks. Accessible medical care and available addiction treatment options will keep many drug users from hitting rock bottom, but we don’t really have that in the US so many users will often go unassisted in any way for ages and lose jobs and homes because of it, only getting “help” when it becomes forced upon them by the state (which is frequently not in any way helpful).
Anyway, I’m rambling, but tl;dr it’s definitely a multifaceted situation and blanket legalization probably isn’t a great move without accompanying medical and social support, which needs to happen anyway regardless of any moves for drug legalization. Gotta walk before we can run, unfortunately.
I think they’re talking about the less addictive and nonaddictive drugs, like ganja and LSD respectively.
So long as that drug use is paired by actually good rehabilitation infrastructure (like Portugal’s drug abuse treatment before its unraveling)
Also, completely banning sex work makes it a lot harder to regulate.
The Scandinavian model only criminalizes the clients, so I guess making their life’s worse isn’t the purpose. Still I am in favor of a fully regulated market with favorable working conditions.
That model is much better but from what I heard it’s still not optimal for sellers because buyers are still committing a crime so it will still need to happen far away from the law and anyone that could help protect the sellers, like in massage places and sus places of town. Otherwise no buyers would dare buy.
Not just that, Nordic sex workers have a combination of problems in the various countries, like not being able to rent private housing because that’s seen as profiting off sex workers (pimping) and various other ancillary limitations surrounding that.
You’re better off fully decriminalizing first, and then later probably creating some sort of government sanctioned organization made up of sex workers and customers, to regulate the industry.
Way back in my senior year of high school (around 2002), we had a debate project where everyone partnered up, picked a controversial topic, picked a side of the topic, and then researched and advocated for their side to the rest of the class, including a Q&A at the end, where the class could challenge their position.
To our surprise, the two hottest girls in our class picked prostitution as their topic, and advocated for it to be legalized. The teacher was also surprised, and curious enough to let them present their topic to the class.
We all thought they were joking with their topic, to get a rise out of all the horny boys. After all, as 17/18 year olds, our experience with prostitution came from movies or TV documentaries, where it was generally shown as a disgusting and degrading act; the last resort for a woman down on her luck.
But the girls’ presentation was incredibly well researched, with figures regarding the number of deaths, violent crime, drugs, and human trafficking involved in illegal prostitution, compared to Nevada’s legalized prostitution since the 1970s, which had practically no numbers to report.
They even did a deep dive into a brothel in Nevada, where the women were paid very well and treated kindly and fair and not like they’re just a piece of meat. Plus, they had regular checkups and practically free health care because of their profession. They even walked through the various services they provided, since some people (they serviced anyone, not just men) wanted other forms of intimacy instead of just sex. It was a safe and judgment-free environment, on both sides of the table, and the women employed there actually wanted to do the job, with the option to quit anytime. Unlike illegal prostitution, which removed the woman’s autonomy over her own body and placed her in dangerous situations, exposed to violence and drugs to barely make a living.
In the end, the girls did a fantastic job on their presentation and convinced a whole class of seniors that prostitution could be an honest and respectable position, and should be legalized. I’ve never looked at it the same way since.
We need to seize the means of reproduction
That would be a great sign for an abortion rally.
This is funny and also begets some serious questions about who we are seizing the means of reproduction from and why they were seized in the first place. Silvia Federici offers some answers in her book Caliban and the Witch
Sex work needs legislation and unions, and work as defined by capitalism is degrading
I think they should do the fuck they want
this comment is very funny
Capitalism makes work degrading
Being a worker is degrading.
Being an owner is empowering.
Being a worker is empowering if you abolish Owners.
What does that even mean in the context of sex work? People no longer own their own bodies? Sounds disempowering to me. A dystopia!
Collective ownership, no individual ownership.
Sex work would still be fundamentally different though, it isn’t the same as regular labor.
Collective ownership? So I can hop on your laptop and do whatever I want?
No.
You can use your laptop to start the next TikTok. Your laptop is a means of production.
You can’t really abolish ownership. Only transfer it. Abolish all private enterprise?
Congrats, the elite political class that rules your government now owns you. :)You can abolish ownership and make decisions democratically. It’s better than Capitalism where the wealthy few own the majority without democracy.
I’m pro sex work, however:
I have mixed feelings about the current ubiquity of online sex work like onlyfans. In theory I’ve definitely got nothing against it but I’m worried that a lot of young women are faced with shitty economic prospects vs potentially lots of money on onlyfans. The alternatives are so poor sometimes that it feels like coercion.
I just wish young people had better options all together.
I have good news for you! The income distribution of OnlyFans creators like many other platforms follows a power law, where the top 1% earn 33% of all revenue, and the average creator only earns $150-180 each month. Don’t think young women doing it tough are likely to be coerced by that.
Most of the high earners are those who already have an established audience, e.g. ex porn stars.
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Only fans is an MLM scheme, and watching “content creators” brag about how awesome it is to groom the next generation is… At least ick.
Nothing wrong with sex work, as any work, when done within a healthy ecosystem. But it is still a very murky area due to the very nature of human sexuality. The lines can get blurred very easily. Not as bad as Wall Street though. That’s where the real abuse is.
Wait, how is onlyfans a MLM? Is there something about how onlyfans is structured that makes it like Amway?
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Not all work. Just work you have to do to not starve. We have enough resources to provide a basic living for everyone. We can then use work as an incentive for more luxuries and encourage people to explore the types of work they want to do. Like creative endeavors. Pay more incentive for the work people dislike doing but is still necessary. We’ll figure out what work is actually necessary and what is just spinning wheels.
Long as it isnt forced on them, let them work
Old joke, but on topic.
A professor asks a class if anyone there would be a sex worker if they were paid $1 billion for a year. Everyone raises their hand.
He then asks if anyone in the class would do sex work for one night if the pay was $5.00?
Class is all irate. “What kind of people do you think we are?”
“I know what kind of people you are. Now we’re discussing the prices.”
That joke has a bit of a history
A woman I know went to Vassar College. According to her, the original version was a Harvard professor talking to an all female class.
Wouldn’t be surprised if Julius Cesar heard it from Seneca.
I don’t partake, but it’s definitely degrading because you have to sell your body for a living just like construction or factory jobs.
Read this as “sex at work” and the second point was very confusing
Well, technically this is correct
It’s no more degrading than other work. I wouldn’t tell a cashier they’re degrading themself by having to work to live, and I wouldn’t say that to a sex worker either.
First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague. External labor, labor in which man alienates himself, is a labor of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Lastly, the external character of labor for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone else’s, that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another. Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, of the human brain and the human heart, operates on the individual independently of him – that is, operates as an alien, divine or diabolical activity – so is the worker’s activity not his spontaneous activity. It belongs to another; it is the loss of his self.
– Karl Marx, Economic Manuscripts
But some people choose jobs that DO satisfy their intrinsic nature. I worked my arse off to have a job like that.
