My opinion is that sex work should be legal. It would enable involuntary virgins to get a good sex experience for payment; they will be guaranteed a good sex experience with a sex worker: no harassment, good education, and a fun time.

Sex work gets shamed by people puritans because of payment for sex and it’s “sinful”; yet these same persons puritans get and have sex for free out of “passion” or marriage; they also discriminate against minorities in sec.

EDIT: Apparently there is an implied difference between sex work and prostitution. I mean sex work.

EDIT 2: I messed up the writing of my post. My real opinion is located in this comment:

Oof. I didn’t realize there was way more exploitation than just sex traffickers. It totally makes sense though; sex trades are a product of capitalist exploitation and the existence of private property. (Naturally under communism, the prevalence of sex trades would be heavily reduced.)

It seems like I couldn’t communicate my ideas properly beforehand. I don’t want people in the sex trade to be criminalized; I want pimps and johns to be criminalized.

Only a few hours ago: I wanted to support a sex trade industry that didn’t involve rapes or rely on economic coercion. I just wanted disabled people, who keep getting discriminated out of sex,[1][2][3] to be able to feel better about their lives; a lack of sex can cause mental health issues in some people (even though this shouldn’t happen). (However, having sex probably won’t fix the issue, it will just hide the problems until later). Now I feel like shit…

  1. Sexual Ableism ↩︎

  2. Dating With Disability: How to Rise Above Sexual Ableism ↩︎

  3. Dating with Disability: Choose Your Dreams Over Sexual Ableism ↩︎

  • OnishiMyers
    71·
    3 years ago

    If you have to pay someone to have sex with you, they don’t actually want to have sex with you. If you’re still willing to take advantage, you’re a rapist. Simple as that.

    How is that different than say… if you have to pay someone to tar your roof, they don’t want to tar your roof, If you are willing to take advantage you are a slaver?

    Now don’t get me wrong, sex work has much worse track record of abuse than manual labor, though I would also say it’s quite probable that is because of it’s underground nature… criminalized things attract criminals, same way that illegal marijuana results in drug dealing groups that commit horrible crimes and shootings defending their territories etc…

    • Oatsteak@lemmygrad.ml
      41·
      3 years ago

      Slaves don’t get paid, so there’s that. I get what you’re saying though. But all work under capitalism is exploitative so I don’t think there’s a contradiction there.

      And look, there is obviously a difference between paying a sex worker for their uh, services, and violently assaulting someone. But you know… Semantics. It’s still having sex with someone who doesn’t actually want to have sex with you.

        • OnishiMyers
          21·
          3 years ago

          Can’t say I disagree with you… slaves got paid… in the sense that they had their housing, food etc… covered for them. As wages are dropping to the point where they barely cover enough for, bare minimum housing, and enough food to stay alive… the only real difference is we get to have a different master quarter us than we have making us do the work, the net result is about the same.

      • OnishiMyers
        32·
        3 years ago

        See but there’s the point, Assuming the sex worker is, being paid fairly, and chosing to do it for the money, I can’t see it as drastically different than someone doing any other task for the purposes of collecting a paycheck.

        Now with both there is the exploitive nature of systems in general. IE a boss, corporation or pimp that takes 90% of the income for the product of other peoples work. Exploitive systems that force people to work in situations which they get only a fraction of the value of their work to the person, under threats of starvation, deportation, homelessness etc…

        I still fail to find the killer statement on why sex work is really that different from regular work. Again asside from higher frequency of blatant abusers, and human traffickers forcing people into sex slavery.

        But the general idea, cutting out possible abusive bosses, captors etc… on both scenerios.

        I fail to see a difference between.

        A person, accepting an offer to have sex with someone, in pre-agreed upon ways, for a pre-agreed upon price, doing what she offered to do, and recieving the agreed upon payment on completion.

        A person, agreeing to an offer to paint someone’s house, to an agreed upon standard, for an agreed upon price and recieving a payment on completion.

        Both of these tasks carry risks, working on a house contains risks of injury from falling, toll on body due to repetitive stress injuries, possible chemical hazards from paint/thinner etc… which also can be factored into the price. As the sex worker has risks of diseases etc…

        Now yes, in either situation if human trafficking is involved. If the person painting the house, or having sex is not actually free, is actually working under threat of death and the payment is going to some other person, that is a horrific situation.

        But my point is the actual nature of transactionally “selling your body”. In which case, both of these situations are more or less doing the exact same thing. It’s effectively renting yourself, accepting the damage you are doing to your body in the process of this activity, giving up your time doing a task you probably are not enjoying in this context (though there’s nothing wrong with it if you do enjoy the task even in this context), in exchange for money.

        • Oatsteak@lemmygrad.ml
          4·
          3 years ago

          You don’t see the difference between paying someone to fix your roof and paying someone to have sex with you?

          Edit: Sorry, I’m not trying to be a dick. I just want you to elaborate. I agree that both sex work and… non-sex work is exploitative under capitalism, but I mean beyond that, don’t you agree that sex work is a hell of a lot more dehumanizing and risky than re-tiling a roof is?

          Not saying sex work should be illegal btw. That just seems to make things worse.

          • OnishiMyers
            4·
            3 years ago

            It’s not something I would want (for me I wouldn’t enjoy sex in a transaction situation) , but no assuming consent, both parties being mentally able and un-coerced enough to decide whether the transaction is worth it to both of them. I do not see anything inherently different in those transactions. Now for some having sex is a high psychological toll… for some it is less of a toll, same could be said for painting, for some the physical toll of climbing and painting would totally wreck their bodies and cause serious injury, for some they would be more than able to.

            Sex is just an action the human body can do. It comes with risks, it can be enjoyable to some, it can be degrading or painful to some in different situations. I see nothing wrong with anyone chosing to take those actions. There is of course something wrong with people being co-erced, forced to do things they don’t want to do, and not being compensated fairly for what they chose to do.