I’m pretty suffering comes more from social stigma around sex and policies implemented around it creating gray spaces that people use to harm them.
Example: SESTA FOSTA lead to bans on social media centered around sex workers so their jobs became less safe without networks of people who can distribute warnings about violent johns or track down missing persons.
Would you enjoy doing sex work? Would you enjoy having sex with men that you were not attracted to, and needing to pretend that you enjoyed it? How do you think it would affect your relationship with your body? Put all of the legal stipulations you want for safety, etc, in this scenario. Do you think you wouldn’t experience harm to your mental health?
How would you measure mental health harm? Suicide rate by job?
Intimate jobs like dentists, doctors and vets have high suicide rates. Jobs that stress people’s bodies like construction workers and farm workers have high suicide rates. Jobs with exposure to violence like police and military have high suicide rates. Jobs with high chemical exposure rates like chemists and manufacturing. These kind of jobs have risks. Sex workers tend to deal with the first three.
Should we start banning jobs based on mental health outcomes? Or should we just make sure whatever jobs people have they are treated with respect and recieve the healthcare they need to function. What we should be doing is making sure such jobs are conducted as safely as possible for everyone involved.
The supposed “concern” about sex workers mental health without concern for similarly mentally stressful jobs is usually a sign somebody is actually operating from a bad faith position about how sex work is “icky”.
Nice assumption. Obviously I’m coming at this from a puritanical point of view. Absolutely none of this has anything to do with the research I shared, or my own experience of survival sex work. I must be a prude.
I think construction workers, farm workers, and dentists are all, yah know, necessary professions. We have to eat, we have to have places to live, we have to have teeth… There’s no need for sex workers. Ideally, we’d have UBI and the profession wouldn’t even exist. I’m not sure saddling someone with lifelong trauma so someone can get an orgasm is quite the same thing.
It’s funny how many “leftist” men lose their leftism the second the suggestion that se. work is inherently exploitative and harmful…
You didn’t answer my question either. You willing to suck a dick for $20?
The things that drive people to “voluntary” sex work is often the same stuff that everybody with a “voluntary” job contends with: education, rent, food etc.
I do think an obvious step is making sure those needs are met by society to reduce coercion.
As for the necessity of jobs, I don’t think sex workers, drug dealers or butchers should be jobs that exist, but I would not outlaw those people for practicing jobs that I think shouldn’t exist. I don’t think those jobs should be illegal.
Banning sex work does little but create another power imbalance that predators use to exploit sex workers similar to how criminalizing drugs leads to more exploitation.
As for sucking dicks, I would rather do that than perform surgeries or butcher animals. If folks are only getting $20 bucks for a blowjob that seems criminally low.
Notice at no point I made the argument that sex work should be criminalized. You are arguing against points I haven’t made.
I don’t believe sex work should be criminalized, although I lean towards the Nordic model of criminalizing the actions of a purchaser. Sex work being criminalized is harmful to the people desperate enough to turn to it, because it adds to stigma which keeps them trapped in the profession and makes them vulnerable to further exploitation by the police.
My argument is that sex work is inherently harmful. Not that it should be illegal, not that it’s “icky” because sex, but that sex work does psychological damage to the people who resort to it. If one purchases the services of a sex worker, they are participating in a harmful and morally wrong act.
Not speaking of the sex worker mental health buddy. It’s good for societies. See Europe.
So you are okay with an underclass of people suffering because you think it might be good for society?
I’m pretty suffering comes more from social stigma around sex and policies implemented around it creating gray spaces that people use to harm them.
Example: SESTA FOSTA lead to bans on social media centered around sex workers so their jobs became less safe without networks of people who can distribute warnings about violent johns or track down missing persons.
Would you enjoy doing sex work? Would you enjoy having sex with men that you were not attracted to, and needing to pretend that you enjoyed it? How do you think it would affect your relationship with your body? Put all of the legal stipulations you want for safety, etc, in this scenario. Do you think you wouldn’t experience harm to your mental health?
How would you measure mental health harm? Suicide rate by job?
Intimate jobs like dentists, doctors and vets have high suicide rates. Jobs that stress people’s bodies like construction workers and farm workers have high suicide rates. Jobs with exposure to violence like police and military have high suicide rates. Jobs with high chemical exposure rates like chemists and manufacturing. These kind of jobs have risks. Sex workers tend to deal with the first three.
Should we start banning jobs based on mental health outcomes? Or should we just make sure whatever jobs people have they are treated with respect and recieve the healthcare they need to function. What we should be doing is making sure such jobs are conducted as safely as possible for everyone involved.
The supposed “concern” about sex workers mental health without concern for similarly mentally stressful jobs is usually a sign somebody is actually operating from a bad faith position about how sex work is “icky”.
Nice assumption. Obviously I’m coming at this from a puritanical point of view. Absolutely none of this has anything to do with the research I shared, or my own experience of survival sex work. I must be a prude.
I think construction workers, farm workers, and dentists are all, yah know, necessary professions. We have to eat, we have to have places to live, we have to have teeth… There’s no need for sex workers. Ideally, we’d have UBI and the profession wouldn’t even exist. I’m not sure saddling someone with lifelong trauma so someone can get an orgasm is quite the same thing.
It’s funny how many “leftist” men lose their leftism the second the suggestion that se. work is inherently exploitative and harmful…
You didn’t answer my question either. You willing to suck a dick for $20?
The things that drive people to “voluntary” sex work is often the same stuff that everybody with a “voluntary” job contends with: education, rent, food etc.
I do think an obvious step is making sure those needs are met by society to reduce coercion.
As for the necessity of jobs, I don’t think sex workers, drug dealers or butchers should be jobs that exist, but I would not outlaw those people for practicing jobs that I think shouldn’t exist. I don’t think those jobs should be illegal.
Banning sex work does little but create another power imbalance that predators use to exploit sex workers similar to how criminalizing drugs leads to more exploitation.
As for sucking dicks, I would rather do that than perform surgeries or butcher animals. If folks are only getting $20 bucks for a blowjob that seems criminally low.
Notice at no point I made the argument that sex work should be criminalized. You are arguing against points I haven’t made.
I don’t believe sex work should be criminalized, although I lean towards the Nordic model of criminalizing the actions of a purchaser. Sex work being criminalized is harmful to the people desperate enough to turn to it, because it adds to stigma which keeps them trapped in the profession and makes them vulnerable to further exploitation by the police.
My argument is that sex work is inherently harmful. Not that it should be illegal, not that it’s “icky” because sex, but that sex work does psychological damage to the people who resort to it. If one purchases the services of a sex worker, they are participating in a harmful and morally wrong act.