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This article describes how some people's best survival option is to give control of their body to someone else. I think anyone with empathy would agree that's a

This article describes how some people's best survival option is to give control of their body to someone else. I think anyone with empathy would agree that's a bad thing.

cperciva 10y ago
I'm not saying that I endorse this; I'm just saying that it doesn't seem particularly novel. It seems to me that a double standard is being applied, with sex work being condemned more harshly simply because it is negotiated online. (Mind you, this is certainly not the only double standard; it seems absurd that sex work is condemned as women "selling their bodies" while working in coal mines is simply accepted as something men do.)
- Mz 10y ago
  I think most people are going to assert that this is absolutely different from marrying a good provider because people want to imagine that most/almost all marriages are nice, loving arrangements where both people deeply and sincerely care about each other. This is not true and pointing that out makes most people incredibly uncomfortable. I am comfortable discussing that reality. But I tend to tread lightly because it tends to be a shit show to try to address that fact. YMMV
  - cperciva 10y ago
    That was part of my point -- we have a popular myth that marriages are all about love, but there's a significant element of practicality about them too... and there used to be far more. Heck, look at how long arranged marriages were widespread.
    - Mz 10y ago
      Let me put it this way, you are making one of those points that hits too uncomfortably close to home for most people to answer honestly and still maintain their own delusions about their own lives. So, you will likely be shouted down so that people can insist to themselves that they have True Love or something. I spent about 3.5 years of my life in therapy with two different ministers discussing the sexual abuse I had endured as a child. I have an incredibly thick skin when it comes to analyzing such things. Most other people find me pretty horrifying and I have largely given up on trying to have meaningful discussions about certain things in public because they tend to inspire lynch mobs. I think a marriage based on practical arrangements is often a better marriage than one based on some weird idea that we are madly in love. But, hey, I am some heretic, as already established. :-)

This article describes how some people's best survival option is to give control of their body to someone else. I think anyone with empathy would agree that's a bad thing.

cperciva 10y ago

I'm not saying that I endorse this; I'm just saying that it doesn't seem particularly novel. It seems to me that a double standard is being applied, with sex work being condemned more harshly simply because it is negotiated online. (Mind you, this is certainly not the only double standard; it seems absurd that sex work is condemned as women "selling their bodies" while working in coal mines is simply accepted as something men do.)

Mz 10y ago
I think most people are going to assert that this is absolutely different from marrying a good provider because people want to imagine that most/almost all marriages are nice, loving arrangements where both people deeply and sincerely care about each other. This is not true and pointing that out makes most people incredibly uncomfortable. I am comfortable discussing that reality. But I tend to tread lightly because it tends to be a shit show to try to address that fact. YMMV
- cperciva 10y ago
  That was part of my point -- we have a popular myth that marriages are all about love, but there's a significant element of practicality about them too... and there used to be far more. Heck, look at how long arranged marriages were widespread.
  - Mz 10y ago
    Let me put it this way, you are making one of those points that hits too uncomfortably close to home for most people to answer honestly and still maintain their own delusions about their own lives. So, you will likely be shouted down so that people can insist to themselves that they have True Love or something. I spent about 3.5 years of my life in therapy with two different ministers discussing the sexual abuse I had endured as a child. I have an incredibly thick skin when it comes to analyzing such things. Most other people find me pretty horrifying and I have largely given up on trying to have meaningful discussions about certain things in public because they tend to inspire lynch mobs. I think a marriage based on practical arrangements is often a better marriage than one based on some weird idea that we are madly in love. But, hey, I am some heretic, as already established. :-)