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One should look at the history behind why certain currently banned obscenity is banned, and what the goals of the groups were who originally pushed the ban. >G

One should look at the history behind why certain currently banned obscenity is banned, and what the goals of the groups were who originally pushed the ban. >Given that history, one could be forgiven for thinking that some of these groups see SESTA as a mere stepping stone to banning pornography from the Internet This is one of their main goals. >blurring the legal distinctions between sex work and trafficking I think this has largely been achieved.

TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
> I think this has largely been achieved. Indeed, “combating sex trafficking” seems to already be a euphemism for cracking down on sex work of all kinds.
- hedora 9y ago
  “Combating sex trafficking” is also a euphemism for cracking down on free speech on the internet, privacy, and small competitors to the big two internet firms. In the same week, we’ve also gotten the cloud act, and widely expanded censorship on youtube. The big two seem to welcome these changes: google lobbied in support of at least some of this, while zuckerberg says he’s ok with expanded regulation of facebook. Reglatory capture is being used to lock down our industry (and, maybe democracy) before our very eyes.
Bartweiss 9y ago
> I think this has largely been achieved. Definitely true, and it's worth noting that crackdowns on 'trafficking' and 'abetting' sex work in the US consistently undermine not sex work but safe sex work. - Acts like "renting an apartment out for a sex worker" become abetting, which drives sex work to happen on the street and at client's residences - the places where serious violence are most likely. - Any attempt at collaboration, like sex workers sharing the cost of private security or hygienic supplies, can be reclassified as a form of trafficking. (The tortured legal logic is that "you give me $10 and I buy paper towels for us both" constitutes taking money from a sex worker and enabling their business, and therefore trafficking.) - When Washington, D.C. attempted to crack down on sex work, women carrying condoms were arrested or forced to throw them away - a move which did nothing to prevent trading sex for money, but effectively undermined safety and disease prevention. - When the government moved against Backpage, quite a lot of sex workers were deeply upset. Because the website didn't make sex work happen, it helped it happen safely, allowing workers to choose their clients before meeting them in person. Over and over again, we see that anti-trafficking laws are actually used to marginalize sex work and destroy any possibility of a safe, healthy, or voluntary environment for the workers. At a certain point, it looks like the scenario of vulnerable sex workers who face constant violence is actually being driven by these laws that punish any worker who tries to live a better life.
- Spivak 9y ago
  Right but you have to address the solution which is proposed by the authors of these laws -- don't be a sex worker. It's not exactly a secret that the goal is to outlaw any kind of sex work but you don't get anywhere punishing the victims so you go after people trying to legitimize it. They view sex work as fundamentally abusive and degrading, something that no one should even consider as an option, and therefore needs to be illegal so that police can intervene -- just like organ harvesting, suicide, and a lot of drug laws. Then you make the punishment for facilitating it in any way steep as a deterrent.
  - Bartweiss 9y ago
    I agree, and I didn't mean to downplay that. My concern is that even within a framework where all sex work is objectionable, these are bad laws. If they made voluntary sex work harder, they'd be successes within that frame. But they don't - they leave the basic transaction untouched, and only undermine worker safety from disease and assault. The situation is actually very similar with drugs. A law that reduced voluntary, non-addictive use would upset some people and please others. But the laws we actually have aren't a success even if you think all drug use is immoral. Crackdowns on supply haven't reduced use, but have increased prices and violence while lowering purity. Crackdowns on drug trafficking haven't reduced use, but have, though the iron law of prohibition, driven a shift to harder and deadlier drugs. And restriction of paraphernalia hasn't reduced use, but has pushed users to unsafe practices like sharing and reusing needles. Deterrent effects are real, though they're exceptionally weak in these cases; sex and drugs have some of the most inelastic demand outside of food and water. But my concern is that these laws aren't actually deterrents against any step essential for the transaction. They're entirely deterrents against incidental features that make the transaction safer or healthier, and so rather than reducing the behavior they simply reduce safety.
  - morogop 9y ago
    I'd like to share two observations about your response: 1) Your implicit argument that the police exist to punish people for wrongdoing, not to help rehabilitate people back into society. 2) Your argument that the solution is entirely on the supply side (don't be a sex worker!), while ignoring entirely the demand side (don't patronize sex workers!). There are many sex workers who are the victims of trafficking, however there are no sex work patrons who are such victims. As such, enforcement actions against patrons can be similarly effective, and it does not have the side effect of transforming trafficking victims into criminals I feel this combination of responses is very common, and very sub-optimal. Additionally, your comparisons to organ harvesting, suicide, and a lot of drug law strike me as unthoughtful. It is legal to donate organs. Laws against suicide are rarely enforced. And drug laws are a failure, thus it seems unwise to put them forth as a model. Your argument that it is acceptable to make any sort of facilitation have incredibly steep punishments also strikes me as a blow against justice. Crimes should have punishments that are aligned with the severity of the crime. I do not believe one could argue that one is being just, when one says that we should make something like "selling condoms to a prostitute" a crime with very steep penalties. These are bad laws. Your counter-argument, that it is fine to have horrible, unjust, and ineffective laws, so long as they have good intentions, does not change my mind. Nor do I think a wise person would ever seriously proffer your nonsensical position.
azernik 9y ago
>>blurring the legal distinctions between sex work and trafficking >I think this has largely been achieved. The text of the bill makes this obvious; whatever the public rhetoric, the legal text talks about prostitution, period. No qualifications regarding consent or exploitation.
otakucode 9y ago
The majority of modern anti-sex policies and mindsets stem from the same place. The Industrial Revolution. With the advent of factory-driven production, urban centers grew up and factory owners did not wish to pay adolescent workers a wage sufficient enough to enable them to support a family. Prior to this, they could apprentice and otherwise obtain jobs which paid enough to enable them to care for any children they produced. This led to urban poor facing a real problem. Their adolescent children produced their own children, but the family as a whole did not earn enough to support them. So, people starved to death. This created a problem that faced both the religious and the secular authorities of the time. The solution they landed upon was to destroy sex. Considering other factors, this actually was mostly their only option. Sex was ever-present in the life of pre-industrialized groups. Homes were built with only 2 rooms generally, a kitchen and a common room where everyone slept and screwed. Abstinence was a superpower only saints (their version of comic book superheroes, and not seen as human) could do. So it wasn't easy. But between doctors inventing horrific tales of the health dangers of masturbation and profligate sexual activity and the clergy literally rewriting scripture to oppose sexuality (the story of Onan being the clearest case), they did pretty well. Far worse than we have done ourselves since the mid 1990s (no one has ever been as prudish as a modern prude), but pretty well. They changed how homes were built, what entertainment was considered acceptable, changed acceptable dress, changed courting practices, changed parenting practices, and reorganized a great deal of how society in general functioned. All so factory owners didn't need to pay adolescent workers a living wage. Things changed slowly enough that by the time we overcame all of the practical reasons that motivated the changes in the first place, most people didn't even know why they hated sex and the body so much. They just figured that was how it was. There was hope with the Sexual Revolution in the 1970s (on the back of the birth control pill which really should have seen most such ideas die off).... but that was killed by the 80s moralizer backlash, STDs, and the final nail staked in it with the pedo panic started in the 90s. The sociology of sexuality is a tremendously fascinating topic and I've been following it for decades. There are certainly many who still bang the drum in an attempt to destroy or control one of the most fundamentally human bodily functions... and they make easy progress in a society as easily manipulated by emotional appeal as our own.

TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago

> I think this has largely been achieved. Indeed, “combating sex trafficking” seems to already be a euphemism for cracking down on sex work of all kinds.

hedora 9y ago
“Combating sex trafficking” is also a euphemism for cracking down on free speech on the internet, privacy, and small competitors to the big two internet firms. In the same week, we’ve also gotten the cloud act, and widely expanded censorship on youtube. The big two seem to welcome these changes: google lobbied in support of at least some of this, while zuckerberg says he’s ok with expanded regulation of facebook. Reglatory capture is being used to lock down our industry (and, maybe democracy) before our very eyes.

Bartweiss 9y ago

> I think this has largely been achieved. Definitely true, and it's worth noting that crackdowns on 'trafficking' and 'abetting' sex work in the US consistently undermine not sex work but safe sex work. - Acts like "renting an apartment out for a sex worker" become abetting, which drives sex work to happen on the street and at client's residences - the places where serious violence are most likely. - Any attempt at collaboration, like sex workers sharing the cost of private security or hygienic supplies, can be reclassified as a form of trafficking. (The tortured legal logic is that "you give me $10 and I buy paper towels for us both" constitutes taking money from a sex worker and enabling their business, and therefore trafficking.) - When Washington, D.C. attempted to crack down on sex work, women carrying condoms were arrested or forced to throw them away - a move which did nothing to prevent trading sex for money, but effectively undermined safety and disease prevention. - When the government moved against Backpage, quite a lot of sex workers were deeply upset. Because the website didn't make sex work happen, it helped it happen safely, allowing workers to choose their clients before meeting them in person. Over and over again, we see that anti-trafficking laws are actually used to marginalize sex work and destroy any possibility of a safe, healthy, or voluntary environment for the workers. At a certain point, it looks like the scenario of vulnerable sex workers who face constant violence is actually being driven by these laws that punish any worker who tries to live a better life.

Spivak 9y ago
Right but you have to address the solution which is proposed by the authors of these laws -- don't be a sex worker. It's not exactly a secret that the goal is to outlaw any kind of sex work but you don't get anywhere punishing the victims so you go after people trying to legitimize it. They view sex work as fundamentally abusive and degrading, something that no one should even consider as an option, and therefore needs to be illegal so that police can intervene -- just like organ harvesting, suicide, and a lot of drug laws. Then you make the punishment for facilitating it in any way steep as a deterrent.
- Bartweiss 9y ago
  I agree, and I didn't mean to downplay that. My concern is that even within a framework where all sex work is objectionable, these are bad laws. If they made voluntary sex work harder, they'd be successes within that frame. But they don't - they leave the basic transaction untouched, and only undermine worker safety from disease and assault. The situation is actually very similar with drugs. A law that reduced voluntary, non-addictive use would upset some people and please others. But the laws we actually have aren't a success even if you think all drug use is immoral. Crackdowns on supply haven't reduced use, but have increased prices and violence while lowering purity. Crackdowns on drug trafficking haven't reduced use, but have, though the iron law of prohibition, driven a shift to harder and deadlier drugs. And restriction of paraphernalia hasn't reduced use, but has pushed users to unsafe practices like sharing and reusing needles. Deterrent effects are real, though they're exceptionally weak in these cases; sex and drugs have some of the most inelastic demand outside of food and water. But my concern is that these laws aren't actually deterrents against any step essential for the transaction. They're entirely deterrents against incidental features that make the transaction safer or healthier, and so rather than reducing the behavior they simply reduce safety.
- morogop 9y ago
  I'd like to share two observations about your response: 1) Your implicit argument that the police exist to punish people for wrongdoing, not to help rehabilitate people back into society. 2) Your argument that the solution is entirely on the supply side (don't be a sex worker!), while ignoring entirely the demand side (don't patronize sex workers!). There are many sex workers who are the victims of trafficking, however there are no sex work patrons who are such victims. As such, enforcement actions against patrons can be similarly effective, and it does not have the side effect of transforming trafficking victims into criminals I feel this combination of responses is very common, and very sub-optimal. Additionally, your comparisons to organ harvesting, suicide, and a lot of drug law strike me as unthoughtful. It is legal to donate organs. Laws against suicide are rarely enforced. And drug laws are a failure, thus it seems unwise to put them forth as a model. Your argument that it is acceptable to make any sort of facilitation have incredibly steep punishments also strikes me as a blow against justice. Crimes should have punishments that are aligned with the severity of the crime. I do not believe one could argue that one is being just, when one says that we should make something like "selling condoms to a prostitute" a crime with very steep penalties. These are bad laws. Your counter-argument, that it is fine to have horrible, unjust, and ineffective laws, so long as they have good intentions, does not change my mind. Nor do I think a wise person would ever seriously proffer your nonsensical position.

azernik 9y ago

>>blurring the legal distinctions between sex work and trafficking >I think this has largely been achieved. The text of the bill makes this obvious; whatever the public rhetoric, the legal text talks about prostitution, period. No qualifications regarding consent or exploitation.

otakucode 9y ago

The majority of modern anti-sex policies and mindsets stem from the same place. The Industrial Revolution. With the advent of factory-driven production, urban centers grew up and factory owners did not wish to pay adolescent workers a wage sufficient enough to enable them to support a family. Prior to this, they could apprentice and otherwise obtain jobs which paid enough to enable them to care for any children they produced. This led to urban poor facing a real problem. Their adolescent children produced their own children, but the family as a whole did not earn enough to support them. So, people starved to death. This created a problem that faced both the religious and the secular authorities of the time. The solution they landed upon was to destroy sex. Considering other factors, this actually was mostly their only option. Sex was ever-present in the life of pre-industrialized groups. Homes were built with only 2 rooms generally, a kitchen and a common room where everyone slept and screwed. Abstinence was a superpower only saints (their version of comic book superheroes, and not seen as human) could do. So it wasn't easy. But between doctors inventing horrific tales of the health dangers of masturbation and profligate sexual activity and the clergy literally rewriting scripture to oppose sexuality (the story of Onan being the clearest case), they did pretty well. Far worse than we have done ourselves since the mid 1990s (no one has ever been as prudish as a modern prude), but pretty well. They changed how homes were built, what entertainment was considered acceptable, changed acceptable dress, changed courting practices, changed parenting practices, and reorganized a great deal of how society in general functioned. All so factory owners didn't need to pay adolescent workers a living wage. Things changed slowly enough that by the time we overcame all of the practical reasons that motivated the changes in the first place, most people didn't even know why they hated sex and the body so much. They just figured that was how it was. There was hope with the Sexual Revolution in the 1970s (on the back of the birth control pill which really should have seen most such ideas die off).... but that was killed by the 80s moralizer backlash, STDs, and the final nail staked in it with the pedo panic started in the 90s. The sociology of sexuality is a tremendously fascinating topic and I've been following it for decades. There are certainly many who still bang the drum in an attempt to destroy or control one of the most fundamentally human bodily functions... and they make easy progress in a society as easily manipulated by emotional appeal as our own.