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These ads weren’t about fantasy Have you ever talked to a sex worker or former sex worker? I know a few. Fantasy and role play is part of the job, even if it's

These ads weren’t about fantasy Have you ever talked to a sex worker or former sex worker? I know a few. Fantasy and role play is part of the job, even if it's just pretending to be someone's girlfriend for a couple hours. I don't see anything wrong with making money off of other people's fantasies (in virtual or real life), as long as everyone is a consenting adult. The indictment doesn't establish that backpage encouraged underage prostitution.

egko 8y ago
> I don't see anything wrong with making money off of other people's fantasies (in virtual or real life), as long as everyone is a consenting adult. The indictment doesn't establish that backpage encouraged underage prostitution. Eh, what? You can't just say "as long as" first and then change the bar to "[isn't] established that they encouraged" in the next sentence. Maybe I am missing something.
DanBC 8y ago
> as long as everyone is a consenting adult. We know, and Backpage don't deny this, that many of the ads were for children. But if we restrict ourself to adults; it's a myth that women want to work in prostitution, or that it's just another job. The vast majority of women working in prostitution only do so to feed a drug addiction,or because they're in debt, or because they're being coercively controlled. Yes, I do speak to women who've been through this.
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > The vast majority of women working in prostitution only do so to feed a drug addiction,or because they're in debt, or because they're being coercively controlled. This is flat-out wrong.
- stickfigure 8y ago
  Your statement is so misogynistic and paternalizing that I don't even know where to begin. I'll just have to go with "what can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence". Back up your claims, and "I talked to a few women" does not count.
- grawprog 8y ago
  Nope, I know a lady who worked as an escort to pay for school. She enjoyed it, liked making money and ended up working as a manager booking appointments and stuff for the agency she worked for, including some fairly important government officials. She talked a lot about it to anyone that would listen and repeatedly said it was a great way to pay for school. She had zero regrets and said she would do it again if she ever needed money. I don't know for sure, but I don't think she was addicted to drugs. A coworker of a friend of mine who works in the medical field also works as an escort on the side just for the money and fun of it. She's one of the ones that goes to parties and on dates with lonely rich people. She's been bought cars and jewelery paid vacations to tons of places.
- belorn 8y ago
  I have suggested before that I would very much like to see a suggestion for a generic law that make prostitution illegal without using words that involve sex or proxies for it. What about a law forbidding all work that has the work injury rates (or higher) of current legal prostitution and where the majority of employees are in debt? As a purely theoretical idea I wonder how wide of an impact that would have. Coercion is naturally a bigger issue and reminds me of how mining and debt slavery co-evolved. Targeting the illegal behavior worked there quite effective in turning mining into a normal profession and away from a place where men in debt worked until they died at an early age.
- drharby 8y ago
  Citation needed
pharrington 8y ago
The context, with Backpage, is that we know literal sex trafficking, include with children, happened through that site. We are viewing the mechanisms Backpage implemented and ads placed on that site, both in the context of the adult marketing fantasy world you talk about and in the context of literal child sex slavery occurring on Backpage.

egko 8y ago

> I don't see anything wrong with making money off of other people's fantasies (in virtual or real life), as long as everyone is a consenting adult. The indictment doesn't establish that backpage encouraged underage prostitution. Eh, what? You can't just say "as long as" first and then change the bar to "[isn't] established that they encouraged" in the next sentence. Maybe I am missing something.

DanBC 8y ago

> as long as everyone is a consenting adult. We know, and Backpage don't deny this, that many of the ads were for children. But if we restrict ourself to adults; it's a myth that women want to work in prostitution, or that it's just another job. The vast majority of women working in prostitution only do so to feed a drug addiction,or because they're in debt, or because they're being coercively controlled. Yes, I do speak to women who've been through this.

chimeracoder 8y ago
> The vast majority of women working in prostitution only do so to feed a drug addiction,or because they're in debt, or because they're being coercively controlled. This is flat-out wrong.
stickfigure 8y ago
Your statement is so misogynistic and paternalizing that I don't even know where to begin. I'll just have to go with "what can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence". Back up your claims, and "I talked to a few women" does not count.
grawprog 8y ago
Nope, I know a lady who worked as an escort to pay for school. She enjoyed it, liked making money and ended up working as a manager booking appointments and stuff for the agency she worked for, including some fairly important government officials. She talked a lot about it to anyone that would listen and repeatedly said it was a great way to pay for school. She had zero regrets and said she would do it again if she ever needed money. I don't know for sure, but I don't think she was addicted to drugs. A coworker of a friend of mine who works in the medical field also works as an escort on the side just for the money and fun of it. She's one of the ones that goes to parties and on dates with lonely rich people. She's been bought cars and jewelery paid vacations to tons of places.
belorn 8y ago
I have suggested before that I would very much like to see a suggestion for a generic law that make prostitution illegal without using words that involve sex or proxies for it. What about a law forbidding all work that has the work injury rates (or higher) of current legal prostitution and where the majority of employees are in debt? As a purely theoretical idea I wonder how wide of an impact that would have. Coercion is naturally a bigger issue and reminds me of how mining and debt slavery co-evolved. Targeting the illegal behavior worked there quite effective in turning mining into a normal profession and away from a place where men in debt worked until they died at an early age.
drharby 8y ago
Citation needed

pharrington 8y ago

The context, with Backpage, is that we know literal sex trafficking, include with children, happened through that site. We are viewing the mechanisms Backpage implemented and ads placed on that site, both in the context of the adult marketing fantasy world you talk about and in the context of literal child sex slavery occurring on Backpage.