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My general view is that you can not make prostitution illegal without a explicit moral stand regarding people who have sex for money (or pay for sex). Any regu

by belorn 7y ago

My general view is that you can not make prostitution illegal without a explicit moral stand regarding people who have sex for money (or pay for sex). Any regulation that tries to go the route and forbid jobs based on health risk would need to make a larger portion of the worked force in order to also cover legal prostitution. We could also take a stand against wage slavery. The article articulate quite well how much of her life was punctuated on the need to raise money for rent and food. Countries like Norway and Sweden have social safety nets in place to prevent that, but even here people will accept risky jobs that they do not want to do in order to escape bare minimum living standard.

e12e 7y ago
There's certainly a moral component to any debate about sex, rape, consent, statutory rape etc (see eg the difference in age of consent - even within the US) - not to mention the long tail of discrimination against homosexuality etc. I still don't think commercialization of intimate relationships with its influence in the private sphere of buyer and seller is on equal footing to "dangerous" work. So somewhat above (physical) health risk, I think there's a social component - that legalizing prostitution contributes to locking women into an antiquated and restricting role in society. If and when our societies were more equal, I'm not so certain I'd be opposed to legalization - but I also suspect in a more equal society there'd be less of a demand. And certainly, poverty as a means of segregating the working class and distracting from the fact that wages are at a record low share of production contributes to the concept that a "right" to sex work is important in defense of the poor - rather than saying that society should make sure everyone have a place to stay and access to decent food. I'm also aware of the old Soviet saying: Under capitalism, man exploits man - but under socialism it's the other way around. A nominal system change without deep cultural reform won't be enough. And I suppose that's the core of the problem; that some people argue that the right to have sex for money is some kind of important freedom. While food and shelter isn't. And that there's an objective need for men (because in aggregate that is who's buying sex) to buy sex - because somehow regular relationships and masturbation isn't enough to keep our society going. It's something I find strange, and I've yet to see a compelling argument for why it's something that our societies need.

by belorn 7y ago

e12e 7y ago

There's certainly a moral component to any debate about sex, rape, consent, statutory rape etc (see eg the difference in age of consent - even within the US) - not to mention the long tail of discrimination against homosexuality etc. I still don't think commercialization of intimate relationships with its influence in the private sphere of buyer and seller is on equal footing to "dangerous" work. So somewhat above (physical) health risk, I think there's a social component - that legalizing prostitution contributes to locking women into an antiquated and restricting role in society. If and when our societies were more equal, I'm not so certain I'd be opposed to legalization - but I also suspect in a more equal society there'd be less of a demand. And certainly, poverty as a means of segregating the working class and distracting from the fact that wages are at a record low share of production contributes to the concept that a "right" to sex work is important in defense of the poor - rather than saying that society should make sure everyone have a place to stay and access to decent food. I'm also aware of the old Soviet saying: Under capitalism, man exploits man - but under socialism it's the other way around. A nominal system change without deep cultural reform won't be enough. And I suppose that's the core of the problem; that some people argue that the right to have sex for money is some kind of important freedom. While food and shelter isn't. And that there's an objective need for men (because in aggregate that is who's buying sex) to buy sex - because somehow regular relationships and masturbation isn't enough to keep our society going. It's something I find strange, and I've yet to see a compelling argument for why it's something that our societies need.