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Is this a side effect of normalizing porn, that sexuality is more effectively partitioned? I once had a debate in an online forum about legalizing prostitution

Is this a side effect of normalizing porn, that sexuality is more effectively partitioned? I once had a debate in an online forum about legalizing prostitution, and most participants were supportive of it. Then I asked the same group, what about legalizing partial prostitution, like a receptionist that also has sex with the boss as part of the job description. The participants all immediately switched to revulsion at the idea and none would support it. So why is 100% sex work less exploitative than 50% sex work? I don't think it is. But for some reason our culture finds specialist sex workers more tolerable. The same pressure seems to be bifurcating entertainment.

fractionalhare 6y ago
> But for some reason our culture finds specialist sex workers more acceptable. Does it? You asked this on an online forum, not a national survey. I don't think our culture has a majority view on the nuance of prostitution. The most engagement I'd expect on this topic is from people who feel strongly that it shouldn't exist at all.
- vixen99 6y ago
  On the other hand there are people who are all for it provided the prostitutes are not their own daughters.
Blikkentrekker 6y ago
I think because prostitution is considered “dirty work”, must like many other dirty professions. Receptionism is “clean work”, consequently a receptionist cannot be forced to lower himself to dirty work. — this would apply to working with human waste or various medical work as much as prostitution, I would gander. A receptionist can be required by contract to serve drinks, play the piano, and various other things that a receptionist does not ordinarily do, but weeding through garbage, performing sex acts, or changing diapers, — that is off limits.
joe_the_user 6y ago
So why is 100% sex work less exploitative than 50% sex work? Gotta say that often questions like this are often as just taken as ways to win rhetorical points and not thought about seriously by those who ask them. But there's actually a good answer. Yes, sex work is extremely exploitative in the sense that you selling a "big piece" of yourself. Which doesn't mean it should be illegal but it should segregated. Why? Other kinds of work exists that extremely exploitative - dangerous, physical exhausting, possibly-humiliating and damaging. Those should be segregated also and usually are. But let's an experiment: Receptionist + some danger deep diving Receptionist + some heavy underground construction Receptionist + some lion tamer work Dangerous heavy construction for part off your rent The reason all those are a problem is because they take a lot out of a person and if you pair them with receptionist, you'll get someone who is paid as a receptionist but often doing these things. Which screws both ordinary receptionists and people paid more to do the highly exploitative labor.
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  Receptionist + some heavy underground construction at the boring company. Sounds awesome. None of those examples seem to have a problem...
- hervature 6y ago
  This phenomena doesn’t apply to just dangerous work. One should expect any provision in a contract to be the norm. If a contract specifies that work on Saturdays is ok, assume every Saturday that you will work. Adjust your pay requirements to reflect this. Don’t let the other party to convince you that “it’ll only be sometimes” or “just in case”. For the 50% stuff, the real answer is empower the worker and train people to sign 2 different contracts for seemingly unrelated jobs. If that screws them out of benefits, then ask for more money. At the very least, it prevents the low pay for hard labor.
- aksss 6y ago
  Honestly those examples you provided take a lot more skill and effort than most people put into exploitive sex. The consequences of doing those examples “wrong” are far higher, too, e.g. loss of life or limb. I think a better retort would be that people want professional jobs where their contribution is based on seemingly objective merit. If 50% of your performance is judged by one person in an entirely subjective way, i.e. their satisfaction with sex, it’s not a very well protected job for one thing. Further, the benefit of exploitive sex industries is not having to commit - to be able to switch it up. Tightly coupling your exploitive sex with job positions whose value increases directly with the amount of institutional knowledge retained would not be wise - your turnover or dissatisfaction would be too high. Finally, despite all the efforts of exploitive industries, sex is still a biological function and very personal to many (most?). There are subtle relationships involved in such intimacy despite efforts to avoid it. From a management perspective, there’s a risk to being “friends” with people that work for you, much less having sex with them. I think it would introduce too many opportunities for personal feelings interrupting optimal productivity. Put directly, the integrity of your decision-making ability on behalf of the company would likely be compromised.
saithound 6y ago
Others have explained why certain jobs are "segregated", and how sex work could plausibly fit into that category. But even if it does not, there's nothing we can learn about sex work from the reactions described above. Isn't it strange how most programmers think that specialist barista work is not demeaning, but would quit on the spot if they were instructed to serve morning coffee to the management? Oh wait, it's not strange at all! Most people who work as programmmers do not want to serve coffee, and will naturally coordinate to avoid normalizing it, lest it become a recurring part of every job description. This happens even though work as a barista does not fit into the 'dangerous and therefore segregated' category. Indeed, there would be nothing unusual about a receptionist who also handles catering at events and serves coffee to management. Or is serving coffee also "effectively partitioned" by "our culture"?
- ipaddr 6y ago
  At my salary I would welcome serving coffee while everyone is in the standup.
  - scruple 6y ago
    A quote that I picked up from my grandfather, "They pay me the same no matter what they've got me doing."
    - mavhc 6y ago
      I'd rather be doing something that will lead me to get paid more in the future, learning new skills
      - necovek 6y ago
        I optimize the way I put dishes in the dishwasher, I design my own closets so I'll have the best design for what I do every day (i.e. clothes I use regularly are close by) — eg. I hang my t-shirts because it's faster than folding them — etc. There are things that can be optimized in serving coffee too! And when you had enough, you can just start serving terrible coffee :D
spcebar 6y ago
In my eyes, the issue is that it the becomes the norm that receptionists need to have sex with their bosses and people who are only interested in the receptionist part are put in the position of needing to go into sex work or someone else getting the job they want.
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  So what though? Isn't this true of people who are not interested in prostitution/pornography needing to go into prostitution/pornography or getting paid less to take a job that isn't involved with that?
Const-me 6y ago
> why is 100% sex work less exploitative than 50% sex work? I oppose receptionist that also has sex with the boss. Exploitation has nothing to do with that. At least in my world view, having sex at workplace is unprofessional. First of all, spending corporate or investor's money on paying sex workers is wrong. Even if the boss is the sole owner of the company i.e. spending their own money, boss fucking a receptionist causes unhealthy atmosphere in the company. The company gonna have hard time attracting female candidates on other positions. Employees who have families gonna have interesting conversations with their SOs.
- throwawayhehe 6y ago
  Why is spending investor's money on sex workers any more wrong then spending it on other job perks? What's "unhealthy" about boss having sex with receptionist. Got news for you: it already happens a lot :) As far as employees who have families, can't they just go poly if they don't want to risk being fired?
  - Const-me 6y ago
    > Why is spending investor's money on sex workers any more wrong then spending it on other job perks? Because it harms the company. This perk gonna reduce hiring pool by a factor of 2-4. I think many married people, women, and probably many lgbtq+ people wouldn’t want to work there. > What's "unhealthy" about boss having sex with receptionist. Sex between consensual adults is fine. The unhealthy atmosphere is caused by other people in and around the company knowing, and discussing, what’s going on. > can't they just go poly if they don't want to risk being fired? Gonna be hard to sell that idea to wives/husbands of these employees.
- z3phyr 6y ago
  Did you just assume that the receptionist is going to be female?
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  You seem to be suggesting there would be logistical problems with the idea of the prostitute/receptionist, but I think that even if those problems were solved it would still be a bad idea. If there was a clause in the contract that sex had to be outside the workplace and the money to pay for the sex act had to come from the entertainment accounts and the company had no problem attracting female employees or retaining workers, would you support it then? That would seem to answer all your logistical concerns.
heterodoxxed 6y ago
Sex work and pugilism I think can be strongly equated. Both involve using ones body and adult consent. One for sex, the other for violence. We don't outlaw boxing or MMA. But we put regulations on it. We shut down illegal basement fights. And we hope people going into it aren't coerced and have recourse if something goes wrong. We accept that if an adult wants to get punched in the face for money that's something society can accommodate with reasonable expectations. But there's no world where we would see a boss getting in the ring with his employees to fight for money as something acceptable.
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  I don't think that's a perfect analogy because the worker can win in boxing in a way that they can't as a prostitute and there is likely far less of an appetite for compelling your workers to fight you than there is for compelling your workers to have sex with you. I agree we shouldn't normalize employer/employee boxing matches (although I'd be willing to participate in some instances...) but it seems a lot less consequential a choice as legalizing the hybrid prostitute role.
ahthat 6y ago
I think people are confusing the notion of being a secretary and having sex with your boss with the idea that it is inherently wrong for superiors to use their workplace capital to exploit those who work under them. It is completely correct that the latter idea is exploitative; however, if a woman is a secretary and is also arranged to have sex with her boss via her job description, and she consents to this when accepting the job offer with full understanding of what her job entails -in effect being a fifty fifty secretary sex worker- then there is nothing wrong with this at all, quite self evidently. It would be consensual and in writing. If she is not coerced into the job, it is not exploitative.
- PurpleFoxy 6y ago
  What about when all of the unfilled job listings include this requirement? The only way I can see prostitution as ethical is if someone can choose to have no job and be fairly comfortable.
  - tux1968 6y ago
    I get what you're saying and think that's a pretty reasonable view. But why do we see having to use your brain to earn a living, or use your muscles to earn a living as any less exploitative? Why is any job ethical unless someone can choose to have no job and be fairly comfortable? Either way, you're essentially forced to do something you'd otherwise not do.
    - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
      So you'd wank a stranger off as soon as carry their bag?
      - tux1968 6y ago
        Depends entirely on how much you're paying now doesn't it. But that wasn't the condition that the OP said made him comfortable. He said he'd be okay with legal sex work only as long as the person could otherwise live a life of comfort without the need to work. He didn't say he'd be okay with legal sex work as long as the person could have chosen to carry a bag instead.
edgyquant 6y ago
The reason why “50%” sex work shouldn’t be legal is because job descriptions change over time so it could easily be the case that every attractive women with a male boss suddenly has to have sex with them or be fired for not completing their job description. Sure, a lot of women can quit, but exploitation already happens now when it is illegal so if the law was on the exploiters side things would only get worse.
- throwawayhehe 6y ago
  Things wouldn't get worse ... they'd just have to start paying taxes on it.
  - edgyquant 6y ago
    I disagree, a world where any job can be coerced into being a sex job is a worse world over all. People don’t generally get away with coercing women who are researching astrophysics into sex these days, your idea would make that legal and thus more common.
roenxi 6y ago
Is it the exploitation or is it the idea of it being a normalised part of workplace culture? I'm in favour of fully legalised prostitution, but I don't want to be personally exposed to it in any capacity. I want the workplace to be about work. I don't want my money wasted arresting people for having sex.
meheleventyone 6y ago
No ones bought it up but to me it seems an issue of of coercion and consent. Even if prostitution was 100% legal it should absolutely be up to the prostitute on a case by case basis when, where, who and how they had paid sex. On that basis your boss who inherently has power over you being able to ask for sex is to close to exploitation and easy to see how it can be abused. We should note this abuse is already all too common in non-sex roles. I also think this applies to full time sex worker positions if there was an “and you’ve got to fuck your boss” contract clause.
- necovek 6y ago
  That's a very good point: basically, it's easy to support sexual work as "contractor work", where the "working party" can choose who they work with, without any long-term commitment (or at least, simple way to break off the contract). An employment contract is significantly different in that employer gets to decide who the work is done for by the employee.
  - meheleventyone 6y ago
    The same protections should be extended to full time employment as well. In the same way your boss cannot compel you to do something dangerous and there are standards around safety and workplace rules.
  - throwawayhehe 6y ago
    Not so fast. Can a landlord refuse to rent to someone because they are black, because they have children, because of their political affiliation? Once sex work becomes legal, then it has to abide by the same rules as everyone else. They are going to get a lot of customers that many of them would probably not want to touch if they were not getting paid to do so. ... and in many cases that will be exactly why they are getting paid to do so.
leveleer323 6y ago
This is no brainer. If a job description involves having sex, then people who don't want to have sex will be forced to do so which violates basic human right. On the other hand having sex with boss or any one with consent should not be prohibited legally.
- Singletoned 6y ago
  If a job description involves something you object to then you probably shouldn’t apply for the job, whatever it is
  - leveleer323 6y ago
    The argument can be applied to the number of working hours in a week or minimum wages. Exactly this is the problem. There won't be any jobs for people who don't want to have sex as part of the job
- Chris2048 6y ago
  > people who don't want to have sex will be forced to do so This doesn't make sense. Not everyone wants to weld either.
necovek 6y ago
This is an anecdote from my student life. One of my colleagues told me how all the girls in the class (including her) are going out of their mind for the chubby, average looking teaching assistant and how he's "very sexy". He wasn't even particularly nerdy, nor well-dressed, humorous or well-spoken (since those might be quirky or well-regarded behaviours that can be considered "sexy" too): to me, he was decidedly average in any way I'd look at him. Nothing wrong with girls liking him, it was just curious to hear him being called "very sexy"! Similarly, male students were going crazy about female teaching assistants who were admittedly very average looking, and didn't have much going for them otherwise either. Thus, I've always interpreted that to be that "position of power" makes for an unreasonable judgement (of both brain and heart :), but you are free to make of that what you will.
- twic 6y ago
  At university, my then-girlfriend confessed that she had had sexual fantasies about her tutor, an unremarkable-looking white-haired man in his mid-fifties at the time.
- HelloNurse 6y ago
  Some of my university professors and assistants were too nerdy or decrepit to be sexy, but most were smart, interesting people that students listened to attentively for hours and found attractive beyond their moderately plain appearance. There were several couples (and triangles) among faculty, evidence that they made a strong impression on each other too.
  - necovek 6y ago
    I wasn't at all focusing on appearance: thus my mention of "decidedly average in any way I'd look at him" (this includes how smart they appeared to be). Your professors/assistants were obviously "well spoken" if they could keep their students' attention for hours, and I had such professors/assistants too.
bitcurious 6y ago
That’s a fascinating question! I think the answer to it might be in assigning some unscientific statistics to the world. Starting here: perhaps 5% of people are psychologically capable of sex work. The reason behind legalizing (or decriminalizing) sex work is to maximize the liberty of, and reduce the harm to, this 5%. Concurrently we must account for the 95%. If we were to normalize sex work in the context other professions, then the volume of jobs requiring sex would quickly outpace the number of people who would choose that profession in lieu of economic necessity, and so you will have people be sexually exploited. Perhaps the free market will solve this in the long term but in the mean time you’ll have many a hurt persons. So basically the whole thing is a compromise based on what we believe about the economic incentives and workforce, aiming to please multiple outlooks. Although the “contractor” point another poster made is maybe more compelling.

fractionalhare 6y ago

> But for some reason our culture finds specialist sex workers more acceptable. Does it? You asked this on an online forum, not a national survey. I don't think our culture has a majority view on the nuance of prostitution. The most engagement I'd expect on this topic is from people who feel strongly that it shouldn't exist at all.

vixen99 6y ago
On the other hand there are people who are all for it provided the prostitutes are not their own daughters.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago

I think because prostitution is considered “dirty work”, must like many other dirty professions. Receptionism is “clean work”, consequently a receptionist cannot be forced to lower himself to dirty work. — this would apply to working with human waste or various medical work as much as prostitution, I would gander. A receptionist can be required by contract to serve drinks, play the piano, and various other things that a receptionist does not ordinarily do, but weeding through garbage, performing sex acts, or changing diapers, — that is off limits.

joe_the_user 6y ago

So why is 100% sex work less exploitative than 50% sex work? Gotta say that often questions like this are often as just taken as ways to win rhetorical points and not thought about seriously by those who ask them. But there's actually a good answer. Yes, sex work is extremely exploitative in the sense that you selling a "big piece" of yourself. Which doesn't mean it should be illegal but it should segregated. Why? Other kinds of work exists that extremely exploitative - dangerous, physical exhausting, possibly-humiliating and damaging. Those should be segregated also and usually are. But let's an experiment: Receptionist + some danger deep diving Receptionist + some heavy underground construction Receptionist + some lion tamer work Dangerous heavy construction for part off your rent The reason all those are a problem is because they take a lot out of a person and if you pair them with receptionist, you'll get someone who is paid as a receptionist but often doing these things. Which screws both ordinary receptionists and people paid more to do the highly exploitative labor.

mensetmanusman 6y ago
Receptionist + some heavy underground construction at the boring company. Sounds awesome. None of those examples seem to have a problem...
hervature 6y ago
This phenomena doesn’t apply to just dangerous work. One should expect any provision in a contract to be the norm. If a contract specifies that work on Saturdays is ok, assume every Saturday that you will work. Adjust your pay requirements to reflect this. Don’t let the other party to convince you that “it’ll only be sometimes” or “just in case”. For the 50% stuff, the real answer is empower the worker and train people to sign 2 different contracts for seemingly unrelated jobs. If that screws them out of benefits, then ask for more money. At the very least, it prevents the low pay for hard labor.
aksss 6y ago
Honestly those examples you provided take a lot more skill and effort than most people put into exploitive sex. The consequences of doing those examples “wrong” are far higher, too, e.g. loss of life or limb. I think a better retort would be that people want professional jobs where their contribution is based on seemingly objective merit. If 50% of your performance is judged by one person in an entirely subjective way, i.e. their satisfaction with sex, it’s not a very well protected job for one thing. Further, the benefit of exploitive sex industries is not having to commit - to be able to switch it up. Tightly coupling your exploitive sex with job positions whose value increases directly with the amount of institutional knowledge retained would not be wise - your turnover or dissatisfaction would be too high. Finally, despite all the efforts of exploitive industries, sex is still a biological function and very personal to many (most?). There are subtle relationships involved in such intimacy despite efforts to avoid it. From a management perspective, there’s a risk to being “friends” with people that work for you, much less having sex with them. I think it would introduce too many opportunities for personal feelings interrupting optimal productivity. Put directly, the integrity of your decision-making ability on behalf of the company would likely be compromised.

saithound 6y ago

Others have explained why certain jobs are "segregated", and how sex work could plausibly fit into that category. But even if it does not, there's nothing we can learn about sex work from the reactions described above. Isn't it strange how most programmers think that specialist barista work is not demeaning, but would quit on the spot if they were instructed to serve morning coffee to the management? Oh wait, it's not strange at all! Most people who work as programmmers do not want to serve coffee, and will naturally coordinate to avoid normalizing it, lest it become a recurring part of every job description. This happens even though work as a barista does not fit into the 'dangerous and therefore segregated' category. Indeed, there would be nothing unusual about a receptionist who also handles catering at events and serves coffee to management. Or is serving coffee also "effectively partitioned" by "our culture"?

ipaddr 6y ago
At my salary I would welcome serving coffee while everyone is in the standup.
- scruple 6y ago
  A quote that I picked up from my grandfather, "They pay me the same no matter what they've got me doing."
  - mavhc 6y ago
    I'd rather be doing something that will lead me to get paid more in the future, learning new skills
    - necovek 6y ago
      I optimize the way I put dishes in the dishwasher, I design my own closets so I'll have the best design for what I do every day (i.e. clothes I use regularly are close by) — eg. I hang my t-shirts because it's faster than folding them — etc. There are things that can be optimized in serving coffee too! And when you had enough, you can just start serving terrible coffee :D

spcebar 6y ago

In my eyes, the issue is that it the becomes the norm that receptionists need to have sex with their bosses and people who are only interested in the receptionist part are put in the position of needing to go into sex work or someone else getting the job they want.

notsureaboutpg 6y ago
So what though? Isn't this true of people who are not interested in prostitution/pornography needing to go into prostitution/pornography or getting paid less to take a job that isn't involved with that?

Const-me 6y ago

> why is 100% sex work less exploitative than 50% sex work? I oppose receptionist that also has sex with the boss. Exploitation has nothing to do with that. At least in my world view, having sex at workplace is unprofessional. First of all, spending corporate or investor's money on paying sex workers is wrong. Even if the boss is the sole owner of the company i.e. spending their own money, boss fucking a receptionist causes unhealthy atmosphere in the company. The company gonna have hard time attracting female candidates on other positions. Employees who have families gonna have interesting conversations with their SOs.

throwawayhehe 6y ago
Why is spending investor's money on sex workers any more wrong then spending it on other job perks? What's "unhealthy" about boss having sex with receptionist. Got news for you: it already happens a lot :) As far as employees who have families, can't they just go poly if they don't want to risk being fired?
- Const-me 6y ago
  > Why is spending investor's money on sex workers any more wrong then spending it on other job perks? Because it harms the company. This perk gonna reduce hiring pool by a factor of 2-4. I think many married people, women, and probably many lgbtq+ people wouldn’t want to work there. > What's "unhealthy" about boss having sex with receptionist. Sex between consensual adults is fine. The unhealthy atmosphere is caused by other people in and around the company knowing, and discussing, what’s going on. > can't they just go poly if they don't want to risk being fired? Gonna be hard to sell that idea to wives/husbands of these employees.
z3phyr 6y ago
Did you just assume that the receptionist is going to be female?
ALittleLight 6y ago
You seem to be suggesting there would be logistical problems with the idea of the prostitute/receptionist, but I think that even if those problems were solved it would still be a bad idea. If there was a clause in the contract that sex had to be outside the workplace and the money to pay for the sex act had to come from the entertainment accounts and the company had no problem attracting female employees or retaining workers, would you support it then? That would seem to answer all your logistical concerns.

heterodoxxed 6y ago

Sex work and pugilism I think can be strongly equated. Both involve using ones body and adult consent. One for sex, the other for violence. We don't outlaw boxing or MMA. But we put regulations on it. We shut down illegal basement fights. And we hope people going into it aren't coerced and have recourse if something goes wrong. We accept that if an adult wants to get punched in the face for money that's something society can accommodate with reasonable expectations. But there's no world where we would see a boss getting in the ring with his employees to fight for money as something acceptable.

ALittleLight 6y ago
I don't think that's a perfect analogy because the worker can win in boxing in a way that they can't as a prostitute and there is likely far less of an appetite for compelling your workers to fight you than there is for compelling your workers to have sex with you. I agree we shouldn't normalize employer/employee boxing matches (although I'd be willing to participate in some instances...) but it seems a lot less consequential a choice as legalizing the hybrid prostitute role.

ahthat 6y ago

I think people are confusing the notion of being a secretary and having sex with your boss with the idea that it is inherently wrong for superiors to use their workplace capital to exploit those who work under them. It is completely correct that the latter idea is exploitative; however, if a woman is a secretary and is also arranged to have sex with her boss via her job description, and she consents to this when accepting the job offer with full understanding of what her job entails -in effect being a fifty fifty secretary sex worker- then there is nothing wrong with this at all, quite self evidently. It would be consensual and in writing. If she is not coerced into the job, it is not exploitative.

PurpleFoxy 6y ago
What about when all of the unfilled job listings include this requirement? The only way I can see prostitution as ethical is if someone can choose to have no job and be fairly comfortable.
- tux1968 6y ago
  I get what you're saying and think that's a pretty reasonable view. But why do we see having to use your brain to earn a living, or use your muscles to earn a living as any less exploitative? Why is any job ethical unless someone can choose to have no job and be fairly comfortable? Either way, you're essentially forced to do something you'd otherwise not do.
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    So you'd wank a stranger off as soon as carry their bag?
    - tux1968 6y ago
      Depends entirely on how much you're paying now doesn't it. But that wasn't the condition that the OP said made him comfortable. He said he'd be okay with legal sex work only as long as the person could otherwise live a life of comfort without the need to work. He didn't say he'd be okay with legal sex work as long as the person could have chosen to carry a bag instead.

edgyquant 6y ago

The reason why “50%” sex work shouldn’t be legal is because job descriptions change over time so it could easily be the case that every attractive women with a male boss suddenly has to have sex with them or be fired for not completing their job description. Sure, a lot of women can quit, but exploitation already happens now when it is illegal so if the law was on the exploiters side things would only get worse.

throwawayhehe 6y ago
Things wouldn't get worse ... they'd just have to start paying taxes on it.
- edgyquant 6y ago
  I disagree, a world where any job can be coerced into being a sex job is a worse world over all. People don’t generally get away with coercing women who are researching astrophysics into sex these days, your idea would make that legal and thus more common.

roenxi 6y ago

Is it the exploitation or is it the idea of it being a normalised part of workplace culture? I'm in favour of fully legalised prostitution, but I don't want to be personally exposed to it in any capacity. I want the workplace to be about work. I don't want my money wasted arresting people for having sex.

meheleventyone 6y ago

No ones bought it up but to me it seems an issue of of coercion and consent. Even if prostitution was 100% legal it should absolutely be up to the prostitute on a case by case basis when, where, who and how they had paid sex. On that basis your boss who inherently has power over you being able to ask for sex is to close to exploitation and easy to see how it can be abused. We should note this abuse is already all too common in non-sex roles. I also think this applies to full time sex worker positions if there was an “and you’ve got to fuck your boss” contract clause.

necovek 6y ago
That's a very good point: basically, it's easy to support sexual work as "contractor work", where the "working party" can choose who they work with, without any long-term commitment (or at least, simple way to break off the contract). An employment contract is significantly different in that employer gets to decide who the work is done for by the employee.
- meheleventyone 6y ago
  The same protections should be extended to full time employment as well. In the same way your boss cannot compel you to do something dangerous and there are standards around safety and workplace rules.
- throwawayhehe 6y ago
  Not so fast. Can a landlord refuse to rent to someone because they are black, because they have children, because of their political affiliation? Once sex work becomes legal, then it has to abide by the same rules as everyone else. They are going to get a lot of customers that many of them would probably not want to touch if they were not getting paid to do so. ... and in many cases that will be exactly why they are getting paid to do so.

leveleer323 6y ago

This is no brainer. If a job description involves having sex, then people who don't want to have sex will be forced to do so which violates basic human right. On the other hand having sex with boss or any one with consent should not be prohibited legally.

Singletoned 6y ago
If a job description involves something you object to then you probably shouldn’t apply for the job, whatever it is
- leveleer323 6y ago
  The argument can be applied to the number of working hours in a week or minimum wages. Exactly this is the problem. There won't be any jobs for people who don't want to have sex as part of the job
Chris2048 6y ago
> people who don't want to have sex will be forced to do so This doesn't make sense. Not everyone wants to weld either.

necovek 6y ago

This is an anecdote from my student life. One of my colleagues told me how all the girls in the class (including her) are going out of their mind for the chubby, average looking teaching assistant and how he's "very sexy". He wasn't even particularly nerdy, nor well-dressed, humorous or well-spoken (since those might be quirky or well-regarded behaviours that can be considered "sexy" too): to me, he was decidedly average in any way I'd look at him. Nothing wrong with girls liking him, it was just curious to hear him being called "very sexy"! Similarly, male students were going crazy about female teaching assistants who were admittedly very average looking, and didn't have much going for them otherwise either. Thus, I've always interpreted that to be that "position of power" makes for an unreasonable judgement (of both brain and heart :), but you are free to make of that what you will.

twic 6y ago
At university, my then-girlfriend confessed that she had had sexual fantasies about her tutor, an unremarkable-looking white-haired man in his mid-fifties at the time.
HelloNurse 6y ago
Some of my university professors and assistants were too nerdy or decrepit to be sexy, but most were smart, interesting people that students listened to attentively for hours and found attractive beyond their moderately plain appearance. There were several couples (and triangles) among faculty, evidence that they made a strong impression on each other too.
- necovek 6y ago
  I wasn't at all focusing on appearance: thus my mention of "decidedly average in any way I'd look at him" (this includes how smart they appeared to be). Your professors/assistants were obviously "well spoken" if they could keep their students' attention for hours, and I had such professors/assistants too.

bitcurious 6y ago

That’s a fascinating question! I think the answer to it might be in assigning some unscientific statistics to the world. Starting here: perhaps 5% of people are psychologically capable of sex work. The reason behind legalizing (or decriminalizing) sex work is to maximize the liberty of, and reduce the harm to, this 5%. Concurrently we must account for the 95%. If we were to normalize sex work in the context other professions, then the volume of jobs requiring sex would quickly outpace the number of people who would choose that profession in lieu of economic necessity, and so you will have people be sexually exploited. Perhaps the free market will solve this in the long term but in the mean time you’ll have many a hurt persons. So basically the whole thing is a compromise based on what we believe about the economic incentives and workforce, aiming to please multiple outlooks. Although the “contractor” point another poster made is maybe more compelling.