5 ms·

The question of whether it's good and wholesome is orthogonal to the question of whether society should punish those who do it. Scenario A: Resourceful, succes

The question of whether it's good and wholesome is orthogonal to the question of whether society should punish those who do it. Scenario A: Resourceful, successful, happy. Should she be forced to accept dangerous working conditions and live under the constant threat of eviction, imprisonment, harassment and stigma? Why? What's the argument in favor of making her life difficult? Scenario B: Physical or mental disability, unattractive, can't afford to refuse clients even though they make her unsafe, doesn't have any other way to pay for rent, food, meds and diapers. Should she be prevented from going to the police when someone beats, rapes or robs her? Should she be prevented from organizing with her friends for mutual protection? Should she be prevented from advertising online and instead forced onto the streets? Again, why? What's the argument in favor of making her life even more difficult?

manquer 5y ago
The point is her experience is niche and unique, it is not indicative of how the industry at large actually operates so making any judgements would not be meaningful as OP was doing.
- KaiserPro 5y ago
  but the issue the article points out that she as an escort has no access to law, should something go wrong. If an in-house hair dresser was assaulted/robbed/stolen from, they would be able to report it to the police. There would be a strong chance (well as high as any other crime) that it would be punished. There would also be an opportunity to use/create a verification scheme for clients, but also ask for insurance/tax/qualifications for the hair dresser. This is what operating in a "decriminalized" world looks like. You don't get harassed by the law, but they wont help you either. Ideally we would have a world where sex work is legally allowed (so long as its not coerced) and allow those workers to form companies, hire security, use payment systems, have vetting functions. All of the services that would make life much less precarious. I know that in the people I have encountered in the sex worker world (who are related but not the same as escorts) are very against "legalisation" as they fear it would lead to registers and no chance to limit or control anonymity. So unless the moral objections are sorted, I don't see any future in these changes.
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    > hire security In the UK, being paid by a pro sex-worker for services in support of that work is a crime called "Living off immoral earnings", and it's treated quite a bit more seriously than prostitution. How do you tell whether the big guy in the car across the street is really just protection, or whether he's a pimp, taxing a harem of girls with threats of violence?
    - KaiserPro 5y ago
      more information on this: https://www.inbrief.co.uk/offences/living-off-immoral-earnings/ https://www.inbrief.co.uk/offences/living-off-immoral-earnin... Modern law has been complicated somewhat by a change in heart. There was an attempt at loosening the rules around prostitution(pre 2009), but they have subsequently been tightened a bit. In short its a mess. > really just protection, or whether he's a pimp, taxing a harem of girls with threats of violence? this is where I diverge from sex workers on my opinion on this. They are pushing for discrimination. But this doesn't solve the coercion/security hired help issue. The only practical way I can see it going away is by allowing sex workers to be fully legalised, as in form a company, have accounts, pay tax, be inspected by environmental health(or would it be CQC?). have three workers, but only pay tax for one? time for an inspection! There are risks, and the stigma will force people underground. Holland and germany _still_ have a people trafficking problem I suspect there are better ways, but unless it sex work can be done on the high street(well not literally), we will never truly over come the stigma, and subsequent exploitation of people.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    >but the issue the article points out that she as an escort has no access to law, should something go wrong. She has little to no access to state sanctioned violence. Call it what it is. If she has a business dispute she has no recourse, she can't sue the other party and get the state to put them in a cage if they don't pay. Drug industry also has the same problem and does its violence in-house. Formerly prostitution did in-house the violence necessary to settle business disputes (i.e. pimps) but the internet has changed the business model somewhat.
- naasking 5y ago
  > so making any judgements would not be meaningful as OP was doing The OP's judgment was that he saw no reason why this escort's business should be illegal. That's not a judgment on whether other forms of prostitution should be legal.
  - manquer 5y ago
    He said "this stuff" , which i assumed to mean escorting in general, he would have been more specific if he meant only hers ? Also it hard from government to legalize only some form of prostitution over others even if politically that is possible, practically impossible to enforce.
    - naasking 5y ago
      Sure, escorting businesses like hers, where there's clearly no victim being trafficked or abused. Also it's not at all difficult to legalize only some forms of prostitution. Consider this analogous situation: it's hard for a government to legalize only some forms of cutting people with knives, but we seem to do fine legally distinguishing surgery from assault with a deadly weapon.
- native_samples 5y ago
  I don't think that's true. I know a former escort pretty well and she's told me a lot about her work. It lines up very well with the article, except that she didn't have a high opinion of the very high end/expensive escorting because there simply isn't enough business available at the $1200/hr level. At least, not in Europe. It worked out much better for her to charge a more regular price and work full time. Otherwise the rest is the same. Most clients are whatever. A few she got to know well and liked. She worked with another person who did screening for her, etc.
  - manquer 5y ago
    Perhaps the regular price for your friend is high end equivalent of 1200 ?. The author strongly says the population of an area makes a big difference in the rates you can charge. Also mean income (as measured by her study of other workers) is $100,000 with her average rates of her sample around 500-600. Effectively = F(x)(y)(z) X - number of people earning 200x the hourly rate Y - % of that interested in paying for sex[1] Z - relative beauty rank among service providers[2] in that area You cannot control beauty much but you could change for location and optimize for all the factors to get best rate[3]. Or optimize for total money depending on what is preferred. [1] age is strong factor so demographics is a good proxy metric. Also perhaps friction with law is proxy for cultural acceptance and can be numerically scaled : fully legal, decriminalized, or criminal with quantum of punishment for scaling. And degree of enforcement measured by number of arrests / convictions etc. [2] probably being 9 in LA wouldnt be the same as say Wyoming( demand would be lesser as a counter pressure) [3] touring is a thing perhaps because of this.
    - native_samples 5y ago
      Well they all tour because otherwise they saturate demand after a week or two in a local area. It's not about big disparities in local earning potential. Guys like novelty and even the ones that pick a girl and stick with her can't afford to come all the time. No, prices are almost standardized, at least in the 'normal' escorting world. I was surprised by this at first. My belief had always been that it'd be super competitive and the hottest girls would charge the highest prices, but it's not like that. Turns out guys don't really care that much about what a girl looks like beyond a baseline level of beauty, which is why so many can get away with hiding their face. What does matter a lot is what special services are offered (e.g. dominatrix stuff has a different price), and customer retention, which is 100% about whether you're nice and make the guys feel happy. The most successful girls are the ones that develop a loyal customer base. A few men even follow the girls around as they tour, but that's rare. Girls who are cold, uninterested etc don't get repeat custom and exhaust the area quite quickly. Whether to go high end or not probably depends a lot on how much else you have going on in life. Aella presumably has lots of other projects like OnlyFans, social media etc. This girl was a full timer. It was her job, and she worked pretty long hours (not anymore). She didn't use social media or create websites or whatever. That's normal. Most escorts use ad sites but they aren't creating dedicated websites for themselves. This girl doesn't even use social media at all, not even in her personal life (and never did, and she's not old). I did ask her once about the high end work but she indicated that at these sorts of prices you could get maybe one client a month, which just wasn't enough to be interesting given she could be making thousands per day reliably by charging a more normal price (a few hundred an hour). And of course with fewer customers you're a lot more exposed to one of them not coming anymore. The people saying "wow $1200/hr is a lot" are right, I suspect only in Silicon Valley are there a large enough percentage of über-rich but unlucky-with-women people to pay those sorts of rates. Most guys visited her around payday, it was a very cyclical business. If you do ever get to know an escort on a personal level, or especially more than one, be aware that this is a world that will seem - to the average office worker at least - astoundingly racist. It's touched on in the article but is something else that surprised me a lot. All the girls have strong opinions about different races and a large number demand to know a client's race before they turn up and will simply refuse clients of particular races. There is no stigma or shame associated with such discussions or policies. In escorting there are no HR departments to tell people what to think, 'diversity' isn't a thing, they're all independent or at most work with one or two other girls who are just like them. Learning about this made me reflect a lot on to what extent the middle class office/tech world obsession with anti-racism is a function of the heavy level of filtering that goes on at the front door as part of selecting for skills, university, background etc. The belief that everyone is culturally homogenous and race is just a pigment, just doesn't fly amongst escorts. They learn to generalize about their client base very quickly. To them the link between race and culture is both real and of critical importance.
- Aella 5y ago
  My experience was not that niche and unique; I tried to consistently show data around how prices might impact your experience. The amount you charge is not correlated with the majority of the questions I asked sex workers.
  - brabel 5y ago
    In some Nordic countries, it's not illegal to sell sex, but it is to buy it. What do you think about that? Do you think making the men fear the law, but not the women, would do anything to help the women? I guess the government's objective is to kill the business completely, which is about as realistic as prohibiting alcohol.
    - c21h30o2 5y ago
      It lets SWERFs pat themselves on the back and feel good by pretending they're not punishing sex workers, only the "evil" men who provide sex workers with income. In practice we have seen in both Sweden and Norway that police systematically pressure landlords and hotels to evict sex workers from rented apartments/rooms under threat of pimping charges. Immigrant sex workers have been deported after going to the police to report crimes.
      - randomswede 5y ago
        With "systematically pressure", you can actually say "tries to enforce the law"[1], if they're aware that the premise is used for swapping sex for money, they need to make it stop. Simply paying for a not-for-work apartment or should not fall under that legal space, though. [1] https://lagen.nu/1962:700#K6P12S2 https://lagen.nu/1962:700#K6P12S2
        c21h30o2 5y ago
        They really don't need to. They are kicking people out of their homes because of a law that shouldn't exist. They could just not prioritize it and free up resources for other crimes.
    - 5y ago
newsclues 5y ago
Scenario B workers under legalization will lose their jobs/income. Marginalized workers in the cannabis industry got pushed out when Canada legalized cannabis.
- celticninja 5y ago
  How do they lose their jobs? I get that a dealer who just sold weed now has to compete with legal alternatives or leave the sector. How so with sex work? You think the increased competition would put them out of work? What is a marginalized worker in the cannabis sector?
  - newsclues 5y ago
    Customers buying from black markets have less choice. If I want drugs, I buy the drugs the dealer is pushing. In a legal market for sex, a customer can be more selective, so the less desired workers will lose customers. When weed was legalized the bottom rung of the weed dealers, lost their market to stores who suddenly offered a better option to consumers. Marginalization in the cannabis dealer scene would be poor people who sell a bit of weed to make ends meet or cheap/free weed in exchange for dealing.
    - celticninja 5y ago
      I think you are over estimating a cross over between these customers. Cheap Mexican brick weed is still being sold because legal cannabis is pricing poorer users out of the legal market. Legal stores are employing people legitimately and paying taxes, so I don't mind if some dealers now have to quit or diversify. The more jobs we have in legal drugs the fewer required in the illegal drug trade. This is a net positive to society.
- robrtsql 5y ago
  This is why most sex workers are specifically in favor of decriminalization and not 'legalization'.
  - 5y ago

manquer 5y ago

The point is her experience is niche and unique, it is not indicative of how the industry at large actually operates so making any judgements would not be meaningful as OP was doing.

KaiserPro 5y ago
but the issue the article points out that she as an escort has no access to law, should something go wrong. If an in-house hair dresser was assaulted/robbed/stolen from, they would be able to report it to the police. There would be a strong chance (well as high as any other crime) that it would be punished. There would also be an opportunity to use/create a verification scheme for clients, but also ask for insurance/tax/qualifications for the hair dresser. This is what operating in a "decriminalized" world looks like. You don't get harassed by the law, but they wont help you either. Ideally we would have a world where sex work is legally allowed (so long as its not coerced) and allow those workers to form companies, hire security, use payment systems, have vetting functions. All of the services that would make life much less precarious. I know that in the people I have encountered in the sex worker world (who are related but not the same as escorts) are very against "legalisation" as they fear it would lead to registers and no chance to limit or control anonymity. So unless the moral objections are sorted, I don't see any future in these changes.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  > hire security In the UK, being paid by a pro sex-worker for services in support of that work is a crime called "Living off immoral earnings", and it's treated quite a bit more seriously than prostitution. How do you tell whether the big guy in the car across the street is really just protection, or whether he's a pimp, taxing a harem of girls with threats of violence?
  - KaiserPro 5y ago
    more information on this: https://www.inbrief.co.uk/offences/living-off-immoral-earnings/ https://www.inbrief.co.uk/offences/living-off-immoral-earnin... Modern law has been complicated somewhat by a change in heart. There was an attempt at loosening the rules around prostitution(pre 2009), but they have subsequently been tightened a bit. In short its a mess. > really just protection, or whether he's a pimp, taxing a harem of girls with threats of violence? this is where I diverge from sex workers on my opinion on this. They are pushing for discrimination. But this doesn't solve the coercion/security hired help issue. The only practical way I can see it going away is by allowing sex workers to be fully legalised, as in form a company, have accounts, pay tax, be inspected by environmental health(or would it be CQC?). have three workers, but only pay tax for one? time for an inspection! There are risks, and the stigma will force people underground. Holland and germany _still_ have a people trafficking problem I suspect there are better ways, but unless it sex work can be done on the high street(well not literally), we will never truly over come the stigma, and subsequent exploitation of people.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  >but the issue the article points out that she as an escort has no access to law, should something go wrong. She has little to no access to state sanctioned violence. Call it what it is. If she has a business dispute she has no recourse, she can't sue the other party and get the state to put them in a cage if they don't pay. Drug industry also has the same problem and does its violence in-house. Formerly prostitution did in-house the violence necessary to settle business disputes (i.e. pimps) but the internet has changed the business model somewhat.
naasking 5y ago
> so making any judgements would not be meaningful as OP was doing The OP's judgment was that he saw no reason why this escort's business should be illegal. That's not a judgment on whether other forms of prostitution should be legal.
- manquer 5y ago
  He said "this stuff" , which i assumed to mean escorting in general, he would have been more specific if he meant only hers ? Also it hard from government to legalize only some form of prostitution over others even if politically that is possible, practically impossible to enforce.
  - naasking 5y ago
    Sure, escorting businesses like hers, where there's clearly no victim being trafficked or abused. Also it's not at all difficult to legalize only some forms of prostitution. Consider this analogous situation: it's hard for a government to legalize only some forms of cutting people with knives, but we seem to do fine legally distinguishing surgery from assault with a deadly weapon.
native_samples 5y ago
I don't think that's true. I know a former escort pretty well and she's told me a lot about her work. It lines up very well with the article, except that she didn't have a high opinion of the very high end/expensive escorting because there simply isn't enough business available at the $1200/hr level. At least, not in Europe. It worked out much better for her to charge a more regular price and work full time. Otherwise the rest is the same. Most clients are whatever. A few she got to know well and liked. She worked with another person who did screening for her, etc.
- manquer 5y ago
  Perhaps the regular price for your friend is high end equivalent of 1200 ?. The author strongly says the population of an area makes a big difference in the rates you can charge. Also mean income (as measured by her study of other workers) is $100,000 with her average rates of her sample around 500-600. Effectively = F(x)(y)(z) X - number of people earning 200x the hourly rate Y - % of that interested in paying for sex[1] Z - relative beauty rank among service providers[2] in that area You cannot control beauty much but you could change for location and optimize for all the factors to get best rate[3]. Or optimize for total money depending on what is preferred. [1] age is strong factor so demographics is a good proxy metric. Also perhaps friction with law is proxy for cultural acceptance and can be numerically scaled : fully legal, decriminalized, or criminal with quantum of punishment for scaling. And degree of enforcement measured by number of arrests / convictions etc. [2] probably being 9 in LA wouldnt be the same as say Wyoming( demand would be lesser as a counter pressure) [3] touring is a thing perhaps because of this.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    Well they all tour because otherwise they saturate demand after a week or two in a local area. It's not about big disparities in local earning potential. Guys like novelty and even the ones that pick a girl and stick with her can't afford to come all the time. No, prices are almost standardized, at least in the 'normal' escorting world. I was surprised by this at first. My belief had always been that it'd be super competitive and the hottest girls would charge the highest prices, but it's not like that. Turns out guys don't really care that much about what a girl looks like beyond a baseline level of beauty, which is why so many can get away with hiding their face. What does matter a lot is what special services are offered (e.g. dominatrix stuff has a different price), and customer retention, which is 100% about whether you're nice and make the guys feel happy. The most successful girls are the ones that develop a loyal customer base. A few men even follow the girls around as they tour, but that's rare. Girls who are cold, uninterested etc don't get repeat custom and exhaust the area quite quickly. Whether to go high end or not probably depends a lot on how much else you have going on in life. Aella presumably has lots of other projects like OnlyFans, social media etc. This girl was a full timer. It was her job, and she worked pretty long hours (not anymore). She didn't use social media or create websites or whatever. That's normal. Most escorts use ad sites but they aren't creating dedicated websites for themselves. This girl doesn't even use social media at all, not even in her personal life (and never did, and she's not old). I did ask her once about the high end work but she indicated that at these sorts of prices you could get maybe one client a month, which just wasn't enough to be interesting given she could be making thousands per day reliably by charging a more normal price (a few hundred an hour). And of course with fewer customers you're a lot more exposed to one of them not coming anymore. The people saying "wow $1200/hr is a lot" are right, I suspect only in Silicon Valley are there a large enough percentage of über-rich but unlucky-with-women people to pay those sorts of rates. Most guys visited her around payday, it was a very cyclical business. If you do ever get to know an escort on a personal level, or especially more than one, be aware that this is a world that will seem - to the average office worker at least - astoundingly racist. It's touched on in the article but is something else that surprised me a lot. All the girls have strong opinions about different races and a large number demand to know a client's race before they turn up and will simply refuse clients of particular races. There is no stigma or shame associated with such discussions or policies. In escorting there are no HR departments to tell people what to think, 'diversity' isn't a thing, they're all independent or at most work with one or two other girls who are just like them. Learning about this made me reflect a lot on to what extent the middle class office/tech world obsession with anti-racism is a function of the heavy level of filtering that goes on at the front door as part of selecting for skills, university, background etc. The belief that everyone is culturally homogenous and race is just a pigment, just doesn't fly amongst escorts. They learn to generalize about their client base very quickly. To them the link between race and culture is both real and of critical importance.
Aella 5y ago
My experience was not that niche and unique; I tried to consistently show data around how prices might impact your experience. The amount you charge is not correlated with the majority of the questions I asked sex workers.
- brabel 5y ago
  In some Nordic countries, it's not illegal to sell sex, but it is to buy it. What do you think about that? Do you think making the men fear the law, but not the women, would do anything to help the women? I guess the government's objective is to kill the business completely, which is about as realistic as prohibiting alcohol.
  - c21h30o2 5y ago
    It lets SWERFs pat themselves on the back and feel good by pretending they're not punishing sex workers, only the "evil" men who provide sex workers with income. In practice we have seen in both Sweden and Norway that police systematically pressure landlords and hotels to evict sex workers from rented apartments/rooms under threat of pimping charges. Immigrant sex workers have been deported after going to the police to report crimes.
    - randomswede 5y ago
      With "systematically pressure", you can actually say "tries to enforce the law"[1], if they're aware that the premise is used for swapping sex for money, they need to make it stop. Simply paying for a not-for-work apartment or should not fall under that legal space, though. [1] https://lagen.nu/1962:700#K6P12S2 https://lagen.nu/1962:700#K6P12S2
      - c21h30o2 5y ago
        They really don't need to. They are kicking people out of their homes because of a law that shouldn't exist. They could just not prioritize it and free up resources for other crimes.
  - 5y ago

newsclues 5y ago

Scenario B workers under legalization will lose their jobs/income. Marginalized workers in the cannabis industry got pushed out when Canada legalized cannabis.

celticninja 5y ago
How do they lose their jobs? I get that a dealer who just sold weed now has to compete with legal alternatives or leave the sector. How so with sex work? You think the increased competition would put them out of work? What is a marginalized worker in the cannabis sector?
- newsclues 5y ago
  Customers buying from black markets have less choice. If I want drugs, I buy the drugs the dealer is pushing. In a legal market for sex, a customer can be more selective, so the less desired workers will lose customers. When weed was legalized the bottom rung of the weed dealers, lost their market to stores who suddenly offered a better option to consumers. Marginalization in the cannabis dealer scene would be poor people who sell a bit of weed to make ends meet or cheap/free weed in exchange for dealing.
  - celticninja 5y ago
    I think you are over estimating a cross over between these customers. Cheap Mexican brick weed is still being sold because legal cannabis is pricing poorer users out of the legal market. Legal stores are employing people legitimately and paying taxes, so I don't mind if some dealers now have to quit or diversify. The more jobs we have in legal drugs the fewer required in the illegal drug trade. This is a net positive to society.
robrtsql 5y ago
This is why most sex workers are specifically in favor of decriminalization and not 'legalization'.
- 5y ago