3 ms·

Many (most?) of the women involved in these situations don't go there out of choice or with full knowledge of what they're getting involved in; they're either l

Many (most?) of the women involved in these situations don't go there out of choice or with full knowledge of what they're getting involved in; they're either lied to and subsequently trapped, sold by their families (which is where poverty is a big factor, and certainly is not a choice made by the girls themselves), or outright kidnapped. That's the difference in your man vs. woman scenario - someone working in a coal mine may not feel like they have much choice but as you say they are agreeing to the work. Of course this is not to say that some men aren't likewise tricked or forced into such jobs but they too are victims.

pcthrowaway 11y ago
If their choice is to watch themselves or their families starve or die of disease, or to go to a likely death in terrible work conditions where they can at least help their families with the money they earn, it's not really much of a choice at all.
- danparsonson 11y ago
  Quite right but it is still a choice, they at least have some agency. I'm not in any way attempting to downplay the awful situations we're discussing, but there is still a significant psychological difference between "I'm doing this to make my life and my families lives better" and "This is being done to me against my will for other peoples' benefit", is there not?
  - netcan 11y ago
    I disagree. The line between consensual, coerced or exploited are sometimes vague but they are real. It's like the pornography line. It's vague, some things are grey, it's culturally contextual but it is a real line. people usually know it when they see it. When extremely disempowered, poor and desperate people interact with much richer, more powerful people who see them as just a means to an end and are completely contemptuous of their humanity (their dignity, their desires..), we cannot call this agency. If a university teacher dates a student or a boss dates an employee, we view it with suspicion because we know that dynamic can be abusive, though it is not necessarily so. Sometimes things are what they seem. Sometimes a name on a dotted line or other symbol of agency means nothing. If you find a dozen girls from rural moldova living in an Istanbul basement, making almost no money, ostracized by society and another group of people making the money and the decisions… I think it's prudent to assume what seems obvious.
    - nostrebored 11y ago
      I would argue that that 'Pornography line' is a very personal distinction you've made. Pornography still crosses the line into coerced and exploited. Read the firsthand accounts of women who have left the porn industry. Watch documentaries about people going into the porn industry. These are people who are desperate and taken advantage of, hurt and abused. I've seen a few statistics, but all of them have said that the average life expectancy of a porn performer is under 50, due to the high rates of suicide and drug abuse. I really don't see much grey there -- I don't think letting poor people sell their kidneys is moral, just like I don't think pornography is moral. Completely agree with the rest of your post though.
      - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        There's a lot of muddy water here. Self-selection for one. Who knows whether the folks going into the business are already selected for an mtbf of 50? 'Desperate and taken advantage of' is a big category, and those folks often come to no great end. Its not a unique feature of this industry - heck even WalMart employees fit there. Cause and effect might be getting confused here.
        nostrebored 11y ago
        However, Walmart employers do not offer their potential addict employees drugs before they go to work. They don't have them participate in labor that frequently compromises their ability to work with no effort to support them when this happens. The employees of Walmart have actual worker's rights and nearly universal standards of employment in this country, while Pornography, especially amateur pornography, has none of this. The self-selection claim is not independent from the claim I'm making -- in fact I find them to be very correlated. You're getting a specific subset of people who are willing to do Pornography, most notably people who are desperate, potentially addicted/suicidal young women. Providing them this predatory avenue and calling it 'empowerment' is beyond unethical.
        vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  - alextgordon 11y ago
    I think that many people go into dangerous jobs with noble goals, but once they realise the reality of it, they want out (but it's too late).
  - DanBC 11y ago
    There are many men who agree to go and work for someone, and who are then forced into labour. If they try to leave they are chased and sometimes beaten or mutilated or killed. People mean different things when they say "wage slave". It's an imprecise term and it leads to confusion. But bonded labour leads to some horrific abuses of men, women, and children. Forced child trafficking: http://m.irinnews.org/Report/94721/AFRICA-High-cost-of-child-trafficking#.VYgJXa2CPTo http://m.irinnews.org/Report/94721/AFRICA-High-cost-of-child... Ugandan women forced into sex work: http://m.irinnews.org/Report/95013/UGANDA-Women-trafficked-into-sex-work#.VYgJaUOCPTo http://m.irinnews.org/Report/95013/UGANDA-Women-trafficked-i... A sixteen year old woman who escaped the LRA after years of rape is now an entrepreneur: http://www.unhcr.org.uk/news-and-views/news-list/news-detail/article/from-captive-to-budding-entrepreneur-with-a-boost-from-unhcr.html http://www.unhcr.org.uk/news-and-views/news-list/news-detail...
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- crobertsbmw 11y ago
  I think the issue is: can one easily come and go from their current state to any one of a set of next best alternatives? For instance, your job as a software dev, you could probably quit and and go be a teacher, or maybe you want to dig ditches, or maybe you want to be a blackjack dealer. Those things are probably all realistically attainable. Whereas, if you are sold into the sex trade and locked in a room, not able to shower for days at a time, you aren't able to swap careers as frictionlessly.
antris 11y ago
> That's the difference in your man vs. woman scenario - someone working in a coal mine may not feel like they have much choice but as you say they are agreeing to the work. Of course this is not to say that some men aren't likewise tricked or forced into such jobs but they too are victims. They pull the same tricks on men too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6yoBcEXwmQ#t=3m58s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6yoBcEXwmQ#t=3m58s
- danparsonson 11y ago
  Indeed; another example would be construction workers in Dubai - I seem to remember an article linked on here a few years ago about that.
  - rayiner 11y ago
    Construction workers in Dubai is a great analogy to "voluntary" sex work.
  - geomark 11y ago
    Take a look at the horrible slave trade story unfolding now involving Rohingya (men mainly) being trafficked to serve as slave labor aboard Thai fishing boats. Some transit camps were recently discovered near the border with Malaysia containing mass graves.
- api 11y ago
  Is anyone saying they don't?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
agumonkey 11y ago
Are you sure coal mine workers were aware of everything ? You may never know what will happen even if you worked there for long. And maybe previous workers, those still alive to talk, were coerced into silence to avoid being fired, may not want to stress acquaintance trying to earn money, or would like more colleagues to lessen the load. Maybe that wasn't the case back in the days. But today's miners seem rarely given any choice or information (talking about African rare earth minerals miners)
eevilspock 11y ago
Male hackers doth protest too much, methinks. I am amazed and saddened how the top comments and comment replies exspend all their energies declaring that men have it just as bad as women, that labelling it human trafficking and the women as victims is so unfair to men! The next most frequent and popular comments declare that the real problem is that we haven't yet legalized prostitution. Discussion of the tragedy and moral failings of our modern world and other possibilities that the above two are few and far down.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
facepalm 11y ago
When they capture a city, ISIS kills all men older than 14 years and turns the women and girls into sex slaves (or force marries them). It seems likely that in situations where women are forced to take up prostitution, men are not living in the greatest circumstances either.

pcthrowaway 11y ago

If their choice is to watch themselves or their families starve or die of disease, or to go to a likely death in terrible work conditions where they can at least help their families with the money they earn, it's not really much of a choice at all.

danparsonson 11y ago
Quite right but it is still a choice, they at least have some agency. I'm not in any way attempting to downplay the awful situations we're discussing, but there is still a significant psychological difference between "I'm doing this to make my life and my families lives better" and "This is being done to me against my will for other peoples' benefit", is there not?
- netcan 11y ago
  I disagree. The line between consensual, coerced or exploited are sometimes vague but they are real. It's like the pornography line. It's vague, some things are grey, it's culturally contextual but it is a real line. people usually know it when they see it. When extremely disempowered, poor and desperate people interact with much richer, more powerful people who see them as just a means to an end and are completely contemptuous of their humanity (their dignity, their desires..), we cannot call this agency. If a university teacher dates a student or a boss dates an employee, we view it with suspicion because we know that dynamic can be abusive, though it is not necessarily so. Sometimes things are what they seem. Sometimes a name on a dotted line or other symbol of agency means nothing. If you find a dozen girls from rural moldova living in an Istanbul basement, making almost no money, ostracized by society and another group of people making the money and the decisions… I think it's prudent to assume what seems obvious.
  - nostrebored 11y ago
    I would argue that that 'Pornography line' is a very personal distinction you've made. Pornography still crosses the line into coerced and exploited. Read the firsthand accounts of women who have left the porn industry. Watch documentaries about people going into the porn industry. These are people who are desperate and taken advantage of, hurt and abused. I've seen a few statistics, but all of them have said that the average life expectancy of a porn performer is under 50, due to the high rates of suicide and drug abuse. I really don't see much grey there -- I don't think letting poor people sell their kidneys is moral, just like I don't think pornography is moral. Completely agree with the rest of your post though.
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      There's a lot of muddy water here. Self-selection for one. Who knows whether the folks going into the business are already selected for an mtbf of 50? 'Desperate and taken advantage of' is a big category, and those folks often come to no great end. Its not a unique feature of this industry - heck even WalMart employees fit there. Cause and effect might be getting confused here.
      - nostrebored 11y ago
        However, Walmart employers do not offer their potential addict employees drugs before they go to work. They don't have them participate in labor that frequently compromises their ability to work with no effort to support them when this happens. The employees of Walmart have actual worker's rights and nearly universal standards of employment in this country, while Pornography, especially amateur pornography, has none of this. The self-selection claim is not independent from the claim I'm making -- in fact I find them to be very correlated. You're getting a specific subset of people who are willing to do Pornography, most notably people who are desperate, potentially addicted/suicidal young women. Providing them this predatory avenue and calling it 'empowerment' is beyond unethical.
        vezzy-fnord 11y ago
- alextgordon 11y ago
  I think that many people go into dangerous jobs with noble goals, but once they realise the reality of it, they want out (but it's too late).
- DanBC 11y ago
  There are many men who agree to go and work for someone, and who are then forced into labour. If they try to leave they are chased and sometimes beaten or mutilated or killed. People mean different things when they say "wage slave". It's an imprecise term and it leads to confusion. But bonded labour leads to some horrific abuses of men, women, and children. Forced child trafficking: http://m.irinnews.org/Report/94721/AFRICA-High-cost-of-child-trafficking#.VYgJXa2CPTo http://m.irinnews.org/Report/94721/AFRICA-High-cost-of-child... Ugandan women forced into sex work: http://m.irinnews.org/Report/95013/UGANDA-Women-trafficked-into-sex-work#.VYgJaUOCPTo http://m.irinnews.org/Report/95013/UGANDA-Women-trafficked-i... A sixteen year old woman who escaped the LRA after years of rape is now an entrepreneur: http://www.unhcr.org.uk/news-and-views/news-list/news-detail/article/from-captive-to-budding-entrepreneur-with-a-boost-from-unhcr.html http://www.unhcr.org.uk/news-and-views/news-list/news-detail...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
crobertsbmw 11y ago
I think the issue is: can one easily come and go from their current state to any one of a set of next best alternatives? For instance, your job as a software dev, you could probably quit and and go be a teacher, or maybe you want to dig ditches, or maybe you want to be a blackjack dealer. Those things are probably all realistically attainable. Whereas, if you are sold into the sex trade and locked in a room, not able to shower for days at a time, you aren't able to swap careers as frictionlessly.

antris 11y ago

> That's the difference in your man vs. woman scenario - someone working in a coal mine may not feel like they have much choice but as you say they are agreeing to the work. Of course this is not to say that some men aren't likewise tricked or forced into such jobs but they too are victims. They pull the same tricks on men too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6yoBcEXwmQ#t=3m58s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6yoBcEXwmQ#t=3m58s

danparsonson 11y ago
Indeed; another example would be construction workers in Dubai - I seem to remember an article linked on here a few years ago about that.
- rayiner 11y ago
  Construction workers in Dubai is a great analogy to "voluntary" sex work.
- geomark 11y ago
  Take a look at the horrible slave trade story unfolding now involving Rohingya (men mainly) being trafficked to serve as slave labor aboard Thai fishing boats. Some transit camps were recently discovered near the border with Malaysia containing mass graves.
api 11y ago
Is anyone saying they don't?

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

agumonkey 11y ago

Are you sure coal mine workers were aware of everything ? You may never know what will happen even if you worked there for long. And maybe previous workers, those still alive to talk, were coerced into silence to avoid being fired, may not want to stress acquaintance trying to earn money, or would like more colleagues to lessen the load. Maybe that wasn't the case back in the days. But today's miners seem rarely given any choice or information (talking about African rare earth minerals miners)

eevilspock 11y ago

Male hackers doth protest too much, methinks. I am amazed and saddened how the top comments and comment replies exspend all their energies declaring that men have it just as bad as women, that labelling it human trafficking and the women as victims is so unfair to men! The next most frequent and popular comments declare that the real problem is that we haven't yet legalized prostitution. Discussion of the tragedy and moral failings of our modern world and other possibilities that the above two are few and far down.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

facepalm 11y ago

When they capture a city, ISIS kills all men older than 14 years and turns the women and girls into sex slaves (or force marries them). It seems likely that in situations where women are forced to take up prostitution, men are not living in the greatest circumstances either.