We pay for everything else. A professional is a professional. Mechanic or prostitute. It’s a mutual transaction. Regulate it and make sure it’s safe. When ai porn blows up there going to be a lot more sex workers.
When ai porn blows up there going to be a lot more sex workers.
How?
The only job left will be fucking each other, oh no what a dystopia.
I’m assuming more adults wanting the real thing
I don’t see a problem with it as long as no trafficking is involved.
I agree with this. I have found that most women do not however. It has been a great trouble for me, to talk about, when trying to find a new partner.
You should definitely bring this up as often as possible. Enjoying coerced intimacy is totally well adjusted behavior.
Why do you hate sex workers?
real big-brain take
Since it’s safe to assume you don’t talk to people in real life, here’s a mass of “reviews” of sex workers. People who buy sex are disgusting.
Says the person with “McCainRBGcreampie” as a username.
I don’t get it
Big shocker there…
This is pretty surprising to me. In my experience (as a woman myself) women are much more likely than men to be vocally supportive of treating sex work like any other service and of breaking the taboo of offering or receiving those services.
I actually can’t think of any woman in my life who would judge someone negatively for seeing a sex worker (assuming full consent from all involved parties including partners). Most men I know would similarly have no issue with it, but a handful would read it as not being able to get laid and see that as something negative.
My social circle isn’t representative of the general population, but I’m still surprised to hear your experience is dramatically different. I wonder if the way the conversations are going make the issue more about consent, cheating, or other non-sex-work-specific ethical questions.
I have sometimes seen a phenomenon where people are very supportive of things until they are affected directly, and then they are supportive of those things in other people’s lives.
deleted by creator
People supporting sex work being legal and the non-acceptance of people using sex workers in illegal/non consensual situations are congruous positions.
Why are you talking about this with potential partners lmao?
mmmm gonna go out on a limb and say it’s most likely for the same reason he started this thread
Then they are not worth your time
They don’t want to date a man who is regularly going to sex workers?
@Driftking@lemmy.ml What have you been telling these women?
Yeah I’m not sure why or how this would be a topic of conversation when, yknow, dating women.
I think the issue is the portrayal of the types of men who use such services in media. They’re usually not good people.
What incredible acting, I felt like I was there
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/-2LUssy5lwA
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Yeah it should be legalized.
What people do with their bodies is their own choice.
Logically, if it’s two consenting adults, why not?
Personally, fucking ew.
Overall, if you are single, you do you! If you have someone waiting at home, go fuckin sort yourself, never be a cheater.
Let alone cheating, you don’t want to catch something and carry it home. So yeah, cheating sucks.
I have very mixed feelings.
On the one hand, I don’t think that there’s anything inherently immoral about sex work.
On the other hand, a large amount of sex work is not voluntary and consensual.
There are a few sites where (legitimate) sex workers can advertise. Prices vary considerably, but you’ll typically see prices starting at $400+ for “full service”. They typically have specific limits laid out, what things they do and don’t do, and usually require some kind of screening for their own safety. If you go to sites where clients can review sex workers, you can find listings for $50-$100 for full-service sex work with “new girls”, frequently Asian. These women–most of the people exchanging sex for money are women—in those listings do not screen clients, do not have pre-stated limits, frequently do not require the use of barriers, and always work for an “agency”. It is clear to me that these are not women that are doing sex work consensually. People that frequent these sex workers are complicit in their abuse. (Willing sex workers can and do work through agencies; that makes their client screening less onerous for them. But they still have clear limits, and not rock-bottom prices.)
Given how many women, esp. at the lower end of the pricing spectrum, aren’t doing sex work consensually, I would not have a good opinion of a person that chooses to use them. I could not accept someone that knew that they were trafficked and didn’t care, or chose to ignore the probability that they were doing sex work involuntarily.
I would have no opinion either way about someone that chooses to use a professional domme; that, at least, is a segment of the market that’s unlikely to involved trafficked victims.
I know you probably mean prostitutes or “escorts”, but aren’t porn actors also sex workers? I watch porn all the time, so do a lot of people. I feel sorry for the sad sacks who aren’t “allowed” to look at porn because their significant other is so goddamn insecure, the idea of their partner having their own private thoughts scares the shit out of them.
You are correct, but people treat “prostitute” like it’s a slur and thereby (wittingly or not) wildly obfuscate any conversation one attempts to have about them and their clientele, etc.
What is your opinion on women that make use of sex worker services?
Shouldn’t you start a new thread for this?
I’d probably be called a sexist pig tho.
IMO the more that money is involved in anything, the less actually voluntary it is, because we need money to live and plenty of people don’t have a lot of options for making money. With sex it’s really important for everything to be actually consensual, but paying for it makes that ambiguous, they can’t really know, so I see it as creepy and unethical.
Right, if you pay to have sex with a person that’s utterly destitute, completely desperate, and has no other options, is that REALLY consensual?
There are plenty of examples of sex workers that are NOT in that situation, but there are just as many (I would guess more) examples of people that ARE in that situation.
I’d be curious to see whether sex workers increase/decrease in a region that implements a universal basic income.
I’ve known people who are sex workers and they’re some of the most talented and intelligent people I’ve ever met. Replace sex-worker with marketing and that’s who they are. There’s nothing involuntary about what they do. Unless you consider that my work is non-consensual because I don’t want to do it if I could just survive without it.
Unless you consider that my work is non-consensual because I don’t want to do it if I could just survive without it.
Yeah, pretty much, it’s one of the worst things about our society and needs fixing in general. It’s just potentially extra bad when sex is involved because of its emotional, cultural, etc. significance. I don’t mean to suggest all sex workers are desperate victims, I’m sure some of them are well off, have options, and are doing it because they want to, but they all have a business incentive to try to appear that way, so someone looking to hire them can’t really be confident what they are doing isn’t ultimately exploitation.
I couldn’t really pin down exactly what my problem with sex work was until reading this. I try not to judge, but I’ve always found it problematic and I do find myself feeling like it shouldn’t have to be a thing. Anecdotally, every person I’ve interacted with who brought the topic up always joked about wanting to do it just for the money.
The fact that it’s paid for as a service makes it inherently open to exploitation, and thus unethical.
Most of what I know is informed by stereotypes from various facets of American pop culture and not reality so my opinion is not valuable
I’d say share it anyway, could still be a really insightful or useful perspective
No, they’re a hexbear user.
She’s a hexbear user. We have pronoun tags for a reason. She doesn’t state they/them as her pronouns so please edit your post to not misgender her.
“They” is a more general word and does not specify gender. Personally I use that word when I want it to be clear I am not implying that gender is relevant to my statement. It isn’t inaccurate and people shouldn’t always have to include references to gender in everything they say.
Every. Single. Fucking. Time. I point out misgendering and some cissie has the fucking nerve to argue with me why blatantly degendering women, a common smear tactic among British terfs btw, isn’t a bad thing akshually. “oH i’M oNlY dOiG tHiS wHeN gEnDeR iSn’T rElEvAnT”, the fuck are you talking about, respecting trans people’s gender is ALWAYS relevant, you do not get to decide on this. This is our decision alone, to deny trans people the autonomy over their gendered self expresion and gender recognition is a textbook case of transphobia.
To make this perfectly clear: There is ONE, just ONE, correct response when somebody calls you out for misgendering somebody. It’s apologizing and correcting your mistake. That’s a tiny thing to do and takes a fraction of the time it takes to argue with me, and it will cause you one millionth of the distress you’re up for when you act transphobic in my presence. If she would be fine with being they / themed, she would have given they / them as a second set of pronouns. Why is that so hard to understand?
I’m sharing my opinions about language, not being transphobic. What I said is not specific to trans women, I had no reason to think the woman replied to was transgender. If you think my disagreeing with you means I must secretly hate you because you’re trans, you’re wrong, but I hope the world treats you with more compassion and respect in the future.
“oH i’M oNlY dOiG tHiS wHeN gEnDeR iSn’T rElEvAnT”
That’s a distortion of what I said. My claim is not that the non-relevance of gender morally justifies using non-gendered language, I’m not trying to be defensive. It’s that a statement using gendered language and a statement not using gendered language is a different expression, the meaning is affected. Think about when singular ‘they’ was less well accepted, and it was more common in writing to use ‘he’ as a catch-all term. Yes, readers understood that it was possible the person being referred to was a woman despite the use of the word ‘he’, but that word still conveyed assumptions about the world. What if that isn’t your actual intent? Then you don’t use gendered words. That is a legitimate choice.
I hope the world treats you with more compassion and respect in the future.
Gee, thanks for your pity, but i don’t need that. Most of my friends are cis and i know what it’s like when cis people treat me with compassion and respect, as most people are actually capable of that. It’s not that hard. They listen when i voice my grievances and understand that i have a different, yet valid perspective on such things than them, and that they can learn something from that to be more inclusive in the future. Probably because they understand that calling out transphobia doesn’t mean calling somebody a transphobe. I would’ve used different language than that if my impression would have been malice instead of ignorance.
This is our decision alone
nobody is saying you can’t identify or specify whatever pronouns you want. But it laughable to say it’s your decision if other people use them in the name of “tolerance,” of all things
Your insistence on ordering trans people around and telling us if we´re allowed to find open misgenderings to be offensive would be laughable if it wouldn’t be so disgusting. Pronouns are not a polite request to pretty please tone down your transphobia out of the kindness of your heart, respecting our pronouns is the absolute bare minimum of respect you can show towards us.
You write a wall of text an get all worked up just because someone used “they” just to be neutral. No one is going to check your profiles one by one just to know your pronouns. This is the real world, no whatever crazy wuerdo echo chamber is hexabear.
Maybe your suicide rates wouldn’t be so high if you didn’t get offended for basically nothing. Is not that you get discrimination against you, is that you can handle society as everyone else can.
Pronouns don’t mean shit, just grow up man
Lmao : 🤣
I love my customers
Safe. Sane. Consensual. Pretty simple. If money changes hands, whatever. Don’t be a dick and no means no. In fact, until there is a yes, you cannot assume there is consent. I digress…
My idea of what the average sex worker client is like isn’t positive, but I wouldn’t hold it against someone I already know to be upstanding if I found out they had used one’s services.
I hold no prejudices. In general, I try not to judge anyone until I’ve got to know them, what their values are, etc.
I hired an escort once. It was awkward. First, I was paranoid about it being a sting or something. Then, I was worried about getting my wallet stolen. When “it” was over, I started getting up to leave, then the women was like “your time’s not up yet,” then laid beside me and started a conversation about q-anon type stuff. Lady had some mental issues, which made me feel kinda bad about the whole thing (and a little bit scared at the time, lol).
Anyways, I would never bring this up on a date or even to a partner (or friend). It is completely irrelevant to a relationship. If asked directly if I’ve ever hired a sex worker, I would lie. There’s a lot of stigma around sex workers and their clients, even with people who are generally more “accepting.” Someone could be a good potential partner, friend, or whatever, but have one weird hang-up about not dating someone who was a “john,” and I wouldn’t want to exclude them from being a potential partner/friend just because of that.
I hired an escort once when drunk at like 2am. I couldn’t get hard so we just talked for 30 minutes or so and I left.
I do tell people, including dates, if they ask or it comes up. Mostly because I find it an amusing story and people get amused. My dates haven’t reacted negatively so far. I’m sure some will but typically I try to filter them before we get to that point.
I don’t like judgy people or super-prudes.
My opinion on them is the same as whatever opinion the sex workers have on them
If you support the sex workers, this is the main answer. If you like them but not their clients how is that supposed to work economically?
It’s pretty straight forward, really.
hexbear user being utterly predictable
good to see we’re renowned for our correct opinions already
Can’t make a proper argument- check
Must rely on memes and gifs to communicate- check
On the rare occasion they actually put their big boy pants on and write some text it’s super offensive/racist/bigoted- check
Hexbear user confirmed.
racist
What, do you think cracker is a slur?
If you like them but not their clients how is that supposed to work economically?
The Nordic or neo-abolitionist model exists. Sweden was the first nation to implement it I think. Selling sex is legal, buying is not. Seems to work for them
You’ve got that backwards. In Sweden, buying is illegal, selling is not. Essentially turning the customer into a rapist and the seller into a victim. And rightly so! Considering that most women selling sex are doing so because of human trafficking, or at least coercion or desperation, it’s cruel, immoral, and ironic that they are criminalized in the rest of the world outside of Sweden and the other countries that have followed their model.
Men who pay for sex are the driving force behind human trafficking.
I think you are agreeing with the post above yours. They said that selling sex is legal, while buying is not.
Yes. My mistake. Thanks.
That’s exactly what I said. I’ll just quote myself here:
Selling sex is legal, buying is not.
Apologies. I swear I reread your comment 3 times, and each time I replaced legal with illegal in my mind. I see it now!
Seems to work for them.
Do you know something I don’t? From what I hear both sex workers and johns continue to exist, just like in the old abolitionist/prohibitionist model.
The point isn’t to prohibit it, it’s to give the prostitute the legal advantage when reporting the john (and thereby rein in the behavior of johns with the tacit threat)
Well that’s nice, but I feel like it could also be abused. What if a prostitute (which is one kind of sex worker) threatened to report a john as a form of blackmail?
It’d probably be best to regulate the entire thing as a legal industry and put in place some sort of watchlist for suspected bad johns.
What if a prostitute . . . threatened to report a john as a form of blackmail?
They already can and sometimes do, usually as honeypots (here I mean the criminal kind). “Blackmail is illegal” and also blackmailing someone being very dangerous are two major elements preventing it. I don’t think making buying legal would be a significant factor since usually the blackmail is on the level of social standing, not getting charged with a relatively minor crime (generally a misdemeanor). Furthermore, especially because prostitution exists more in the open in these societies, the prostitute who blackmails would also have her reputation damaged quite severely, to the point that it might not be viable for her to continue her profession if it gets out that she even attempted blackmail – to say nothing of the fact that, not to beat a dead horse, having someone who absolutely hates your guts (the victim) makes being a prostitute much more dangerous: What if this is one of the old john’s friends or someone he hired to hurt you?
“The plight of the johns” is also just not a very moving cause because anyone who is worried about getting blackmailed even given all of these factors can just not buy sex. Prostitutes are much more likely to be desperate – though less likely in these countries than in a place like the US.
Well, there’s some good arguments there. But making something you want people to do illegal is certainly counterintuitive and doesn’t seem like a sane approach to me.
“The plight of the johns” is also just not a very moving cause because anyone who is worried about getting blackmailed even given all of these factors can just not buy sex.
Ah, so you do want to prohibit sex work. I get that’s not what you think you’re saying, but prostitutes can’t exist without johns, and so it doesn’t fall under “support sex workers”. Now, abolishing sex work is a thing intelligent, well-meaning people argue for as well, but that’s a different conversation.
I want to live in a world where no one feels they are struggling so much that they need to turn to selling their body for sex.
However, I don’t live in that world, so in the meantime I support sex workers, because sex work is work.
The men who use their services? That’s a tougher nut to crack.
My partners brother is heavily mentally disabled and pushing 40, he’s still very much like a child, but obviously does not have a child’s libido. This man has never had an intimate interaction with a woman. He might never get the chance, he struggles to talk to women, even women who have similar issues as himself. I think sex workers could be beneficial for him, in the right context, for giving him intimacy he may otherwise never experience. I don’t think he would ever think/know to pursue a sex worker, but I could be wrong. There’s also the issue of his emotions began to be involved, which leads me to…
I’d be more worried about him finding OnlyFans and blowing through all his disability money each month instead of realizing he’s not actually getting much out of such a “relationship.” He’s the kind of person who a parasocial relationship like that could really damage their already troubling mental health. The same thing could happen with a prostitute, but they are less likely to hang the relationships on fake social cues that say they care about you. He’s not quite advanced enough to understand that these women are being paid to pretend to care, I don’t think.
Also, there’s other types of men who use these services I’m sure aren’t a net positive. There are plenty of conservative men who already view a standard relationship as a sexual transaction (I take care of girl = she give me sex), so they’re not far from viewing everything women with transactional already. Secondly, not only do the already view it as transactional, many of these conservative men turn to prostitutes because average women simply don’t want to date them because of their horrible, outdated views on women’s bodily autonomy. They are already angsty and moody because of women not wanting to date them, and they often are willing to take out their frustrations on the woman they paid to serve them. I see these men as not respecting and hurting the women they turn to for sex work.
Anyway, just some quick thoughts on the subject.
I wonder if there’s a third type too where a person has an extremely busy life and doesn’t have time or possibly doesn’t want an intimate relationship.
I don’t know if it’s “right” that this type of person pays for sex. I think it makes sense as long as they respect the person that they’re paying and understand this person does not ‘belong’ to them - but this last point appears to be a problem for people whenever they pay anyone for anything.
There’s plenty of other types, those were just the ones I had time to write about before I pop off to work for the day.
I wonder if there’s a third type too where a person has an extremely busy life and doesn’t have time or possibly doesn’t want an intimate relationship.
That would be me. I work 60 hours a week most weeks. I just want regular, casual, no strings attached sex.
Unfortunately I can’t actually afford sex workers, but some day…
Your comment led me towards an amusing thought: in the Harry Potter universe, goblins sell things to wizards for the duration of the wizard’s life, but then they expect it to go back to the goblins because ownership works differently for them vs wizards. Wizards don’t always/usually understand or respect that. So… If I ever was in the position to open a brothel, perhaps I’d name it “The Goblin’s Den.” I… Don’t know what kind of clientele that would attract though.
Weird cross over but okay :D
Thank you for putting what’s pretty much exactly my view on the topic into words.
I would like to add though that I expect of men using sex services to thoroughly check and make sure that the women whose service they use provide this service by their own choice, which means they are in no way forced, not by pimps but also not by financial hardship.
With this constraint I’m afraid that many if not most existing sex services are actually probably not ethical to use.
Because of the poor treatment of the workers due to it being illegal, I’d say the majority are not great to terrible people.
If they go to legal, well managed brothels, they’re probably ok people.
But if it’s illegal there wouldn’t be legal brothels around?
And I haven’t followed through but I’ve looked into prostitution in my area through various means. There do seem to be fairly moral options in my opinion. People who work independent and interact directly with the customer and they keep all the money. They have their own space to meet and they have the option of refusal at any time.
I’m not saying you’re doing this intentionally, or that what you’re saying is harmful, but I do worry. It feels like you’re demonizing an entire industry and adding to the idea that it’s immoral unless done through brothels. Sex work is work, and while often people end up there out of necessity, that’s not much different than any other job people work these days. I would say that people who knowingly pay for sex work where the worker doesn’t have their full autonomy is, at best, selfish and shortsighted.
Or are you saying that because it’s a crime, by paying for it they’re contributing to the sex worker also doing something illegal and that’s bad?
It’s not illegal everywhere. I think their point is that legal and licensed brothels are less likely to be exploitative and involved in human trafficking.
Sure, not all sex work where it is illegal is exploitative, but I’m not sure most clients would shop around for the ethical choice like you have.
Yes. This. Words are hard.
I absolutely believe sex work is work and I support it. I live in the USA where it is illegal. This leads to vilifying sex workers. A lot of them are victims. This makes any dealings with sex workers suspect. The typical “law abiding citizen” wouldnt go.
I’ve been to Germany and it’s treated like a business transaction. (Not cold, just not shady or unusual). I feel like anyone that went there would be just a normal guy.
