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steven lightfoot's avatar

Judith Butler is a genuine idiot. No sane person would take anything she says seriously. She is not qualified to even be a garbage-women.

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Daniel Solow's avatar

I do think "sex work is work" is a slogan women parrot mostly unthinkingly, often while actually feeling uncomfortable about prostitution. But I think you're going too far the other way when you talk about "renting out orifices," etc.

I think there are different types of prostitution, sometimes it's exploitative, sometimes not. I don't think average people really need to think about it that much. And I think that's the main problem: the internet always elevates these highly charged issues and flattens them into two extremes (sex work is noble vs sex work is violence against women).

It's more complicated than two extremes. If you aren't willing to engage with that complexity, maybe stop thinking about it, and definitely stop talking about it.

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Gemma Dykstra's avatar

Nothing complex about exploiting drug addicts for blowjobs

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magi83's avatar

Yeah, I think we can acknowledge both (a) normalisation of prostitution is probably bad and being a prostitute isn’t something most women should aspire to and (b) women who choose prostitution can have agency and can be beneficiaries of that arrangement. There’s an argument to be made that higher class prostitutes are simply leveraging outlier traits in sexual appetite and openness - most women don’t want to have sex with hundreds of men which creates a gap in the market for those who do.

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Apr 25
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AweDude's avatar

How, exactly, is porn as a genre "bad"? If I write "Jill fucked Ben", who is being harmed? Jill and Ben don't exist. You cannot harm fictional beings!

(Sorry, I somehow got onto a thread with a completely different person, so my initial comment didn't reach you)

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May 12
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AweDude's avatar

Oh, but the other person said that they were uninterested in defending your point. The only logical conclusion I could reach was that I somehow got some wires crossed and was messaging a completely different person.

Well, now that we settled that bit of confusion, I would like to reiterate that porn, as a genre of media, has no inherent harm.

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AweDude's avatar

How, exactly, is porn as a genre "bad"? If I write "Jill fucked Ben", who is being harmed? Jill and Ben don't exist. You cannot harm fictional beings!

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May 12
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AweDude's avatar

Erotica, as well as pornographic animations, comics, manga, 3d models, and so on, are all under the general umbrella of "porn." But, even if we exclusively look at live action porn, the assumption that "porn is bad" isn't correct. Porn is a genre of media, and no genre of media is inherently harmful.

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May 12
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AweDude's avatar

If you are saying that porn is bad, I can, with equal authority, say that western dramas are also as bad.

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GenderRealistMom's avatar

I cannot find any reasonable way to finish the sentence " '“honoured and recognised the sex worker community FOR ...” Like, what is she honoring them for? Exactly what essential service are they providing and how are they serving the community? Even if you take a neutral position of "my body, my choice", doesn't honoring something require to , you know, have something to honor for?

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Bob's avatar

We’re not allowed to tolerate things we don’t like anymore. We’re required to celebrate them.

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XxYwise's avatar

Slut-shame much?

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Apr 30
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XxYwise's avatar

I think the democratization of porn is a good thing. I also recognize that there is much we do not yet know about the evolution and history of human sexuality.

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Apr 29
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XxYwise's avatar

Oh really, THAT’S what’s behind it all?

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Apr 30
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XxYwise's avatar

The lack of slut-shaming causing all those things you mentioned...

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goodnightrose's avatar

The tolerance>acceptance>celebration pipeline for all manner of debauchery was a decidedly short one. So, yeah, entirely fair to suggest it's behind much of the culture-rot we face today.

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HWSr.'s avatar

Another twisted lie folks have been sold to signal beneficent open-mindedness. Progressiveness. Virtue. Nope. What parent, when holding their newborn baby girl thinks, “My greatest hope for her is she grows up to be a prostitute.” God almighty. Exactly none. I am so tired of the lies and abject sickness. Enough.

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Jake's avatar

Because they don’t think past the orgasms = financial autonomy calculation.

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AweDude's avatar

That is such a shallow take. Just because exploitation exists in an industry does not make that industry as a whole exploitative.

Take farming, a fundamental profession for nearly any civilization. For the vast majority of humanity’s history, the bulk of farming was done by some flavour of slave. Sometimes it was “simple” indentured servants, sometimes it was chattel slavery of African Slave trade. But, the point stands that most of the crops were grown by non-free hands. Even today, many farms employ what basically amounts to slave labour, where foreign people are trafficked into a country, have their passports taken, and are forced to work long hours for barely any pay.

Does that mean we should say that farming, as an industry, is fundamentally exploitative? Should we say that the local granny growing an herb garden is being as exploited as the Puerto Rican being a slave to some rich farmer?

Obviously not, as the issue is not with the whole growing-food-in-the-ground, but the work environment surrounding that.

As for the general response to certain activities, that shouldn’t be a factor about whether or not a certain act is moral or ethical. Eating pizza is perfectly acceptable, but I would personally be at least a bit disgusted if I saw someone eating 100 pizzas at once. Does this disgust mean that eating pizza actually isn’t acceptable? Does my disgust mean the person actually shouldn’t eat 100 pizzas, and should somehow be prevented from doing so?

I hope the answer is an obvious and emphatic no, because so many people find so many different things disgusting. To keep the topic on pizza, many people find pineapple on pizza to be disgusting. Should that mean that pineapple on pizza should be banned? Others find onions on pizza just as revolting. Others find anchovies, or olives, or pepperoni, or cilantro, or cheese itself. Some people are gluten intolerant, and will literally destroy their lower intestines if they eat bread products. Others are lactose intolerant, and will become violently ill shortly after eating cheese. Under the idea that “if people find it disgusting, it is unacceptable”, all toppings on pizza are banned, even the underlying bread and cheese.

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Tommy Manley's avatar

Those using the sex worker tag are idiots. It’s inherently exploitative to force someone to do something against their will. I’ve seen the reality from a young age. It’s fucking awful. This sex work bullshit must have only come from SJW etc. It’s to feel better about exploitation. They know the reality but look away (that’s worse imo) . Men who buy sex are the lowest of the low. We should not be pandering to them they deserve condemnation. All the women I knew who prostituted themselves to feed there kids. Eradicating poverty would be a better use of time?

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Tommy Manley's avatar

The fact of going too work where I have representation I am payed correctly I can get sick pay etc. I agree all labor is exploitative. But I am not naked at work I am not dealing with poly drug use poverty violence being assaulted etc. your comparison is lacking in context. My genitalia is not a place of work. The phrase sex work can only have come from Bourgeois politics of the like propagated by Universities. People mostly men who pay for sex are scum and the sooner we cast this phrase from the lexicon of language the better .it’s so you don’t feel the burning reality of exploitation and your part in it.

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AweDude's avatar

>It’s inherently exploitative to force someone to do something against their will.

Do you have a job? If so, would you do that job for free? If not, then you are literally doing something against your normal, uncompensated will. At its core, all labour is exploitative. That’s why they need to pay you!

I’m working as a librarian right now, but I’ve also done similar work on a volunteer basis. The difference between working and volunteering is very simple: I can stop volunteering any time I want, and feel harm from that decision. If I wasn’t feeling good, I could just… not go and volunteer. However, as a paid employee, I can’t do that. (Well, I can call in sick and get a replacement, but a) that sick leave is limited and b) if I do that, I don’t get paid)

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The Irish Wet Nurse's avatar

I'm a feminist Art Historian and college professor of 25 years who has been ostracized from the WMS dept. I helped start because "TERF" and "SWERF." (How anyone who studies the representation of the female body in history could be expected to say it doesn't matter is beyond me.) Your essay in particular reminds me of a time I went directly from a campus lecture where suburban faux trans profs were telling me that the female body was a construct to an afternoon of volunteering with once-trafficked women trying to get their lives together--many of whom were abused as adolescents. Now I just laugh when those profs start talking.

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Jann Guerrero's avatar

It’s a way for people who engage in human trafficking to be less stigmatized because paying for sex wouldn’t be different from paying someone to make you a burrito; your favorite burrito maker could’ve been trafficked, and he’s such a cool guy; why would you object to another service provider being trafficked? “Where’s your compassion? Don’t you care?”

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AweDude's avatar

What exactly are you saying? That we shouldn’t care about trafficked individuals as long as they aren’t working in a sex-adjacent industry? Obviously no one should be trafficked for any reason.

But lets say you did find out your favourite burrito maker was trafficked from their home country and are not allowed to leave. That’s a terrible thing, and we should work to free that person. But, after they are freed and replaced with a properly paid and compensated employee, should we no long buy burritos because someone was trafficked?

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May 1
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Tommy Manley's avatar

What a reprehensible character. What does he know about prostitution?

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