Well, those civilians who can think for themselves, especially about the consequences of their actions, are clearly in advantage. I am lacking empathy for those who are apparently so hooked up to the here-and-now that they seem to ignore the future. If you sell your body, most societies will punish you. Thats fine, societies have all sorts of norms we all need to learn.
> If you sell your body, most societies will punish you.
Why though? It is an interesting issue when you look closer. For an individual, it's more obvious - I wouldn't like to be with a prostitute because of possible hidden diseases and lack of trust - but there is no way of telling how many sexual contacts my new partner had, whether paid for or not.
But I wouldn't have any problem working with an ex-pro in the same company or team, they would be just a colleague like all the rest, and I can't imagine any adult making any immature comments about the past of any colleagues on my team.
> If you sell your body, most societies will punish you.
> Why though?
In stable families and societies, women use sex as control (power) over men. Younger women who sell sex are undermining that power structure. That is why they must be punished.
Another way to look at in economic terms: Female sex is a scarce resource. Female selling transactional sex is commoditizing this resource. In general, people don't like their valuable service getting commoditized.
It's already commodities in places like California. For instance, the state considers a wife a depreciating asset that goes to zero at year ten, now owed potentially lifelong alimony as you've used up her most fertile years and therefore you must support her for life.
As a married person in balancing my finances I always then half it and then subtract 20 percent of my pretax income to find what's truly mine after liabilities to my spouse. This makes me explicitly aware of the true cost I pay, and if god forbid i am divorced i have already mentally written off most my wealth and home I painstakingly singlehandedly built stick by stick over a period of years as not actually mine.
Prostitution causes a real problem here as it throws a bone in the resource extraction from male to female by making the consumer more informed on costs up front.
>I wouldn't like to be with a prostitute because of possible hidden diseases and lack of trust
Why do you inherently distrust a former sex worker? What about sex work is distrustful? Do you think prostitutes have a habit of not delivering after payment or something?
same here, i think some people are just a little too submissive and uncritical to the so called rules of society. also engaging in porn or even prostitution isn't really "selling" of one's body.
People working in the mines, or the military, I wonder why that's a socially acceptable way of "selling" their body, but prostitution is not. Even we, behind a computer screen and getting back pain and wrist RSI, we also "sell" our bodies in a matter of speaking.
I can only imagine that the negative perception of prostitution as "selling" your body is coming from mainstream religions which are the great society moralizer.
Even coming from mainstream religions, that's annoyingly knee-jerk. Sure, prostitution is shameful and sinful and whatnot, but what about maliciously lying to your neighbor, trying to get rich off their misfortune? Even from a mainstream religious perspective, marketing gives prostitution a run for its money, and outside that framework, arguably it's less shameful to do OF than to be a "regular" influencer, or go into telemarketing. At least with this kind of sex work, all parties to transaction tend to benefit, and all are in it voluntarily.
I can believe it. Sex work in general is fraught with various degrees of abuse. However, it's also clear that there is a large class of workers that's doing this work voluntarily, under no pressure (at least not beyond the pressures every employee in any field experiences); my comparison would apply to them.
I think you'll find that lots of people in non-sex-work, non-stigmatized, socially respected jobs feel like they were pressured into them and/or currently doing more of the work they are in than they'd like due to economic coercion.
It's whataboutism, isn't it? It surely hypocritical when someone only fights other's sin while ignoring own (and one mainstream religion has a special piece about it - speck in a brother's eye). But my harmful behavior still doesn't make your harmful behavior good, and vice versa
> But my harmful behavior still doesn't make your harmful behavior good, and vice versa
In principle I agree.
We have a society praising a soldier for killing and risks losing limbs and life (basically selling his body) during military service, but demonizing a sex worker.
This society needs to take a good hard look in the mirror. We have people admonishing sex work and marijuana use, while its most "successful" members are in arms dealing, fossil fuels, workers exploitation (amazon), and gambling with the livelihoods of people (banks/wall street).
This is pretty illogical comparison. When we praise soldiers, we do it not for them getting paid for their bodies, but for hard work, and risks they take protecting us.
Considering the risk are bodily harm, there is some similarity to the risks of bodily harm that some sex workers take, and far more frequently, than soldiers. STDs, violent guys, etc etc.
> but for hard work
Do sex workers not work hard (pun potentially intended)? I don't see society praising them for their hard work and the risks they take.
>I wonder why that's a socially acceptable way of "selling" their body, but prostitution is not.
Probably because its not the same at all. Getting naked and spreading your legs is neither as productive nor difficult as serving your country. Neither should it have the same social status.
> Getting naked and spreading your legs is neither as productive nor difficult as serving your country
We have different moral compasses, I guess. To me, obeying military orders (which often result in killing people) is neither productive, nor difficult (as a big part of thinking/initiative is replaced by blindly following orders). Military personnel basically outsource a large chunk of thinking and assessing good/bad to a "higher power". In a way, that's very easy and comfortable life for a specific type of people: all higher order judgments are deferred to higher ups in the military chain. Besides, I wouldn't say military personnel are "serving" their country more than, say, plumbers, electricians, railway workers, postal service, healthcare workers, or, even sex workers.
> Neither should it have the same social status
I disagree. The fact that somebody who has no other skills and initiative but to be a death machine/robot blindly following orders, doesn't warrant them to be a hero, and sure as hell doesn't qualify them to a high social status in my book. And, at least to me, calling military service "productive" is just plain hypocrisy. Their only function is to either destroy things during war, or sit around looking menacing when there is no war.
Imo, money spent on weapons and the military could be better spent to build more social housing, solve healthcare problems, etc.
> Imo, money spent on weapons and the military could be better spent to build more social housing, solve healthcare problems, etc.
In an ideal world, 100% yes.
In our world, where every now and again a crazy power-hungry dictator appears and wages a war against a weaker country and is killing civilians - unfortunately it's a comfort we can't afford.
> again a crazy power-hungry dictator appears and wages a war against a weaker country
With the risk of being political, I see nothing "defensive" or moral about the military, even in the most advanced nations that are supposedly paragons of human rights.
Take the "dictator attacks weaker country" narrative. The NATO defensive alliance fits this narrative by providing weapons and military training to weaker Ukraine so it can defend itself against the aggression of bigger Russia. On the other hand, the same defensive alliance has no scruples to providing weapons to Israel so it can wipe out and cause immense suffering and casualties to Palestine, a weaker nation.
Which brings me to my conclusion that there is nothing inherently moral about the army, it's just a blunt instrument to do the government's bidding. Hence, I don't see military as our "protectors", but as the government's institutionalized thugs. I also don't see a reason for them to be lauded for their actions, as their actions are often immoral and sinister. I am talking things like the military secrets Assange unveiled, or the illegal treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo, or the sometimes indiscriminate bombings of civilians to hit 1 potential target.
And since they are not protecting me but the government's interests, I don't see a need to thank them for their service more than I see the need to thank bouncers at a disco I don't own for theirs.
We don't give high social status to killers, thugs, murderers and hired assassins, but when it's institutionalized killing, (which is the military) that's okay? The fact that an "official" gives the word, and the victims are not citizens of your country doesn't make the military be less about killing.
There also is nothing "productive" about paying for salaries, equipment and training to a bunch of grown men in the anticipation that you have to send them to do violence to your bidding.
If the military was not under the veneer of "official", wrapping it in an "institution" and all the language of "serving your country", we'd not been able to distinguish between military, militia and armed thugs.
Yet, our society at large reveres them as some heroes and they are mainly socially acceptable.
I bet that if we had a "Department of pleasure", with ranks, hierarchies, rules, promotion paths, etc, sex workers wouldn't be as marginalized as they are now. In fact, in many civilized countries, prostitutions is both legal and taxed, and less stigmatized than it is in the US, who are too puritanical/religion influenced in their views to want it to be otherwise.
> There also is nothing "productive" about paying for salaries, equipment and training to a bunch of grown men in the anticipation that you have to send them to do violence to your bidding.
I disagree. First and only rule of nature is might makes right, and being capable of dishing out the most violence (and hence also least likely to be the victim of it) is very “productive”. It is a huge contributor to the purchasing power of the US dollar, which is a referendum on the stability and productivity of US society.
For example, the oceanic transportation routes around the world are kept mostly safe and humming along because of militaries enforcing it.
Those rules aren't taken from the thin air though. It's really easy to argue that sexual gedonism is detrimental to society, and its online incarnation is even more so: as any addiction it steals productive time from people's lives, it puts hormones over culture which patently breeds violence, it leads to social atomization, and consequently to mental issues (which means violence again), economically bad on a level comparable to fentanyl imports, and the list goes on.
> as any addiction it steals productive time from people's lives, it leads to social atomization, and consequently to mental issues (which means violence again), economically bad on a level comparable to fentanyl imports, and the list goes on.
Well the same could be said of social media, mobile phones, netflix binge, computer games (although I don't agree with the violence part). So why single out sex then?
You are tying to make an argument for destigmatizing sex work, but for me I think it really points out how we should really increase the stigma towards those working for social media giants, sports gambling sites, and other tech companies whose main operating model is actively getting people addicted to something and then profiting off of it. Social media is one of the worst developments for society in recent history, and the people working for Facebook or TikTok absolutely deserve to be shamed for actively participating for personal gain.
While I agree with you in general, I see no way to actually sensibly enforce this. Whatever activity you take, it can be abused.
For example Google is abusing their position by feeding a stream of right-wing and related stuff to my mother because she clicked a Trump video a friend(?) sent her so that she watches more of this stuff, gets more negative emotions, and continues to spend her time on their site. Trying to regulate these things is terribly hard and whatever idea you come up with, the folks at big tech will find a way to go around them.
Use and particularly overuse of those things is definitely a relationship deal killer for many people. Ask around with the women you know what they think about men who spend most of their time playing video games.
Straw man. No one singled anything out, this thread is specifically talking about one topic. In many other threads you'll find people discussing the extreme negative consequences of social media.
> If you sell your body, most societies will punish you. Thats [sic] fine, […]
How is that 'fine'?
I would like to see a future where someone doing sex work to make ends meet (or even as a freely chosen profession!) is not ostracised for it. Sex is part of society whether you want it or not, and so is paying for sexual acts.
I would like to see a future where people shouldn't have to prostitute themselves to make ends meet.
Some cultural norms are outdated, but prostitution is still degrading and dangerous for those practicing it, especially for the women; who may not be doing so willingly, prostitution being the main incentive for human trafficking. And the online medium doesn't change that by much.
Some people may be willing to pay for sex, some people are willing to pay for many other things or activities that should be or are illegal.
Sex work will never go away. The only way forward is to make sure it can be done safely and legally.
Consider the sex workers who deal with mentally or physically disabled adults. Most people have sexual urges, and those who are unable to participate in society in the usual way of addressing their urges with a romantic partner or a one-night stand still have them. There are a good number of very professional sex workers out there who can provide these people with sex (often with specific expertise for the relevant handicaps) and generally significantly improve the wellbeing.
Are those sex workers doing something they shouldn't be doing?
> Are those sex workers doing something they shouldn't be doing?
You are asking a binary question for which there isn't a binary answer. Better to ask are those sex workers doing something they will get a pat on their backs for from other members of society? In a way a builder, chef, firefighter, and even a prison guard would.
Well folks appreciate different things and to different degrees. Some are born with natural talents and others work hard for it. Regardless, folks generally get at least some respect for doing the work to produce things others appreciate. Stigmatizing OF work seems unfair when so much praise is heaped on creators and workers of all other kinds.
For what? For opening your legs and getting paid for it? Without criminals and sleezy execs as clients prostitution would cease to exist. The edge cases mentioned before are tiny
Your moral compass is truly fucked.
One makes a mess of their own life and contributes to making a mess of many other lives. The other cleans up messes.
Public sanitation workers keep our society functioning, they're a cornerstone of civilization.
Online prostitution, on the other hand, ranges from providing 0 value, to extreme negative consequences, such as the current porn addiction epidemic, or the loneliness epidemic.
The GP, trying to show how 'bad' profession A was, was making the argument that the average HN reader would look badly on his progeny participating in profession A. I simply made the argument that the average HN reader would also look badly on his progeny doing profession B. Obviously, my point is not to throw shit on profession B but rather show that GP's argument simply does not work.
The fact that you think profession B > A only reinforces my point and shows, precisely, that GP's argument does not work.
That would depend entirely on her circumstances. Is she a professional helping disabled people like my example above? That's laudable. A self-employed dominatrix with a select clientele? Sounds lucrative. A popular OnlyFans starlet just making some money on the side during her studies? Clever. Participating in explicit forms of BDSM porn? If she does so of her own volition, with the consent of all parties involved, for a fair pay and without lasting harm? Cool as long as she's working with professionals with a good reputation.
In all of those cases I would council her to the best of my abilities on safety and long-term planning, if she'd let me. And of course, as any parent, I would worry about her safety. But hey, I'd worry if she went paragliding or mountain climbing too.
Honestly, I would be more disappointed if she became a lawyer in the pocket of, say, Amazon or AirBnB. Or a politician for some extreme right political party.
Would I be happy if she was a sex worker in some seedy part of town with a pimp hovering over her? Of course not. But that is not dismissive of sex work as such, rather of exploitation and coercion. All of the examples above avoid that.
I would like to see a future where people shouldn't have to do any work they don't enjoy to make ends meet. As far as I can see, working fast food (and many other badly paid service jobs) is not much different from prostitution, except in that there is no social stigma attached, and you earn much less.
Why? Especially compared to e.g. advertising/marketing? At least in the former case, all parties to the transaction are there voluntarily, for an honest, mutually beneficial exchange of value.
I wouldn't be surprised to find out an absurd fraction of those 300k is just straight up money laundering. Who is actually gonna be able to verify the value of someone allegedly showing their tits to a whale at 3am? The fact this all passed through traditional financial networks with a clean and reportable earnings report at the end is just pure gold.
OF is like the wet dream of a drug dealer or whoever else with a baby momma and some kind of scam/fraud/counterfeit operation.
I agree with what you say but we know enough about youtubers and mobile gaming to safely assume that the numbers in this space are wild. I remember on Pewdiepie's first ever charity YouTube stream he was printing thousands per second via donos
But you can't compare with top performers in a power law / winner-takes-all setting. Comparing random youtubers or OF-ers to PewDiePie is like comparing the guy owning a fruit stand down the street to Jeff Bezos. Owns business, owns business; the same thing, right?
I agree that power laws are in play, but 1000 subs paying $10 a month is already a six figure income and 1000 users isn't a big number on the internet, especially when as TFA mentions you can go on reddit and advertise cosplays on subs that have audiences in the millions
Who would have thought that all those big numbers in TV deals were actually underestimated by the billions. The general public is even more desperate/gullible than we ever considered possible. And OF and YT are just the beginning.
Source? Like all entertainment sold with near zero marginal cost, why should only fans work also not follow an extreme power law formula for compensation.
Thats also fine. You can "like to see" everything you want. Question is, what the rest of society believes. Oldest bussiness and all that, I am actually on your side. But that doesn't mean I can ignore what overall society feels and thinks. Besides, there is a difference between consuming payed sex, and having a relationship with a (ex) sex worker. The difference is quite huge.
Society accepting sex work is the worst thing that can happen to sex workers. They can have their cake and eat it right now -- not terribly illegal in the west but shunned which limits competition.
When it becomes fine, it will be worth no more than someone coming to mow your lawn, and probably less than that.
Wouldn't that be an incentive towards other career paths (such as mowing lawns)?
EDIT: brace for the lawn mowing cartels led by ex human trafficking gangs.
On a more serious note, there is so much criminality involved in that field precisely because it's illegal and lucrative. You remove that and you remove a lot of abuse.
Wow i never thought of that! I love this reasoning (no sarcasm intended!). Based on supply/demand, the lack of social acceptance leads to low supply which in turn makes sure the price matches the moral cost.
I honestly wished it was not (considered) degrading and just as acceptable as any hospitality service, although in my culture it is indeed immoral to take or provide sex services. Even so if it still is degrading indeed there should be a matching cost, but damn economics is a tricky one.
not treating sex workers like crap doesnt mean they'll make lesser. one must also consider the monetary equivalents of the mental health of the worker. and the demand will increase by a lot too.
> I would like to see a future where someone doing sex work to make ends meet
It's better to have a future where people don't have to do SW to make ends meet
A future where more people get forced into sex work because of economic reasons is not desirable. Consider the diseases, conflict with cultural norms, potential for rape and abuse
Sex should be freely given. "Free laborers" aren't freely giving their labor, they're forced to for economic reasons
> Sex is part of society whether you want it or not, and so is paying for sexual acts.
Yes, and this seems to be a discussion of whether people want it or not. I don't think paid sex acts ruin the world. Some people probably need it in place of real intimacy, for their own mental health. I still think it's generally scummy and unproductive. Then again, I think all sorts of businesses can be described that way. Snake oil has been killing it for as long as commerce has been around. Another example: if you go around gutting productive companies to line your own pockets, e.g. buying & dismantling competitors to stop competition, I see that as a greater moral failing than baiting lonely people with sex appeal.
It's common that people forget or fail to understand that business is a way to cooperatively shape life into something desirable, and instead see it as a way to win at others expense.
If you want to take purely moral grounds, there's nothing to make prostitution or Onlyfans "wrong", except if done with exploitation. At the same time, it contributes to the demographic crysis, and if you care about results, you have to put pressure against the lifestyles that are nudging people away from starting a family and having kids.
Drug dealers are also part of society, yet we still frown upon them.
Why do you say that? Most individuals that aren't respected by society had that respect, yet lost it through some action (like dealing drugs).
I think we're seeing things in different frameworks, and I'm considering the end result more important than the principles here. If you don't accept that some seemingly individual decisions have a cumulated effect on society long-term, and that shaming is the only mechanism to make changes here, there really is no discourse possible.
I would certainly not like to live in a future where selling your body to make ends meet is considered normal. To me it is already concerning that normalization of prostitution is happening to some extent in mass media.
Sex is in all (?) human cultures viewed as most intimate and private expression of civilized love. It is also how we teach our kids about sex. Pornography and prostitution serve only our primal desires which goes against all this. Does it really surprise you that society will shun people that partake in these things? To me it is obvious as day.
We all have to sell ourselves in order to live. I'm sure that there are plenty of people working at jobs that they thoroughly dislike. Shouldn't we concentrate on making sure that people really have a choice rather than on discriminating against people who make a choice?
> I am lacking empathy for those who are apparently so hooked up to the here-and-now
A large amount of those people are very young, at an age where you don't really pick your options solely on their super long term consequences.
Most people are going to be "stupid" in their early adulthood, failing and adjusting is a big part of it. Unfortunately, some of those decisions will stick more than others and sex work is very sticky (zing).
>A large amount of those people are very young, at an age where you don't really pick your options solely on their super long term consequences.
And they will continue to be if there are never any consequences.
Stop bailing people out of problems they make for themselves and people will start learning to not make those problems.
Human beings are not stupid machines who see others put their hand in the fire, getting burned, then they put their own hands in the fire get burned, and then keep doing it over and over again.
Most will stop when they see others get burned, others still will stop when they get burned, and a small minority will stop once there is no hand left to burn.
There is a reason why many parts of the world will ticket you for not wearing your seatbelt. There is a reason you cannot (could not? crypto changed a lot) do advanced stock trading without a license. Why gambling is regulated, etc.
We don't want people to hurt themselves, because we have humanity and because they become a drain on society.
I find it hard to be that black and white with phenomenons like OF, that emerge from a mix of societal and technological advancement.
There are grey zones and not everyone is fortunate enough to be taught to be responsible. Not everyone can go through life without feeling desperate and resort to doing things they would not be proud of.
We should try to educate and protect people instead of pointing internet fingers at them.
> Most will stop when they see others get burned, others still will stop when they get burned, and a small minority will stop once there is no hand left to burn.
And this explains how drug problems solved themselves hundreds of years ago. Good thing we've all decided to stop doing debilitating drugs after seeing the consequences of addition in the past!
So, if young people are unable to take responsibility for their actions, we will need to raise the age for maturity... I am sorry, adults are adults are adults. Either you make your own decisions or you don't.
Unironically the former. It's weird that we have at the same time reduced the legal age of adulthood, while simultaneously extended the actual period of adolescence and dependence for the average young person. It used to be a century ago, that you started working for a wage at 14 and didn't get legal independence until 21. Now you get legal independence at 18 but might be in full time education until you are 25 (with a masters).
Yah my mum was helping out with the family business around age 5. It's kind of crazy to think how quickly its swung from having that kind of responsibility thrust on you from so young to now where people in their mid 20s may still be in their "incubatory" period
Historically, many of societies' "norms" have been hateful, vile and narrowly targeted. There is a thousand years of history showing us that we are better off challenging norms than adhering to them.
> If you sell your body, most societies will punish you.
No, if you sell sex, lots of societies will punish you. Selling or renting your body otherwise -- which a very large share of jobs involve just as much as sex work does -- is otherwise lauded.
> Thats fine, societies have all sorts of norms we all need to learn.
Lots of norms that societies have or historically have had would be better eliminated. That something is an existing norm isn't an argument in favor of it being a norm.
