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Comment by yannick | Hacker News Reader

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yannick·

sorry, but didn't you read the article?

It begins with years of bullying at school, well before puberty.

Making sex work legal doesn't seem like a solution that addresses anything about the actual root cause of this issue.

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You are not going to get rid of bullying at school. You may be able to make it more subtle, but not eliminate it entirely. It’s the basic pissing contest with which social dominance hierarchy is established. Those on top get the best looking girls (who come to them voluntarily), and more dopamine in their bloodstream. This mechanism is rooted in evolution and goes all the way back to crustaceans. You are not going to be able to eliminate it, period.

So I think as a palliative measure, legalizing sex work is long overdue. Some sex is better than none at all.

Incels don't want to use prostitutes, because sex workers have the right to say no.

Also, incels are prepared to murder other people. Why do you think sex work laws are a deterrant?

We probably have a different definition of “incel” then. To me “involuntarily celibate” means “unable to find a willing sexual partner”. That’s the problem prostitution has been solving quite handily for thousands of years.

That's the etymology of "incel", but in practice it's not just a definition, it's a community identity with a lot of associated baggage. There are plenty of lonely young men who don't consider themselves "incels", often because they don't want to associate themselves with that community.

And if you examine the community, you'll quickly find that they don't think sex work "counts". Because what they want isn't sex, it's the status they imagine it confers, and if you had to pay for it, you didn't "earn" that status.

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