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Comment by seph-reed | Hacker News Reader

I think the one big emotional difference which has put prostitution in a separate category is that it kind of overlaps with drugs and addiction.

Sex releases happy chemicals, just like drugs. Nobody is getting hooked on paying people to pour concrete.

There's the saying "if you look for yellow cars, you'll find them." I think your assumption that the difference was gender is just a product of the times: you were looking for that answer. Even though male prostitutes are illegal too. And there's clearly an emotional difference between having sex with someone, and having them mow your lawn.

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success and completing things also release happy chemicals, but we you're allowed to build things or play sports for payment.

Even with that emotional connection, both psychologists and masseuses exist just fine

I've made a few friends in life who've done pretty much every drug under the sun. The only one that I've consistently heard described as "better than sex" is heroin.

Please, reflect on that for a second. Imagine going through all the drugs you could, trying heroin, and being like: "woah, this one drug is actually better than sex." It says a lot.

>There's the saying "if you look for yellow cars, you'll find them." I think your assumption that the difference was gender is just a product of the times: you were looking for that answer.

Without passing an opinion on the subject, isn't that kind of a flaming laser sword? You could apply it to any parallel drawn between two things regardless of whether the comparison is valid or not. It doesn't seem like a useful tool to discriminate valid ideas from invalid ones.

This form of argument does not seem to apply to every parallel drawn between any two things. It seems to apply specifically to comparisons that are very close fits with dominant cultural trends.

In 1800s Britain, it could be applied to reject claims such as "cholera is caused by the jews", but it could not be applied to claims such as "cholera is caused by contaminated water pumps".

Similarly, the claim "prostitution was made illegal because the Plumbers and Deliverypeople Union wanted exclusive nibs on spontaneous sexual encounters" would be impervious to this 'sword', because blaming plumbers for the problems of society is not a current trope of our culture.

Disregarding the merits of this particular instance, that seems like a reasonable general heuristic: after all, if some conclusion is socially desirable, then people may reach it even when it's not supported by the preponderance of evidence.

Why couldn't it? The statement has nothing to do with current tropes, but rather is an implicit accusation of a confirmation bias on a single person. You can make a claim, and regardless of what it is I can reply with "well, you're saying that because you have an a priori belief and you were looking for any evidence to confirm it".

The statement has a lot to do with current tropes: that's exactly what "product of the times" means.

Cf. a "sign of the times": something that shows the kinds of things that are happening, popular, important, etc., in a culture at a particular period in history.

~~If you watch any interviews with sex workers it's clear that they view it as a job, not as a pleasure act. Many porn stars for instance have boyfriends/husbands and note that sex with them is different then their day job sex.~~

Also I am talking more about hard labor, construction, dock work, mining, landscaping is is taxing but it doesn't pay the big sell-your-back-knees-and-possibly-a-limb bucks.

You misunderstood. The people who presumably get 'hooked' aren't the workers, but the customers. People don't sell drugs as a pleasure act either.

Ah, I see.

> Nobody is getting hooked on paying people to pour concrete.

So you think sex work is illegal / made very impractical in so many countries to protect the customers?

Only one is a transmissible disease vector that presents a threat to all of society.

These things aren't illegal soas to protect the unfortunates who would become addicted, so much as the society as a whole. So that (most) people don't just give up and smoke crack all day or become too immoral or whatever. In principle at least, every individual vice has it's own complicated story.

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