Sex work is consensual, doesn't target anyone, does not create a victim, doesn't diminish anyone else's rights, so why would it be comparable to hate-mongers being de-platformed?
Wether consensual sex work is good or bad, it’s clear to me that discriminating against victims of human trafficking is a terrible idea. Those people need to be saved from their abusive circumstances. Using the panopticon to ban them from everything only hurts them more.
There is a big difference between saying "This is bad and this company should stop doing it" and "This is bad and the government should step in".
This is made worse, because most people don't even bother to propose a solution and just say "this is bad!" leaving others to fight over the implications of the incomplete thought.
My point is rather that most people don't even bother making a coherent criticism. "This is bad and I think they should update their policy" is a vastly more constructive position than "this is bad"
Is that not to become a victim?
edit - the intense support for prostitution on HN (mostly computer programmers) will never cease to make me smile.
Essentially, there's no case in which cheating is not "wrong." There's many where prostitution isn't.
Great. Let's legalize selling yourself into slavery while we're at it.
> Morality is not universal, so yours has no more value than anyone else's.
Morality is universal, it's not mine though.
This is a non-sequitur. A slave, does not have autonomy. Nothing in the parent comment supports slavery. You're trying to draw a false equivalence between consensual sex work and slavery.
> [it's] support for any person to have autonomy of their body in whichever way they see fit, including making a living by selling access to it to other people
There's simply no way you can claim that doesn't include selling yourself into slavery. Not a false equivalence and an extremely common practice around most of the world until recently. Usually you were paid after your term of slavery terminated.
I understand why you're shocked. You just realized that you support slavery. The good thing is that you can change your mind and come around to not supporting the exchange of human bodies for money.
I think you're arguing in very bad faith here. I do not condone slavery, but yes, I condone the right of people to sell themselves into slavery. I'm not sure why you would perceive these two things as not* different, but nuance is very important when thinking about stuff. Let me ask again: are you sure you're not being blinded by your biases?
edit: actually making sense this time.
You just admitted that you support legalizing slavery! Okay, fair enough, you're not encouraging people to become slaves. And it would involve voluntary sale of oneself into slavery. But I was fairly close to the mark.
Also, questions have to be asked: if a man is poor, is he really voluntarily selling himself into slavery?
> Let me ask again: are you sure you're not being blinded by your biases?
Perhaps it is "bias" that is keeping me from supporting the legalization of slavery. Or perhaps it's something else. I'm going with something else.
Well:
> You just admitted that you support legalizing slavery
I have also admitted that I support abortion, assisted suicide, sex work and probably some other unsavory things that you can think of. I'm not sure why when I say "full autonomy over their bodies" you fixated on just the one.
For the second time, slavery by definition means depriving someone of autonomy. This directly contradicts what the comment supports. The comment directly opposes slavery, because it deprives people of autonomy.
This kind of false equivalence between consensual sex and slavery is going to take this conversation nowhere.
Read the rest of the thread. That commenter already admitted they support legalizing slavery.
Supporting absolute autonomy clearly means supporting selling yourself into slavery. How could it not? Part of autonomy is choosing when and for what duration to surrender it.
Who's is it then: Jesus, Budda, Kali, Jahveh, Mohamed, Musk, Thor, Ganesh, Gates, Bernie?
I don't mean to be an asshole, but even if you are religious (which I take you are) you can't fault people that find moral relativism a worthy concept when there are so many points of view between different religions. And I understand that "faith" strips relativism from your own belief, but you beeing someone that posts on HN, you probably understand that not everyone can say the same thing and it's a little rude to not even acknowledge that.
I don't know. We should keep asking though.
I would say that your comment:
> Morality is not universal, so yours has no more value than anyone else's.
is much "ruder" than mine:
> Morality is universal, it's not mine though.
Neither does tweeting that you won a presidential election but here we are.
I especially dislike this unthinking and unconsidered memeing of sex work because it only serves to normalize the profession and has a net-deleterious effect on society.
Not trying to be snarky here, and I'm not mounting a defense for complete prohibition of prostitution and the varying types of sex work, I'm just terrified by the increasing acceptability of the work in common society: I want little girls to have engineers and doctors as role models instead of being prodded into sex work by virtue of its encroaching and increasing presence and exposure, a trade that obliges (commonly) the woman to invest their time pleasing men, a trade that has diminishing returns overtime as they age. Leaving aside the mountain of studies that pinpoint poverty as root of most sex work the continents across the globe and related psychological issues brought on by the experiences later on, if you cannot accept earlier-stated premise, then I reckon we come from differing views and further debate on this forum on this subject will likely be fruitless.
Off topic, but congratulations, you've just found an example of why the phrase "trust the experts/science" is not a good argument!
One of the few fallacies that stops being a fallacy if your science checks out. Which it doesn't here.
Nobody wants their kids to grow up and do sex work, no matter how progressive they claim to be. So yes, there is a clear difference.
And unlike a lot of low end service jobs, some people actually seem to enjoy doing sex work and make a much more reasonable wage.
It's just odd to see an attractive western woman advocating for "sex work" because she made a killing on onlyfans from her bedroom. That is not the reality of most sex workers!
Work that alleviates the hardships of poverty is a good thing. This is a positive good, not a mark against sex work. Same with other low skill jobs with low barriers of entry.
Isn't that massively debatable?
Even if you find someone that says yeah I want to do this - what in their background/life story pushed them into that and made it what they "want"
Of course! Anything is massively debatable, if you want to be unreasonable enough about it. I've had discussions with people who were on the pro side of the "slavery debate", which is a thing apparently, and then tell me off using woke language to stay in my lane.
But, yes, all anti-sexwork positions must begin and with the premise and insist that the sexworker does not really have agency. Not really a reasonable perspective, no matter how cleverly you try to twist it.
I am a victim of my middle class upbringing that made me want to be highly compensated and do white collar work.
It does.
The point being made isn't that this is okay behavior. The point being made is that people should be honest with why they're against or for something rather than pretending to appeal to some more basic moral/political/civic reason.
(The deeper point is that some on the left and on the right are okay with censorship/deplatforming/refusal of service in specific situations because it was only happening to the people on "the other side". When in reality these are universal negatives and absolutely WILL be applied to your side as well once they become the norm.)