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Comment by daenz | Hacker News Reader

>Sex workers are not one of those classes, though they should be.

Please explain your reasoning.

Sex work is near-universal in human society and sex workers are arguably among the most vulnerable of all working people, with an uniquely high risk of abuse and discrimination, hence the acute need for special protections.

I think morality plays into it. If morality wasn't an aspect of this, you could say the same thing about rapists: they're universal in human society, they're at a unique high risk of abuse and discrimination. But criminal history is not a protected class because society's morality says we shouldn't protect them. This isn't to say that sex workers are like rapists, but only to illustrate that the spectrum of morality influences what is considered a protected class. And despite what people might want it to be, sex work has pretty consistently been in a gray area of morality: both desired and rejected. I don't think it is at the threshold to make it a protected class, at least in the USA

"sex work has pretty consistently been in a gray area of morality"

So was slavery, but we don't pretend that past moral failings should make us question our modern moral understanding, as you have just suggested we do for sex work.

Classifying sex work as immoral (or at best, amoral) is not the same as classifying slavery as moral, so I would find a better example for "moral failings"

Cooking and food service is near universal in human society and is a hard job that often pays absolute garbage while working people very hard.

Yet another "they're so vulnerable, let's re-order society" push that throws around all of the right buzzwords (vulnerable, discrimination) but fails to make any real sense in a broader context.

If you want to protect sex workers then legalize and tax it

"If you want to protect sex workers then legalize and tax it"

Yes, obviously we need to stop making consensual sex a crime. But that alone won't protect a type of worker that is obviously at a higher risk than food works, which is a nonsensical comparison.

Most of that discrimination is legally required. If im using ur airbnb to commit a crime and you know about it and do nothing ur are also likely committing a crime.

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