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Comment by paganel | Hacker News Reader

> The sex worker explains why she loves her job.

I'm not going to comment on the other stuff, but we should stop with the sociopathic neo-liberal glorification of "sex work", which in the majority of cases is just human trafficking.

I come from a town in Eastern Europe where one of the local mob guys has been caught with trafficking hundreds of (I guess mostly local) girls in Spain. I'm pretty sure many of those girls, if asked, would have told a nice story of "I earn good money out of this! It's liberating!" to any Westerner techie client who would have bothered to ask, what else could have they said? They were still the victims of human trafficking.

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The fact that some prodtitutes are victims of human trafficking doesn't mean that all are. In fact, there are countries where sex work is legal but not human trafficking. So it's possible to even have a legal distinction there.

I don't know how things are in Spain, but in the US there's a huge stigma associated with being a sex worker besides it being illegal and actively enforced. In these conditions it would be very difficult to have sex workers who are not somehow a product of sex trafficking. However, in societies where it's not really a taboo, some people will pick that profession, at least for a while.

I'd like to believe that the people who are against sex work are actually thinking of the good of the sex workers and because of human trafficking.

Yet there is a lot of human trafficking in other areas, like farmwork or maids in the Western world, and the non-Western world is filled with sweatshops and literal slaves. And you never hear them mention it.

Which makes me convinced these people are just anti-sex work for religious or moral reasons (because they have internalized that sex is sinful or bad), reasons they then lie about.

> Which makes me convinced these people are just anti-sex work for religious or moral reasons

If it matters I'm an atheist. I'm against "sex work" because women (it's women in the majority of cases) are trafficked and taken advantage of, in both a material and a direct physical way.

I see this "sex work" non-sense mostly coming from people who have had no direct contact with the reality/materiality of it all, i.e. mostly from the Western middle-classes.

Later edit: Because this has touched a close nerve with me, copy-pasting some stuff related to that reality/materiality I had mentioned from a news article about Romanian prostitution rings in Spain [1]:

> The women were freed from brothels in Malaga and Girona where they had been sexual exploited by their compatriots and made to work for up to ten hours a day under the threat of violence.

> Some had come to Spain after being falsely promised better lives by the Romanian sex traffickers while others had fallen victim to the so-called 'lover boy' scam, according to a police statement.

> This method involves one of the sex traffickers forming an intimate relationship with the woman to earn her trust before later forcing her into prostitution.

> One of the women freed, who was only 18 years old, had been reported as missing by her family in Romania.

> Police described the 'iron control' exerted by the 'well-organized' sex-trafficking ring and said that the women had been kept completely isolated from the outside world.

I don't know of any sane person who would call that legit "work" and "liberating".

[1] https://www.thelocal.es/20140812/spanish-police-smash-romani...

It's just when I pragmatically think about solutions to the very real problem of human trafficking, banning sex-work seems like the least effective thing to do. And what constitutes sex-work? Any sex where payment is involved? Any sex act outside of marriage?

Human trafficking is already illegal. Fund investigators and get rid of traffickers.

Empower sex-workers instead of banning the practice, because it will still happen but just more in the shadows. Bring it to the front and truly regulate it.

Why would sex outside of marriage be considered sex work? For something to be work you need to receive some sort of material compensation. Usually it's just money. But I guess if someone gives you a car or some jewelry in exchange of sex it could classify too. I don't see how having sex with someone in a party where both people wanted it could conceivably be considered sex work

> I'm against "sex work" because women (it's women in the majority of cases) are trafficked and taken advantage of, in both a material and a direct physical way.

That's a very naive and harmful take.

Criminalizing sex work means that only criminals would be involved in it, hence the trafficking.

Given that you can't do anything about supply and demand, the only sane solution to trafficking is decriminalizing sex work. Not being "against it".

This 'lover boy' scam is a big industry in Japan, it's called host clubs.

> Yet there is a lot of human trafficking in other areas, like farmwork or maids in the Western world, and the non-Western world is filled with sweatshops and literal slaves. And you never hear them mention it.

> Which makes me convinced these people are just anti-sex work for religious or moral reasons (because they have internalized that sex is sinful or bad), reasons they then lie about.

> thinking of the good of the sex workers

Good for whom? for the johns and a handful of high profile female "socialites"? It certainly brings nothing good for females as a class.

You blame "religious" morals for opposition to prostitution, but even Marx was opposed to prostitution, nobody can't accuse him of being very religious...

Good test of the OP’s point, hope you both lost this one :-)

Perhaps we should credit OP with enough intelligence to assume that their debate with the sex worker didn't happen in a context where OP was their client.

Also the fact that sex work can be linked with human trafficking doesn't necessarily mean that sex work is bad. Working on a construction site can be a meaningful and rewarding career, but could also be utterly miserable if you've been trafficked there and are working in conditions of modern slavery. But that means human trafficking is bad, not that construction work is bad.

If anything, I think the human trafficking thing is an argument for NOT demonizing / criminalizing sex work, so that it becomes part of the visible, regulated economy, which would it turn make it harder for traffickers to exploit and control people.

I totally assumed it was a friend of his, for some reason. Having read his stuff I get the impression he spent a portion of his life being highly social and trying to meet a lot of people. In an intentional way. His life is a bit like a lab!

Sex work is a very good example of a topic where you can change your mind completely from one debate/conversation to another depending on examples and framing and the ulterior motive of the conversation partner.

I think it has to do with morality of course and the problem of defining "sex work" but mostly I think it's the fact that we humans are sexual beings and that our sexuality often is a "dark" place. In the sense that we don't shine a light there ourselves out of fear what we could discover (eg. why did I get a tingly sensation when two people of the same sex kissed in the latest mega hyped tv show everyone is talking about).

Edit: and due to this our reasoning abilities are kinda off and we are more subject of swaying to different sides based on subconsious feelings. Eg. "so you are saying prostitution should be legal and protected by laws and unions, YES, that seem like better for the sex workers (then I could hire a male sex escort and finally find out...)"

What about just young women making stupid life choices? Like putting off meaningful relationships or long-term careers for easy short-term cash to fund their vices. Would they count as liberated individuals that middle aged men should feel no qualms about availing themselves of?

Even if it's normalized, women will just be tossed aside when they get old (pass 30) in such environments...

You're opening a can of worms, but that's basically what every debate does. The idea of "sex work" has other, larger implications. For example, in my country, if you are unemployed, the government gives you some money, but less money if you don't try to find work. If "sex work" is a legitimate form of work, can the government suggest you seek such a job, if you can't find work otherwise? Will your friends and your family pressure you? It may seem far-fetched at first, but if I think back to all the other things that were liberating alternatives and now have become mandatory. Cars gave us the freedom to quickly get from A to B, but now a commute of 1 hour is acceptable. Phones gave us the freedom to reach everyone almost instantly, but now you have to be available 24/7 for everyone else. You can get the latest news at any time, but you also have to stay up-to-date. It is no coincidence that most women put on make-up every single day.

What I'm trying to say is that everything that is "liberating" only shackles you to a new framework eventually.

If you value freedom and equality you cannot be against sex-work. Being against sex-work means that police someone elses bodily autonomy. Human trafficking is a framework issue, not specific to sex-work.

Do you oppose agriculture as an industry? Do you oppose factory work? Globally a lot of forced labor ends up being used to cut costs for international companies.

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