> In its most extreme realizations has been shown to cause severe emotional harm to exploited workers.
Care to share these findings?
Care to share these findings?
That's not true for most people involved in sex work. It's not a free choice they've made. They find themselves in that situation to pay for drugs, or alcohol, or to pay off debts, or because they're modern slaves.
Camming is the lighter end of sex work, and thus the ratio of willing : unwilling workers is better than for other sex work, but it's still more likely to be harmful than harm free.
> That's not true for most people involved in sex work.
You know, if you dropped "sex" for most other domains wherein people might work, that'd probably still be true. There's probably a few areas of work where most people work in the domain because they like it, but for most domains of work people work in the domain because they need the money and working in the domain is the best way they feel they have of making the money they need.
Socially taboo -- and, even moreso, illegal -- domains of work, naturally, increase the risk of people being stuck in them and being less able to move to other domains of work later, and they also increase the risk of exploitation (because people feel trapped in them, because subject to abuse have less ability to address abuse, and because the social taboo (or illegality) of working in the domain naturally means that people, even if they like the domain, are less likely to choose it as a domain of work if they have other viable options, meaning the people that do end up there are usually the most vulnerable to exploitation in the first place.
See http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/hookers-in-the-holy-land-an-u... for an example of something that qualifies for that description.
Outside of human trafficking (which I acknowledge as an important problem) it's pretty hard to get coerced into prostitution.
No, not hard at all.
I had a friend from high school who met a guy at a party. He gave her drugs. Before long, she was addicted. She couldn't afford the habit. He let her get into full withdrawal, then offered her drugs if she'd have sex with his friends. She did. A week later, she had dropped out of law school and was working a street corner.
My understanding is that this is a fairly common path into prostitution.
While I agree with what you seem to be arguing in your post, this particular sentence is true in the same sense as "outside of triangles, its pretty hard to have a three-sided polygon."
4.5 million victims of trafficking for purposes of sex, 40 million prostitutes total.
I certainly won't argue with the idea that some of them are forced into it by circumstance, but no matter how you slice it you end up with a lot of voluntary sex workers.
You can't come back comparing trafficked workers to non-trafficked workers and say that the rest are voluntary.
There are criminal gangs that specialise in coercing girls into providing sexual services, and who take money from punters for those services. See recent UK cases about child grooming gangs.
Your link in incoherent. One example:
> It is true that as I type this, there are young girls and women {and some boys} who are physically locked behind closed doors, who are threatened with their family’s safety, and who are paying off debts by servicing men in brothels. Estimates are, in fact, that there are about 4.5 million women and children forced, by coercion or abuse, into the sex industry today.
That's coercion, not trafficking. I have no idea what definition they're using for coercion, or trafficking, or even prostitution. (Can a 14 year old be a prostitute, or is that always rape of a child?)
Here's a better article about modern day slavery: http://www.irinnews.org/report/98964/anatomy-of-modern-day-s...
And about helping people who used to be indentured workers. This article also has links to better quality information about human trafficking, about child trafficking, etc: http://www.irinnews.org/report/98867/new-lease-on-life-for-e...
Yes, to focus on people with choices, because it's obvious that trafficked workers are bad in any type of work.
>You can't come back comparing trafficked workers to non-trafficked workers and say that the rest are voluntary.
I can and do claim that a large amount of non-trafficked workers are voluntary. Sure, not 100%, but I never argued 100%.
>There are criminal gangs that specialise in coercing girls into providing sexual services, and who take money from punters for those services. See recent UK cases about child grooming gangs.
That's certainly a bad thing, but it's unrelated to a discussion of typical work, which involves consent-capable adults.
>That's coercion, not trafficking.
Well great, if that's accurate then it makes my point even better: <4.5M trafficked, <4.5M coerced, 35M voluntary.
> I have no idea what definition they're using for coercion, or trafficking, or even prostitution.
Well I didn't link the blog for its own text, but for having the sources in a convenient form. It cites 21 million trafficked, your link says 30 million slaves, either number works fine.
>Can a 14 year old be a prostitute, or is that always rape of a child?
I would say that it can be both, but the answer doesn't matter when you're comparing 5 million to 40 million.
>Here's a better article
These articles are informative but I'm afraid I don't see the connection to my argument, which is that there are a large number of non-slave non-coerced sex workers, whether they particularly like their job or not.
No wonder, then, that such folks find themselves hurt by the work or perhaps drawn deeper into the vortex to earn a better income; they were already unable to pursue more typical paths.
Citation? I'm taking particular umbrage with "most".
I don't really have a point with that post, I just never drew the parallel before. I was very lucky I had skills that are wanted and pay well.
In pointing this out, I'm not just playing a philosophical game. Those who wish to assist sex workers, whether in leaving sex work entirely or just being safer or happier in sex work, ought to be practical enough to realize that many sex workers choose sex work over other means of support.
The rest of your argument applies to just about well-paying job in a poor country. I know software developers making an order of magnitude more than they would at any other job. Some of them don't enjoy dealing with software. It's still a voluntary decision.
If I say I would not want to work in telecom because I get paid more for my efforts in that field than others, is that somehow now involuntary?
Would you say that the internet industry is inherently harmful because much of this exploitation of children takes place over the internet? Would you say that the software industry is inherently harmful because some people write malware?
You said that "I think the industry is fundamentally different and in its most extreme realizations has been shown to cause severe emotional harm to exploited workers" but I'm not sure how the most extreme realizations of abuse in a particular industry speak to the industry as a whole, unless those are somehow condoned by the majority of the industry or vastly more widespread in a particular industry.
There's a lot of the adult entertainment industry that works scrupulously within the law, and provides income for a lot of models. For some reason, a lot of people have a notion that they are being harmed merely because they are involved in sex work, no matter that they are consenting adults and are choosing this work over any of a number of other jobs that they could have.
So do you believe that working in the sex industry is inherently harmful in some way? Or do you believe that the industry exploits its workers more than is common in other industries? Or that acceptance of harmful behavior is more widespread in the sex industry? And do you have evidence to back this up?
And note, of course, that I'm talking about the legal sex industry; like in the case of any prohibition, such as alcohol prohibition back in the day or drug prohibition today, illegal industries tend to attract more crime, because you're already a criminal merely by participating in the industry. Do you have evidence that shows that the legal sex industry is particularly harmful or more conducive towards tempting people to abusive or illegal behaviors than any other similar industry?
I live in a country where prostitution is completely legal, and while that doesn't entirely remove all problems, it's certainly helped. Being in a western first world country also helps. it's not a simple topic, and your point is well made; we should think before we rush to judgements and conclusions, especially those based on "Puritan" morals and societies shunning of the industry as a whole.