where, which sex workers, and which services? i think men who spend more money on onlyfans than they do on groceries are dumb, i think strip clubs are fucken weird, i think sex tourists probably deserve death, and i think most johns are walking into a minefield of exploitation.
this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
230 points (92.0% liked)
Asklemmy
43952 readers
759 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Although not something I could see myself doing, I don't judge. People can be too busy for dating, out of practice, too awkward or just wanting to cross off something off their bucket list. At the very least it ain't my business.
Gross. How can you even enjoy sex when you essentially bought someone's consent?
I understand the sentiment, but "buying consent" is a difficult line of thinking when you follow it all the way through.
I don't think that idea holds much water in all cases. It often does, but you cannot apply it universally to all sex work. That's because you can't just "buy consent", a sex worker still has very specific conditons for giving you conditional consent that only extends to a select number of specified acts, to certain time frames, certain areas of their body and so on, and they can revoke that consent when things turn south because the john starts to behave badly. And ultimately, all consensual sexual acts are in some ways conditional, even if it's the unspoken agreements in vanilla heteronormative relationships. It takes a massive level of trust and the knowledge that your partner will always intuitively accept your boundaries to allow them to do what they want with you and actually mean it. And when i look at it that way, i do not think that you can just override somebody's ability to consent by giving them money. There is already some form of consent to these acts involved when somebody agrees to pick up that line of work. It's difficult to say where that ends, moreso than in sexual realtions outside of sex work, i'd fully agree to that, and that's highly problematic, but it's not as clearcut as "all sex work is a form of SA because you bought consent the sex worker normally wouldn't have given to you".CW: SA
There's sex workers who are sexually assaulted by clients, some brothels have panic buttons in their rooms for this reason. So if you follow the "prostitution is legalized r*pe" line of thinking, what's that then? Wasn't the sex worker in question already violated when they entered the contract with the client? Is that a case of double sexual assault?
(rest of the post is just general musings not directed at you, comrade, i'm only putting them here because i think this works better in one post).
That said, i'm very much not a fan of people buying sex work, and yes, that includes porn. Sorry guys, i know that most of you can't nut on your own without this stuff, for reasons i've always failed to understand, but it's how it is. The reason for my attitude isn't that i disagree with sex work per se, my support actually always lies with the workers and puts their concerns first, which is why i DO NOT support failed approaches like the "Nordic Model", which aims to only punish buying sex work, but effectively worsens risks for sex workers, increases deportations of sex workers without papers etc. My concern rather lies with the inherent coerciveness of all transactional relations under capitalism. When you listen to a typical socdem SWERF like German SPD member Leni Braimeyer (surprise, she's also a massive terf), who is pushing for the "Nordic Model" instead of the legalized prostitution we see in Germany today, there is not only a total, ultra-patronizing lack of recognizing the agency of sex workers, there's also a complete obliviousness to the economic conditions that determine how prostitution works in Germany, as yet another form of exploiting the economic imbalances in the EU and supplying German capital with a constant supply of workers who have to take increasingly awful deals out of pauiperization and desparation, as well as an increasingly precarious situation for the lower incomes among the German working class. It's these conditions that give rise to prostitution as an area of mass exploitation, and ending capitalist relations is the only way to amend the problem that a majority of sex workers are in a lopsided economic situation that is the actual threat to their agency and their ability to fully consent.
load more comments
(2 replies)
I don’t see a problem with it but there’s definitely a stigma associated with it. (At least in the US) I think folks who pay are seen as not being able to find it elsewhere which may make them appear as not desirable to other people which then may make your partner question if they’re making a bad choice. Unless you happen to be in an area that has well regulated sex workers, I imagine people might think that you’ve been exposed to STDs which may give you a perception of being “unclean”.
I don’t think you should have to lie when finding a partner… but I do think telling them this (at the beginning) may be problematic for you for a lot of people.
I’d love to see sex work well regulated, protected, and normalized in the US but I don’t think we’re there.
The problem is exploitation which can and does happen in every industry. Sex work is no exception to that rule. Nobody is saying amazon needs to be abolished because of how they treat their workers. But some people see one industry or another as being inherently exploitative.
load more comments
(6 replies)
Pierre Elliot Trudeau, a former prime minister of Canada, has a great quote that I like to pull out: "No place for the state in the bedrooms of of the nation."
I think sex work should be legal and regulated to avoid trafficking and other health issues. General indecency shouldn't be allowed, like in playgrounds, parks, or where minors may otherwise be present. Private clubs, events, etc. should be fine. Governments should otherwise be uninvolved in our sex lives. It's none of their business.
However to answer your question directly, while I think it should be legal I also think it's sad when men use a sex workers services. I try not to, but I can't help but judge them. There's only a handful of reasons where I think its a persons only option. If someone feels like they've run out of options, it's just sad to me. What's gone wrong? Where's your confidence? Have you given up?
And for those legitimate reasons, like someone who's physically handicapped - that's heartbreaking for whole other reasons.
It just makes me sad.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Worked night shift at a hotel next to a night club that doubled as a brothel, could talk to the girls who were always taken to our hotel, heard how the dudes talked about the girls they had sex with, i say kill everyone who pays for sex.
And this was supposed to be a "good" place btw.
seriously, i feel like so much of the discourse surrounding the sex industry is now dictated by a small minority of relatively well off sex workers who, probably unwittingly, produce a distorted image of what it's like to sell sex for a living. and through social media, these voices gets amplified both by libs, whose understanding of anything begins and ends with 'listen to x-voices,' and redditor-type men who have a vested interest in expanding prostitution and sanitizing its image, not because they care about sex workers, but because deep down they want to buy sex without having to feel bad about it
Logically, if he treats the sex worker right, with no demanding, no (non negotiated/sane) violence, and his actions don’t extend into monogamous relationships, and his views on future sexual partners are neither transactional nor cruel, it should be fine.
Emotionally would likely be a different story for the partner, or at least for me. Partly due to the stigma attached to sex work, and partly due to feelings of inadequacy or worry about needing to perform unwanted acts, and partly due to a suspicion that that really would affect his views, because people’s thoughts and feelings are messy, sprawling things that don’t fit into the mental cabinets we stuff them into. But if the partner couldn’t get over that, then they’re not for him.
And yes, this applies to women who pay for sex workers, too. Or at least it damn well should.
It grosses me out, but as long as they're not shitty to the sex worker and the sex worker isn't being abused by a pimp, and everyone consents, it's none of my damned business.
I know a guy who does, and while it doesn't really matter I'm my opinion, he's kind of a weirdo sleezebag already so it's kind of expected. I suspect there's a correlation that makes it a little hard to separate the service from the kind of guy who would seek out the service.
No judgement. BUT. I have slightly less of an opinion of those who do it when visiting a foreign country. Like a number of other things (such as gambling) I don't quite like the idea of a city having their citizens relying on sex tourism for sustainability, which by itself is whatever. But mixing that with the concept of fetishizing other races makes it icky. I can't imagine a man with "class" doing it.
load more comments
(7 replies)
I mean, it just depends on why. I don't look down on it as a whole, but if you're in a relationship and doing it on the side, I think you're a scumbag. That would go for women, too though.
I personally wouldn't date a man who's into that, I'd be too worried they'd indulge while we're together, and that's a hard no for me.