I understand that some of the criticism comes from conservatives but the sentiment seems to extend far beyond thst. Of course, I understand it when it’s forced or when someone only does it to survive against their will. But if people genuinely want to do it, why do people hate on them?
Because christianity taught them that sex is bad.
people think it’s easy money and get jealous
and people like that never realize just how much work actually goes into it (speaking from personal experience here)
This, it’s purely moralistic fart sniffing. That and folks who can’t control themselves and blame the performers for being too tempting.
Anyone who works a job they hate for a boss they hate, for not enough money, is the same as any prostitute. They should stop being so judgemental.
Wise words master
I only have a problem with sex work if people feel like they have to do it to make ends meet, or if they are being coerced into it. The latter being a big problem in the porn industry.
The first is a form of coercion as well.
Who do you know that goes to work for fun, and not to make ends meet?
No one
I have at least 4 coworkers who disprove this.
I work with several such people in my department. I prefer not to reveal much information about my work but I’ll just say it’s with electronics.
Three of them are retired and one of them works for us in his spare time when he’s not traveling across the country for his “main” job. The later one offered to do the work for free because all he really wanted out of the job was to learn how the work is done and how he can do the same work for his retired father.
Of the other three one recently had a second “retirement” because he no longer had the spare time and now cares for his wife full time. Another one recently had an argument with management because he wasn’t logging all of his hours on the job while working from home and would regularly do additional work that he wasn’t being paid for.
I’ve also had one prior side gig type of job where I know some people did it for fun while getting some cash on the side in the entertainment industry and another job with a similar situation in sports.
I’m not going to pretend much of this is very normal by current standards and I’m certain the majority of people involved were also motivated by having at least an additional source of income, but there absolutely are people who even within our current economic system go to work for the fun of it. But the only ones I’ve ever met who do it are people who no longer need to worry about making ends meet.
All work is done through coercition Some coercition are worst than other, but the all the worst one are not only in sex works. Fighting for emancipation is done by the workers themselves, not aqainst them
I feel like I have to do my job to make ends meet - how is that different from sex work? Coercion is a different story
Fact is, we humans make quite surplus enough for everyone to make ends meet. Your job is a form of coercion, to make others money. That health care in the U.S. is tied to one’s job is evidence of that. That housing is dependent on mortgages being paid consistently or one risks homelessness is more evidence still. Taxes are coercion by governments to give credence to fiat currency, not because they need it to pay for goods and services… they could print money to pay for goods if that weren’t true. Point is jobs are coercion, and sex workers are under the same pressures I described above, enough that I doubt any sex worker is in it just for their love of the game.
And thus… Sex work is no different to the others
Then why so many sex workers die from drug overdose?
Why do so many people in other jobs die from a drug overdose? Because the world sucks
Sex workers face mortality rates from overdose that dwarf the general population. We’re talking about an external-cause mortality risk roughly 8-12 times higher for these marginalized groups. The direct link is undeniable: studies show a significant history of substance dependence (100% in one cohort) with opioids involved in ~90% of those fatal events. It’s crucial to note these are likely “conservative estimates” because many records don’t capture sex work status.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12405828/
The driving factor isn’t the work itself, but the trauma surrounding it. You see a high burden of PTSD, anxiety, and depression that predates or coincides with substance use. For many, the drug use, especially “polysubstance” mixing of opioids and benzos, is a form of self-medication to numb the violence and stigma
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acps.13559
The overdose is often a direct consequence of criminalization and policing. Research shows that when police target sex workers or create barriers to safe consumption sites, the odds of a fatal overdose more than double (AOR 2.15)
I agree with what you’ve said but I don’t consider these things as caused by the job, rather symptomatic of how the job is treated in society (and how poorly regulated human trafficking for sex work is)
Time to abolish anesthesiologists
and that’s why sex workers made their unions too
We are not free. We are just able to choose from a limited selection of approved choices or face retribution, or maybe you can’t even get a choice and that is seen as a personal failing.
needing to perform sexuality in order to make ends meet is a form of coercion. Like if someone has to grant access to their body, under threat of starvation or homelessness or whatever, that’s coercion. I don’t know how many sex workers are out there with a couple jobs lined up an then say “nah i’d rather do sex work” but within the current framework of gig economies and legally grey/restricted labor I bet it’s not a significant amount.
if someone has to grant access to their body, under threat of starvation or homelessness
But that’s employment in a nutshell, though. A welder rents out his body to a company to weld steel beams for 8 hours a day. An accountant rents out their body to sit behind a desk for 8 hours a day and crunch numbers. A salesperson rents out their body to cold-call for 8 hours a day.
No matter what, we’re coerced into giving or body to perform someone else’s labour. The fact that it doesn’t always involve nudity doesn’t change anything vis a vis your bodily autonomy.
None of them rent out intimate access to their bodies, it’s stupid to think that an account sitting behind the desk is just like a sex worker. Clearly one is in a more preferalble job. Clearly the welder has a better option to barter or organize for collective action, clearly those jobs would still exist in a society where destitute women didn’t whereas the porn industry as it currently is would die out
“Intimate” is a completely subjective term. Some people, like it or not, don’t consider nudity to be intimate and are therefore more than happy to use it to their advantage. Just because you wouldn’t, doesn’t make you the arbiter or what is or isn’t considered intimate.
So, as you say “Clearly being the more preferable job” is a meaningless statement. A vegan wouldn’t rent out their body to work in a slaughterhouse. A pacifist wouldn’t rent out their body to the military. Just because you wouldn’t rent out your body for people to enjoy on the internet doesn’t make it objectively worse than any other profession. It’s just your perspective.
I’m not saying that there aren’t issues in the porn industry. Of course there are, tonnes of them. But renting out your body to perform manual labour or renting out your body for people to look at on the internet are not as different as you think.
That rings true for every single job - I mean individual coercion
and yet some of those jobs would exist in a society without destitute women, whereas the porn industry as it currently is, wouldn’t.
I am personally friends with multiple women (and non women) who do sex work (some do porn) instead of other, more mundane jobs that they are fully qualified to do. There are issues with the industry for fucking SURE but lets not pretend that everybody in it is a hostage, as an excuse to belittle those who work in SW.
I think they mean it’s their only option to make ends meet.
Other people do a lot of shit to make ends meet.
Hazardous backbreaking work and being treated like shit in a minimum wage job.
And you have a problem with people who have the choice to be their own boss and work on their own terms?
So you’re basically saying you’re against it.
You can’t do it if you’re coerced, and not by your own choice to make money.
Do you also have a problem with 99% of people who work to make ends meet, not for fun.I’m against the conditions that force people into doing any work that they don’t want to do. I’m mentioning sex work because the topic of this post is sex work and not construction or janitorial work.
No, that’s only one reason you mentioned.
You also said you are against it “to make ends meet”.
If they’re not coerced, a valid reason to be against it, then it’s nobody’s business how they choose to get their money.
If they choose sex work over janitorial or whatever shit work it’s their right and there’s nothing wrong with it.I don’t really know what you’re taking issue with because I agree
OK
Whats going on??? There’s obviously a difference between a cashier or warehouse worker being forced into their labour than a sex worker forced to sell intimate access to their body?? “Their own boss” what kind of liberalism is this??? This just flattens all the discourse around “sex work as work” into “wow they just perform a service like my mechanic it’s literally the same thing!” Fuck off with that bullshit.
I’m just gonna quote some marx here for all you people that think all labor is equally good and everyone just chooses freely what they want to do
The economists tell us, to be sure, that those labourers who have been rendered superfluous by machinery find new venues of employment. They dare not assert directly that the same labourers that have been discharged find situations in new branches of labour. Facts cry out too loudly against this lie. Strictly speaking, they only maintain that new means of employment will be found for other sections of the working class; for example, for that portion of the young generation of labourers who were about to enter upon that branch of industry which had just been abolished. Of course, this is a great satisfaction to the disabled labourers. There will be no lack of fresh exploitable blood and muscle for the Messrs. Capitalists—the dead may bury their dead. This consolation seems to be intended more for the comfort of the capitalists themselves than their labourers. If the whole class of the wage-labourer were to be annihilated by machinery, how terrible that would be for capital, which, without wage-labour, ceases to be capital!
But even if we assume that all who are directly forced out of employment by machinery, as well as all of the rising generation who were waiting for a chance of employment in the same branch of industry, do actually find some new employment—are we to believe that this new employment will pay as high wages as did the one they have lost? If it did, it would be in contradiction to the laws of political economy. We have seen how modern industry always tends to the substitution of the simpler and more subordinate employments for the higher and more complex ones. How, then, could a mass of workers thrown out of one branch of industry by machinery find refuge in another branch, unless they were to be paid more poorly?
LOL the moral police got triggered hard I see.
Yeah being against the commodification of womens bodies and nonconsensual sex is just being the moral police 🤮
Woman can do what they want, cry about it repressed biblethumper.
yeah I’m sure they’re really stoked to be fueling your goonsessions. disgusting. fucking libs start frothing everytime someone dares call out the oppression required to maintain their treatlerite life.
I feast on your tears little frustrated nasty man
Nah, they’re right about this one and you’re wrong.
the oppression required to maintain their treatlerite life.
If you don’t feel the same way about fast food workers, convenience store clerks, and baristas, your problem isn’t with the exploitation, it’s with the sex.
ITT: misogyny
They don’t. Generally, nobody cares. The few that do are just so damn loud you’d think there was a lot of them.
Misogyny.
I see people hate the pronographic industry (with every reason to), but not the actors.
Sex workers face mortality rates from overdose that dwarf the general population. We’re talking about an external-cause mortality risk roughly 8-12 times higher for these marginalized groups. The direct link is undeniable: studies show a significant history of substance dependence (100% in one cohort) with opioids involved in ~90% of those fatal events. It’s crucial to note these are likely “conservative estimates” because many records don’t capture sex work status.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12405828/
The driving factor isn’t the work itself, but the trauma surrounding it. You see a high burden of PTSD, anxiety, and depression that predates or coincides with substance use. For many, the drug use, especially “polysubstance” mixing of opioids and benzos, is a form of self-medication to numb the violence and stigma
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acps.13559
The overdose is often a direct consequence of criminalization and policing. Research shows that when police target sex workers or create barriers to safe consumption sites, the odds of a fatal overdose more than double (AOR 2.15)
I dated a cam girl for a while, (insert the obligatory “it’s not dating if you’re paying her lul” joke here), and she smoked a quarter per day. It was the only way she could tolerate the work.
Given, she was damned good at her job. She made more in 4 hours of streaming than my roommate and I made in a week combined. She literally made enough to cover her rent and bills in like three or four hours of work. So she could definitely afford to smoke that much, because basically everything after that first stream was disposable income for her. But she would get done with her stream and immediately hit a bowl to try and forget the work. And she’d basically be stoned until her next stream was scheduled to start.
If she had ever graduated to harder drugs, she 100% would have OD’ed. However, it’s also a little disingenuous to compare streamers/OnlyFans models with in-person sex workers. There’s a level of compartmentalization that online sex work creates. It’s definitely still reliant on building a parasocial relationship, but you’re not actually sleeping with Johns in person. Unless you’re doxxed, there’s very little personal risk involved. But with in-person sex work, all of that is inverted. Online sex work is obviously still sex work, but it’s definitely a different type of sex work.
It’s like comparing retail work with an Amazon warehouse. Both jobs suck in their own way, and they’re both fulfilling the same basic purpose of getting products to customers. But very few people would say that they’re the same job, and the stressors associated with each are unique.
While yes, I agree that OnlyFans is sex work, I disagree with lumping the general “prostitute” from the street/brothel with the onlyfans/sex cam worker.
The remote nature keeps unsavory folk away by default (under the assumption that they arent doxxed) while sex work in person is, well, in person.
Personally, I think influencer/hustle culture, parasocial relations, personal “brands” are a rot on society coming from the worst parts of capitalism. The influencer benefits from alienation and I think that’s wrong. I don’t think an OF model is any worse than any other influencer. I also think a lot of OF models didn’t feel they had many options when they started. But the really successful ones could get out or be less parasocial or something.
Sex work is work.If someone hates on a sex workers, me thinks they doth protest too much.
I don’t like how it’s spammed around, otherwise I wouldn’t care about it.
Its the bots and getting it shoved down your throat. on every app with a non neglable user base you will see countless bots/grifters swarm popular posts.
its kinda like the furry comunity. The vocal minority destroyes the public image
Yup. The fact that they take over any community revolving around self photos without heavy moderation.(cosplay, fashion, etc)
Also dating apps, but I don’t use those anyways.
Of course, I understand it when it’s forced or when someone only does it to survive against their will. But if people genuinely want to do it, why do people hate on them?
Replace ‘porn star’ with ‘slave’ and you’ll understand. There might be a section of the population that would like to be a slave, but we have, as a society, decided that people shouldn’t be bought and sold like furniture.
Of course, the hatred should be aimed at the economic and social systems that allow people to buy others’ dignity, not at the victims of that system.
Having spoken with a few women that have done things adjacent to pornography, their regrets are mostly in regards to the way they were treated by people that were not in the industry. The escorts I’ve spoken with enjoy the work itself, although not necessarily all of the customers.
What you’re saying about the horrors of pornography and prostitution apply to ALL people that need to work for a living. The company I work for buys my time, the product of my labor–which they sell for many times what I’m paid–and even my dignity by forcing me to wear a uniform of their choice. I absolutely do not like the customers that ultimately purchase the products of my labor, but I have little choice if I want to have a place to live, and food to eat.
There are significant differences to being forced to sell your mind, competence and time; vs being forced to auction off the another’s use of your own genitals.
Please explain what those differences are without using any magical thinking that places sex into a sacred sphere of human activity that is holy and sacrosanct?
Or don’t. My point is you can tell how serious a person is when they start talking about the morality of sex by replacing every mention of sex in their point with “boxing”. It’s still a highly physical one-on-one activity that’s a crime of both participants haven’t consented, so if the exact same argument doesn’t make sense when made about boxing then they are thinking magically about sex and not materialistically.
Why do I have to think about sex materialistically?
Because thinking about it magically leads you to idiotic conclusions like “maybe the bronze age goat fuckers really did discover the ultimate truth of sexual morality, and it’s just coincidence that it just so happened to lay the foundation for millennia of Patriarchal bullshit”.
So you have arbitrarily decided that I must think about sex either magically or materialistically.
Good day to you sir.
I mean, I didn’t decide that, that’s just kind of how it works.
Yes, being forced to sell your own mind is infinitely worse. You no longer have your own thoughts; your mind belongs to your employers. That is absolutely, 1000% worse than selling physical labor.
The escorts I’ve spoken with enjoy the work itself
Like I said, I’m sure there are people who enjoy this, but the system is still exploitative and harmful.
What you’re saying about the horrors of pornography and prostitution apply to ALL people that need to work for a living …
Yes. In an ideal world, people won’t have to do any dangerous or difficult jobs. But for now, we can’t start with the worst offenders.
I think there are no worst offenders here, all labor is valid as in all labor is exploitative in a capitalist system
Dignity is very relative here, I think you can be a sex worker and keep your dignity
I think there are no worst offenders here, all labor is valid as in all labor is exploitative in a capitalist system
There is no difference in work quality between painting and coal mining? Teaching children and soldering diodes? Really?
I think you can be a sex worker and keep your dignity
Again, I’m not talking about the exceptions here. Having to sell yourself for money is a horrible fate to most, to the extent that we make laws against that. You can think of this the same way.
Having to sell yourself for money is what most people do every day, bruh. Every job I’ve ever had has been a major detriment to my physical and/or mental health, and was accepted only under threat of homelessness and starvation.
I’ve met more people who are proud sex workers then I have people who are proud fast food employees.
I think that perhaps you are letting your disgust for a person’s work color how you feel about the person. Do you feel the same about athletes and actors? They also “sell their bodies”.
As I said above, the people being forced to sell their dignity are the victims, and need help and rehabilitation. My hatred and disgust are reserved exclusively for those who exploit them, and the economic and social system which enables such behaviour.
No, you misunderstand: ALL labor under capitalism is exploitative. ‘Dangerous’ and ‘difficult’ has nothing to do with it. The system is set up so that your labor must be used for the benefit of someone else in order to obtain the bare necessities of survival, and you don’t get the full value of your labor. It doesn’t matter if that’s working in an office doing spreadsheets all day, or as a sex work; ALL labor is exploited under capitalism.
Work is work; sex workers are workers.
See my reply to sakuraba@lemmy.ml.
Yes. In an ideal world, people won’t have to do any dangerous or difficult jobs. But for now, we can’t start with the worst offenders.
do you believe that all sex work is dangerous or difficult?
do you believe that easy & safe but compulsory work as a means to get obtain food and shelter is an ideal world?
do you believe that all sex work is dangerous or difficult?
Emotional toll aside, putting yourself at the mercy of a stronger person who has already shown that he does not care about right and wrong, day after day, is very much dangerous.
do you believe that easy & safe but compulsory work as a means to get obtain food and shelter is an ideal world?
People do enjoy work when it is pleasant and interesting. Should it be compulsory? I don’t know. Rich people who don’t have to do any work often lose touch with the world. So perhaps even in that ideal world where we have amazing robots that can do anything, we should have people do a little bit of some work of their choice.
But all this is just speculation. For now, the focus should be on freeing people from the most dangerous and difficult jobs.
Are you comparing OnlyFans to literal slavery? You do know that they get paid, right?
Slaves could get paid and buy their freedom in many historical societies.
I think the comparison is about want and need. They do it because they feel forced into it, by some means or another.
Sounds like the same reason I go to work. I need the money because it’s the only legal option I have to obtain food and shelter.
And you would be right. That is what it sounds like. We all get forced into working. Some have to wear a uniform and serve coffee and biscuits, others have to slop 50 year old meat in a dirty toilet - or whatever scenario that makes it more palatable.
Not most of them, apparently!
There are infinitely more people who work themselves to death in hazardous jobs for peanuts with a boss who treats them like shit.
But somehow the people who are their own boss, make good money on their own terms have no dignity and are ‘sold like furniture’.
That is a backward and pedantic view.
- giving fake hope to subsribers
- generating fake drama
- used for tax fraud in many cases
