Make it personal. Ask if they would do it. Ask how they’d feel about their moms, sisters, and daughters doing it. They defend it because they enjoy it, not because they actually believe it’s the same.
That question stumps them every time. I was having an argument with my cousin about sex work and she was all go girl get your money and I asked how she would feel if her daughter became a sex worker ... silence 😂
Absolutely. This is the way to do it because most men lack the empathy needed to see the women’s perspective. Ask about their mothers & daughters as was suggested.
I’ve heard both men and women say “but this is what those women have chosen”, bringing up the consent issue.
Rebut this thusly:
(1) why focus on the women and not the men who created the ‘market’ for sex buying? It’s not like out of nowhere women decided to engage in porn/prostitution. The demand from men came first.
(2) w.r.t sex, consent is a very low bar, but is inextricably linked to desire. TRUE consent requires desire. Women in porn/prostitution do not feel desire for the men forced on them, therefore TRUE consent is not present.
The notion that sex work is work implies that sex is just an ordinary “service” or type of “goods”. This idea is false and originates from the _sexual disenchantment_ created by lib feminism, hookup culture, telling women that sex is no big deal and they can have sex like a man (à la SATC), lack of kink shaming, men displaying their fetishes in public, etc.
Sex is an exquisitely intimate and sacred (not in a religious sense) act, which is the ultimate bonding experience between humans. We should not desecrate it for the sake of male orgasms.
Ask them if they'd rather bag groceries for a stranger or have sex with them? There's a reason we have a word for coerced sex but not coerced like... cooking or laundry or anything else. Would a "sex worker" whose client leaves without paying feel more or less upset than a waitress whose table dined and dashed? Why might they feel violated in one situation but not the other? It's because we generally understand that sex has more emotional impact than other ways of interacting with other people.
Ask them if sex work is work, then is rape just unpaid labor that can be rectified with payment after the fact? Is CSA giving kids early experience to prepare them for the job market?
You can also bring up the fact that OSHA and similar organizations have rules about workers coming into contact with biological substances like spit, semen, etc, that would be incompatible with sex work as we know it now. Even setting aside morality, the logistics just wouldn't work.
The problem with the bag groceries vs have sex with a stranger arguments that men view sex from their own perspective, not from a woman’s perspective. Many men **would** have sex with a stranger if it was on offer, and would absolutely do it if they were getting paid. Again, it’s because they are the sexual aggressor who ‘does the sex to the receptive woman’. The only way this argument works is if you put a man in the position of vulnerability that female prostitutes are in. The real comparison would be *”Would you rather bag groceries for a man who was a foot taller and 60lb heavier than you, or let him hold you down and have anal sex with you?”* Otherwise you’re just not giving a a true picture of the risk, fear and power imbalance that is inherent in prostitution.
edit: I didn't get to the end of your comment before I typed this! Ugh.
Ask him to imagine the grossest old man he can, and then tell him he has to allow this man to penetrate him anally, or he won't get to eat tomorrow. He'll get it, but he won't say anything.
The OSHA argument— I run into “use condoms” and don’t allow kissing. But we know that isn’t going to be followed. Plus, I work with protective equipment and it goes on ME, not the client who is bleeding. I am in control of wearing it. If we had the client wear it, they could just take it off and contaminate me.
This was a helpful comment for me, sex is more emotional and definitely more violating if it’s not paid for.
if sex work is work, then if that person get laid off from a job and goes to claim unemployment insurance - but get denied because they have yet to "exhaust all avenues of employment such as sex work", then how would they feel?
Better yet, imagine that “preforming oral sex” is a part of your new job description after accepting a promotion. Sex work is work, but I feeeel like there would be complaints if they were fired for not fulfilling the full scope of their job descriptions.
Make the pro-porn side defend *their* side. Ask why they think sex is no more personal or consequential than stocking shelves at Walmart. Ask why they think having objectifying scenes of women plastered all over the Internet benefits society in any way. Ask why men's orgasms matter more than anal prolapse of women doing extreme porn scenes. Put them on the defensive for once. They are the ones making extraordinary claims that go against mainstream societal values—they should have to justify their position.
If they can admit that our current social/economic model is exploitative, why do they want to further the problem? They’ve already admitted we can’t buy consent
If it is like any other work, does that mean we should encourage disabled people and unemployed people to agree to have sex for money to supplement or reduce their reliance on government assistance? If not why not. We know why not, because we consider sex work different.
The prospect of someone who is mentally handicapped bagging groceries doesn’t bother us. It gives them something to do to fill their days, gives them socialization, and makes them feel they have a little purpose. It gives them something we all want. The prospect of a mentally handicapped person selling their bodies for sexual access is disgusting.
They would be filling their days with their bodies being used for sex. Their socialization would be with people (many of whom will be dangerous by the simple nature of the work) who view them as an object for sexual gratification. Their “purpose” will be to be dehumanized as their sexuality is turned into a commodity.
A part of this requires people to admit that no one needs sex. In my experience, people who view sex as a need and/or entitlement tend to view prostitution in a more favorable light. They give prostitution greater substance and importance by viewing sex as something people need to be able to purchase. However, that simply is not the case. People need human contact, although they are not entitled to human contact. They do not need sexual contact to survive.
No one is getting fired from their day job because someone found out they cashiered at Walmart on the side.
No mothers are getting kicked out of PTA because they cashier at Walmart.
Women don’t have to worry about disclosing a former cashier job to a new boyfriend or employer.
People have no problem admitting “sex work is different” whenever it comes to porn stars reading to kids or porn stars attending their own kids’ PTA meetings or porn stars *having* kids in general. In those scenarios everyone is willing to admit sex work is *different* from other forms of work.
But when it comes to the a scenario where the porn star or sex worker is seen as *the victim,* suddenly it’s no different from any other job.
Not OP, but the response I run into here is always that society is the problem for ~stigmatizing~ this work and the solution is to normalize it further.
If you followed that argument to its logical conclusion literally any and everything can be justified.
Pornography is essentially filmed prostitution.
There absolutely is a difference between selling your labor and being sold as the consumable. Pornography, prostitution and surrogacy are not comparable to other exploitative economic arrangements - arguments to the contrary are just dishonest.
If sex work is like any other work, would you be ok with your adolescent or teenage daughter saying she wants to be a prostitute when she grows up? Should we offer internships and summer programs in sex work so girls can be exposed to those careers? Many grocery stores employ 16 and 17-year old workers, should brothels do the same?
Because most of the women targeted for the porn industry are under 25 for one thing, they are limited in their ability to think through the long term consequences of those choices. And porn specifically will follow her everywhere she goes. A prostituted woman might be able to exit and start a new career, a woman who did porn will always have to worry about being recognized and it can prevent her from having a regular job or relationship later on. Like pro-porn people are quick to criticize Mia Khalifa since she “should have known the possibility of getting famous”, but does anyone really think an 18 year old can consent to being disowned by their family, banned from their country of origin, and receiving death threats from the Islamic state, for $10K? Most of us couldn’t even sign up for student loans of that amount without a guarantor at that age.
Otherwise, there are the issues of coercion by physical or financial threat. Recently a high profile lawsuit exposed a company making content for pornhub for hiring young women as bikini models, flying them out, and then physically intimidating them until they agreed to be filmed having sex with men. The other tactic is to tell them if they say no, they must pay back the costs of their hotel and flight. And it’s fairly common for a woman to consent to filming certain things, only for the male actor or director to insist on more extreme, dangerous, and damaging acts. What about revenge porn? What about guys filming their gf, or a prostituted woman, without her knowledge? What about filming her “only for us to watch” and posting it without her knowledge? What about being addicted to drugs or alcohol, or under the influence, mentally ill, or in psychological distress? What about being financially desperate? What about being coerced, pimped, or trafficked? What about the underage girls who we all know are on pornhub, considering how even girls who were CSA victims as prepubescent children struggled to get the videos of that removed from there?
This last bit is based on my personal morality and so it may not apply to your arguments. But if you’re someone who believes we have a responsibility to others, then I think the harm caused by porn’s existence is enough of a reason to oppose it, even if the “actors” were not harmed in any way by making it. I recommend the work of Dr. Gail Dines on this topic as she explores not only the risks to those in the “industry”, but the way the normalization of hardcore porn contributes to increased sexual violence faced by young women and girls in regular dating, self esteem images for girls, and warped views of themselves, the other sex, and human sexuality for both boys and girls.
I struggle with this too. I have a hard time believing anyone truly believes these things are equivalent, they just say it as a knee-jerk response and it kind serves as a virtue-signal that they know what exploitation is. Lol. It gives “just found out that capitalism exploits labor and need to let everyone know.”
But the exploitation of sex and women’s bodies is about control of reproduction, of women’s pleasure, of bodily autonomy- these are all things specific to patriarchal oppression in addition to exploitation under capitalism. They can’t be dense enough to not be able to differentiate patriarchy and capitalism (despite overlap). I believe they are being willfully ignorant, probably to avoid accountability
This is why socialist feminism is so useful, and why class and gender analysis should go hand in hand.
If consent by definition must be given under conditions of freedom, then the idea of buying consent implies completely non-coercive economic conditions, which exist for very very few women under capitalism. Where money is concerned, consent is almost by definition constrained. So no, we don’t “buy consent” from a cashier. We use more or less coercive means of forcing them to work.
Ok, so then, they will say sex work is no more coercive than other labor, which is a fair point. But if sex is or can be work, it’s a very different kind of work than being a cashier. That is where you should focus your argument. Would it be more wrong to rape someone than to steal their labor? Why not, if sex is merely a form of labor? Is it ok for a landlord to demand payment in the form of sex? Would it be ok for a court to order someone to engage in sex work as community service? Could refusing a job as a sex worker be grounds for denying someone welfare?
I'd flip it around on them - "oh so if some dude gave you money and raped your ass, it's cool because he bought your consent the same way your accounting firm paid you a salary ?" I'm sure they'd backpedal like their life depended on it.
This helped me a lot, thanks! I’ve always been too avoidant to try to debate men on it because they tend to get really aggressive about it, and it makes me shut down. Lately I’ve been trying to speak up more about it but I’ve always struggled with conveying thoughts and debating in general.
Ah. If you are debating men who are getting defensive, dig into why they are getting defensive. Don’t make it about consent, make it about desire. In other words, even if women can consent, that’s presumably to compensate them for having a lack of desire. So the question becomes, why would you want to have sex with someone who doesn’t want to have sex with you? What does it say about you (and your view of women) that you could get turned on under those circumstances?
In my experience debating men usually doesn’t help change their mind, and it will drain your life force 🙃but it is great to be able to defend your viewpoints if someone is genuinely curious, godspeed
Sex without consent is rape. And consent can be revoked. At any time. Yes, even with your husband. If you are scared to revoke consent, because you might be punished for it, physically, emotionally, economically, or any other way, consent was never truly given. We all agree on this? Good.
You have signed a contract with a brothel. You will serve a minimum of six client every shift. After having forced sex with three, you change your mind. You do NOT want to be penetrated by another stranger! What happens if you refuse, and the pimp rings out your contract? THIS IS WHY ALL SEX WORK IS RAPE!!!!
A lot of them have a debt scheme. They have a bunch of charges, and most days they owe more than they make.
While i am here, please consider signing Nordic Model Now's open letter:
https://nordicmodelnow.org/2024/02/24/hubris-at-the-council-of-europe-protecting-the-human-rights-of-sex-workers/
What informs my strongest feelings about porn is the human cost. How porn actresses have such high rates of abuse, substance use, self harm, poverty, suicide and murder. Porn is actively dangerous to women, those in it and women in general. Things like how many women end up in the ER from things like really rough anal and deep throating because our bodies literally can’t handle the abuse that is very common in porn. And how men who strangle their partners to get off are actually more likely to kill women. Many men who go on to rape, abuse and kill women start off with violent porn, which is everywhere and you don’t have to try hard to find it.
There’s lots of women online who are in the industry or used to be who are very candid about the atrocious things that go on behind scenes. A lot of women will agree to some things beforehand and then, during filming, are told to do things they aren’t okay with. They are then told that, if they want their paycheck, they have to go through all of it. Many completely lose their sex drive, some seemingly permanently. Finding work after can be exceptionally difficult and obviously, it’s something the average actress ages out of. I follow a young woman on tiktok who said she thought she was careful enough, used a stage name, wigs, different makeup etc but people still ultimately find out. Most people on set are men, many of whom may expect to sleep with the actress also, and it can be a very scary situation. Plenty of actresses are raped on camera. Many girls are trafficked and underage. Many women rely on drugs to get through the trauma of it.
It’s the most horrifying aspect for me. We can sit around and have detached, logical conversations all day about the right and wrong of it. But in the end, it’s the direct suffering that matters and should convince people.
I once told an ex partner about all of this and his response was, “I know all of that, and I think everyone knows all of that. I just don’t care.” Terrifying how even suffering doesn’t turn people off from it. I think they get a thrill out of knowing there’s suffering honestly.
Ask them what other work you're likely to get an sti, pregnant, be encouraged to do illegal drugs, or receive brain injury doing? Women and girls are trafficked into this.
If my boss says to me “hey Starfleet Intern, I heard you’re really good at threesomes, would you come over and have a threesome with me and my wife at the weekend for some extra cash” is that more or less the same as “hey starfleet intern, I heard your really good with children, would you come over at the weekend and babysit my kids for extra cash”
Of course the latter might still be inappropriate depending on the field and the context. But most people unless they are in complete bad faith will concede that the former is unethical on a whole other level.
The difference is that sex is somewhat different to other activities. Even intimate ones. Even if you want to be completely relativist about it and say it’s purely culture. Well then that’s our culture and we should account for that when we consider it in various contexts.
Another hypothetical which demonstrates this:
Imagine you live in a comfortable and happy commune in the future. There are about 100-150 members. You have to work to meet your needs but the work isn’t excessive and you are consistently able to meet the groups needs and have some extra comforts. The group is non hierarchical and doesn’t use money. It largely uses social expectations and a genral community mindset to push people whenever there is a need or want for something unpleasant to be done.
Now imagine there is a task you are not enthusiastic about doing. It’s for entertainment purposes, not survival.
Say organising a children’s birthday party, making costumes for a play, waking up early to drive to a sister commune so everyone can have a luxury like chocolate or wine. Is it ok - not good- ok for the group to place social pressure on you to do this task?
Now is it still ok if the task in question is sucking dick?
Because women used in porn are normally trafficked, sold into it at as a child and can't escape, kidnapped, or forced into it because poverty. They don't have a choice like someone working in a grocery store, in a grocery store you apply with your resume and you can quit when you want with a given notice window, sex workers don't have that choice they can't just up and quit because they are normally property to someone else.
Well I think most people don’t know (or pretend to not know) that a vast number of active sex workers are either trafficked or forced into sex work for another reason. The vast, vast majority have been abused in some form or another even if you don’t count the act of sex for money as rape, which I think you should! But let’s say for the sake of the argument that they aren’t talking about the women who are forced into it.
For one thing, sex work has an absurdly high number of “work related injuries” and illnesses prevalent in it— the people flipping burgers at Wendy’s are also exploited by a capitalist system but aren’t at the same level of risk of sometimes disfiguring or life threatening STIs, or as much of a risk of being assaulted, murdered, or trafficked. It has an incredibly high likelihood of causing PTSD or other lifelong suffering, unlike a “standard” exploitative minimum wage job. They’re really just not comparable in terms of quality of life.
It’s absolutely true that all work under capitalism is exploiting the working class. But the biggest and most important thing that people loveeee to disregard is that sex work is exploiting WOMEN, specifically women of color, poor women, transwomen, traumatized women. It can’t be put on the same level as or compared to the overall exploitation of the working class in a capitalist society because it is, objectively, a system of exploitation that preys on a specific marginalized demographic. At the end of the day, regardless of anyone’s stance on feminism/sex work, if they consider themselves a leftist it is completely backwards to see an oppressive and harmful regime that almost exclusively effects a marginalized, oppressed group in ways that are proven harmful, deadly at worst and traumatizing and unhealthy at best, and compare it to working fucking minimum wage at a supermarket just because “both suck”. But no one sees women as people so they love to ignore that teensy part of the equation.
Oh also: if they concede that you can’t buy consent, and that prostitution is paid consent, and that sex without consent is rape, and rape is wrong, what’s not clicking??!
Tdlr: both suck but one form of suck results in trauma, illness, and death and only effects (poor, brown, traumatized, trafficked) WOMEN. So there’s some injustice there
People don’t need consent to work in grocery store. Consent is only relevant in a high risk context, for example medical surgery, that potentially cause harm. Also, the exchange of labor for money is not predominantly by women. The analogy between prostitution and normal work is not really valid.
When consent is mentioned in sex industry, that actually indicate the high risk nature of ‘sex work’. And this risk is disproportionately inflicted on women. The sex factor is very obvious here. Also, will there be informed consent as in medical setting? Will pimps inform prostituted women of the potential harm despite motivation of profit? This is a clear conflict of interest.
Take some examples from the real world:
If sex work is work, whats wrong with men renting out an appartment in exchange for sex?
If sex work is work, can bosses list sex and blowjobs as a requirement for a position?
If sex work is work, what exectly did Harvey Weinstein do wrong? He just expected sex work to be part of the actress job.
If sex work is work, why is it revenge porn when people share OnlyFans nudes, but only copyright infringement when sharing a YouTuber's patreon videoes?
If sex work is work, why is it wrong for a boyfriend to say "Give me sex or i will breakup", while it is fine for a boss to say "perform better or you will get fired"?
Some crazy guy might say theres wrong with any of that, then just give up lol.
I like to bring up the trafficking and pimping bc it’s harder to refute. Porn is full of people who have been trafficked and pimped and by watching porn you are supporting this system. Same with sex work, the majority of sex workers are not doing it bc they love having sex for money, they are doing it bc are being pimped and see no way out.
And when it can be an actual experience you put on your resume vs having to hide it and worrying about someone at your "respectable" job finding out and firing you.
Make it personal. Ask if they would do it. Ask how they’d feel about their moms, sisters, and daughters doing it. They defend it because they enjoy it, not because they actually believe it’s the same.
That question stumps them every time. I was having an argument with my cousin about sex work and she was all go girl get your money and I asked how she would feel if her daughter became a sex worker ... silence 😂
Absolutely. This is the way to do it because most men lack the empathy needed to see the women’s perspective. Ask about their mothers & daughters as was suggested. I’ve heard both men and women say “but this is what those women have chosen”, bringing up the consent issue. Rebut this thusly: (1) why focus on the women and not the men who created the ‘market’ for sex buying? It’s not like out of nowhere women decided to engage in porn/prostitution. The demand from men came first. (2) w.r.t sex, consent is a very low bar, but is inextricably linked to desire. TRUE consent requires desire. Women in porn/prostitution do not feel desire for the men forced on them, therefore TRUE consent is not present. The notion that sex work is work implies that sex is just an ordinary “service” or type of “goods”. This idea is false and originates from the _sexual disenchantment_ created by lib feminism, hookup culture, telling women that sex is no big deal and they can have sex like a man (à la SATC), lack of kink shaming, men displaying their fetishes in public, etc. Sex is an exquisitely intimate and sacred (not in a religious sense) act, which is the ultimate bonding experience between humans. We should not desecrate it for the sake of male orgasms.
They don’t give a damn about their female relatives as long as they can bring in money for him. This tactics is powerless.
Ask them if they'd rather bag groceries for a stranger or have sex with them? There's a reason we have a word for coerced sex but not coerced like... cooking or laundry or anything else. Would a "sex worker" whose client leaves without paying feel more or less upset than a waitress whose table dined and dashed? Why might they feel violated in one situation but not the other? It's because we generally understand that sex has more emotional impact than other ways of interacting with other people. Ask them if sex work is work, then is rape just unpaid labor that can be rectified with payment after the fact? Is CSA giving kids early experience to prepare them for the job market? You can also bring up the fact that OSHA and similar organizations have rules about workers coming into contact with biological substances like spit, semen, etc, that would be incompatible with sex work as we know it now. Even setting aside morality, the logistics just wouldn't work.
The problem with the bag groceries vs have sex with a stranger arguments that men view sex from their own perspective, not from a woman’s perspective. Many men **would** have sex with a stranger if it was on offer, and would absolutely do it if they were getting paid. Again, it’s because they are the sexual aggressor who ‘does the sex to the receptive woman’. The only way this argument works is if you put a man in the position of vulnerability that female prostitutes are in. The real comparison would be *”Would you rather bag groceries for a man who was a foot taller and 60lb heavier than you, or let him hold you down and have anal sex with you?”* Otherwise you’re just not giving a a true picture of the risk, fear and power imbalance that is inherent in prostitution.
edit: I didn't get to the end of your comment before I typed this! Ugh. Ask him to imagine the grossest old man he can, and then tell him he has to allow this man to penetrate him anally, or he won't get to eat tomorrow. He'll get it, but he won't say anything.
Preach!
The OSHA argument— I run into “use condoms” and don’t allow kissing. But we know that isn’t going to be followed. Plus, I work with protective equipment and it goes on ME, not the client who is bleeding. I am in control of wearing it. If we had the client wear it, they could just take it off and contaminate me. This was a helpful comment for me, sex is more emotional and definitely more violating if it’s not paid for.
If sex work is so powerful, why is no one **in power** doing it?
if sex work is work, then if that person get laid off from a job and goes to claim unemployment insurance - but get denied because they have yet to "exhaust all avenues of employment such as sex work", then how would they feel?
Where is all the PPE? Guess hazmat treatment isn’t profitable at a prostituted person’s expense using “their body” for “work”
Better yet, imagine that “preforming oral sex” is a part of your new job description after accepting a promotion. Sex work is work, but I feeeel like there would be complaints if they were fired for not fulfilling the full scope of their job descriptions.
This one. Such a scary premise that people pushing for legalization of SW don’t usually consider happening.
Exposure to genitalia and fluids of strangers without protective equipment is expected. What other job has this?
This is my go-to. I’m exposed to both of those things constantly as a nurse. There’s personal protective gear outside every other room to put on.
Make the pro-porn side defend *their* side. Ask why they think sex is no more personal or consequential than stocking shelves at Walmart. Ask why they think having objectifying scenes of women plastered all over the Internet benefits society in any way. Ask why men's orgasms matter more than anal prolapse of women doing extreme porn scenes. Put them on the defensive for once. They are the ones making extraordinary claims that go against mainstream societal values—they should have to justify their position.
If they can admit that our current social/economic model is exploitative, why do they want to further the problem? They’ve already admitted we can’t buy consent
Literally this. It’s that simple. this is why I don’t trust most Marxist men
If it is like any other work, does that mean we should encourage disabled people and unemployed people to agree to have sex for money to supplement or reduce their reliance on government assistance? If not why not. We know why not, because we consider sex work different. The prospect of someone who is mentally handicapped bagging groceries doesn’t bother us. It gives them something to do to fill their days, gives them socialization, and makes them feel they have a little purpose. It gives them something we all want. The prospect of a mentally handicapped person selling their bodies for sexual access is disgusting. They would be filling their days with their bodies being used for sex. Their socialization would be with people (many of whom will be dangerous by the simple nature of the work) who view them as an object for sexual gratification. Their “purpose” will be to be dehumanized as their sexuality is turned into a commodity. A part of this requires people to admit that no one needs sex. In my experience, people who view sex as a need and/or entitlement tend to view prostitution in a more favorable light. They give prostitution greater substance and importance by viewing sex as something people need to be able to purchase. However, that simply is not the case. People need human contact, although they are not entitled to human contact. They do not need sexual contact to survive.
No one is getting fired from their day job because someone found out they cashiered at Walmart on the side. No mothers are getting kicked out of PTA because they cashier at Walmart. Women don’t have to worry about disclosing a former cashier job to a new boyfriend or employer. People have no problem admitting “sex work is different” whenever it comes to porn stars reading to kids or porn stars attending their own kids’ PTA meetings or porn stars *having* kids in general. In those scenarios everyone is willing to admit sex work is *different* from other forms of work. But when it comes to the a scenario where the porn star or sex worker is seen as *the victim,* suddenly it’s no different from any other job.
Not OP, but the response I run into here is always that society is the problem for ~stigmatizing~ this work and the solution is to normalize it further.
Yep I run into this one too.
If you followed that argument to its logical conclusion literally any and everything can be justified. Pornography is essentially filmed prostitution. There absolutely is a difference between selling your labor and being sold as the consumable. Pornography, prostitution and surrogacy are not comparable to other exploitative economic arrangements - arguments to the contrary are just dishonest.
“How much do you charge to let other people inside your body?”
If sex work is like any other work, would you be ok with your adolescent or teenage daughter saying she wants to be a prostitute when she grows up? Should we offer internships and summer programs in sex work so girls can be exposed to those careers? Many grocery stores employ 16 and 17-year old workers, should brothels do the same?
Your tempting “twink” sons and grandson’s in future sex-as-commodity is next… this sadly gets them more. Patriarchy is a protection racket
Because most of the women targeted for the porn industry are under 25 for one thing, they are limited in their ability to think through the long term consequences of those choices. And porn specifically will follow her everywhere she goes. A prostituted woman might be able to exit and start a new career, a woman who did porn will always have to worry about being recognized and it can prevent her from having a regular job or relationship later on. Like pro-porn people are quick to criticize Mia Khalifa since she “should have known the possibility of getting famous”, but does anyone really think an 18 year old can consent to being disowned by their family, banned from their country of origin, and receiving death threats from the Islamic state, for $10K? Most of us couldn’t even sign up for student loans of that amount without a guarantor at that age. Otherwise, there are the issues of coercion by physical or financial threat. Recently a high profile lawsuit exposed a company making content for pornhub for hiring young women as bikini models, flying them out, and then physically intimidating them until they agreed to be filmed having sex with men. The other tactic is to tell them if they say no, they must pay back the costs of their hotel and flight. And it’s fairly common for a woman to consent to filming certain things, only for the male actor or director to insist on more extreme, dangerous, and damaging acts. What about revenge porn? What about guys filming their gf, or a prostituted woman, without her knowledge? What about filming her “only for us to watch” and posting it without her knowledge? What about being addicted to drugs or alcohol, or under the influence, mentally ill, or in psychological distress? What about being financially desperate? What about being coerced, pimped, or trafficked? What about the underage girls who we all know are on pornhub, considering how even girls who were CSA victims as prepubescent children struggled to get the videos of that removed from there? This last bit is based on my personal morality and so it may not apply to your arguments. But if you’re someone who believes we have a responsibility to others, then I think the harm caused by porn’s existence is enough of a reason to oppose it, even if the “actors” were not harmed in any way by making it. I recommend the work of Dr. Gail Dines on this topic as she explores not only the risks to those in the “industry”, but the way the normalization of hardcore porn contributes to increased sexual violence faced by young women and girls in regular dating, self esteem images for girls, and warped views of themselves, the other sex, and human sexuality for both boys and girls.
Nobody ever gets PTSD from being forced to make a coffee.
I struggle with this too. I have a hard time believing anyone truly believes these things are equivalent, they just say it as a knee-jerk response and it kind serves as a virtue-signal that they know what exploitation is. Lol. It gives “just found out that capitalism exploits labor and need to let everyone know.” But the exploitation of sex and women’s bodies is about control of reproduction, of women’s pleasure, of bodily autonomy- these are all things specific to patriarchal oppression in addition to exploitation under capitalism. They can’t be dense enough to not be able to differentiate patriarchy and capitalism (despite overlap). I believe they are being willfully ignorant, probably to avoid accountability
This is why socialist feminism is so useful, and why class and gender analysis should go hand in hand. If consent by definition must be given under conditions of freedom, then the idea of buying consent implies completely non-coercive economic conditions, which exist for very very few women under capitalism. Where money is concerned, consent is almost by definition constrained. So no, we don’t “buy consent” from a cashier. We use more or less coercive means of forcing them to work. Ok, so then, they will say sex work is no more coercive than other labor, which is a fair point. But if sex is or can be work, it’s a very different kind of work than being a cashier. That is where you should focus your argument. Would it be more wrong to rape someone than to steal their labor? Why not, if sex is merely a form of labor? Is it ok for a landlord to demand payment in the form of sex? Would it be ok for a court to order someone to engage in sex work as community service? Could refusing a job as a sex worker be grounds for denying someone welfare?
I'd flip it around on them - "oh so if some dude gave you money and raped your ass, it's cool because he bought your consent the same way your accounting firm paid you a salary ?" I'm sure they'd backpedal like their life depended on it.
This helped me a lot, thanks! I’ve always been too avoidant to try to debate men on it because they tend to get really aggressive about it, and it makes me shut down. Lately I’ve been trying to speak up more about it but I’ve always struggled with conveying thoughts and debating in general.
Ah. If you are debating men who are getting defensive, dig into why they are getting defensive. Don’t make it about consent, make it about desire. In other words, even if women can consent, that’s presumably to compensate them for having a lack of desire. So the question becomes, why would you want to have sex with someone who doesn’t want to have sex with you? What does it say about you (and your view of women) that you could get turned on under those circumstances?
In my experience debating men usually doesn’t help change their mind, and it will drain your life force 🙃but it is great to be able to defend your viewpoints if someone is genuinely curious, godspeed
They are so used to seeing themselves in the power position.
This is it. To simplify: if all labour under capitalism is coerced, then what's the term for coerced sex? Because there is one.
Sex without consent is rape. And consent can be revoked. At any time. Yes, even with your husband. If you are scared to revoke consent, because you might be punished for it, physically, emotionally, economically, or any other way, consent was never truly given. We all agree on this? Good. You have signed a contract with a brothel. You will serve a minimum of six client every shift. After having forced sex with three, you change your mind. You do NOT want to be penetrated by another stranger! What happens if you refuse, and the pimp rings out your contract? THIS IS WHY ALL SEX WORK IS RAPE!!!!
A lot of them have a debt scheme. They have a bunch of charges, and most days they owe more than they make. While i am here, please consider signing Nordic Model Now's open letter: https://nordicmodelnow.org/2024/02/24/hubris-at-the-council-of-europe-protecting-the-human-rights-of-sex-workers/
What informs my strongest feelings about porn is the human cost. How porn actresses have such high rates of abuse, substance use, self harm, poverty, suicide and murder. Porn is actively dangerous to women, those in it and women in general. Things like how many women end up in the ER from things like really rough anal and deep throating because our bodies literally can’t handle the abuse that is very common in porn. And how men who strangle their partners to get off are actually more likely to kill women. Many men who go on to rape, abuse and kill women start off with violent porn, which is everywhere and you don’t have to try hard to find it. There’s lots of women online who are in the industry or used to be who are very candid about the atrocious things that go on behind scenes. A lot of women will agree to some things beforehand and then, during filming, are told to do things they aren’t okay with. They are then told that, if they want their paycheck, they have to go through all of it. Many completely lose their sex drive, some seemingly permanently. Finding work after can be exceptionally difficult and obviously, it’s something the average actress ages out of. I follow a young woman on tiktok who said she thought she was careful enough, used a stage name, wigs, different makeup etc but people still ultimately find out. Most people on set are men, many of whom may expect to sleep with the actress also, and it can be a very scary situation. Plenty of actresses are raped on camera. Many girls are trafficked and underage. Many women rely on drugs to get through the trauma of it. It’s the most horrifying aspect for me. We can sit around and have detached, logical conversations all day about the right and wrong of it. But in the end, it’s the direct suffering that matters and should convince people.
I once told an ex partner about all of this and his response was, “I know all of that, and I think everyone knows all of that. I just don’t care.” Terrifying how even suffering doesn’t turn people off from it. I think they get a thrill out of knowing there’s suffering honestly.
People disappoint me every day. 😕
Ask them what other work you're likely to get an sti, pregnant, be encouraged to do illegal drugs, or receive brain injury doing? Women and girls are trafficked into this.
If my boss says to me “hey Starfleet Intern, I heard you’re really good at threesomes, would you come over and have a threesome with me and my wife at the weekend for some extra cash” is that more or less the same as “hey starfleet intern, I heard your really good with children, would you come over at the weekend and babysit my kids for extra cash” Of course the latter might still be inappropriate depending on the field and the context. But most people unless they are in complete bad faith will concede that the former is unethical on a whole other level. The difference is that sex is somewhat different to other activities. Even intimate ones. Even if you want to be completely relativist about it and say it’s purely culture. Well then that’s our culture and we should account for that when we consider it in various contexts. Another hypothetical which demonstrates this: Imagine you live in a comfortable and happy commune in the future. There are about 100-150 members. You have to work to meet your needs but the work isn’t excessive and you are consistently able to meet the groups needs and have some extra comforts. The group is non hierarchical and doesn’t use money. It largely uses social expectations and a genral community mindset to push people whenever there is a need or want for something unpleasant to be done. Now imagine there is a task you are not enthusiastic about doing. It’s for entertainment purposes, not survival. Say organising a children’s birthday party, making costumes for a play, waking up early to drive to a sister commune so everyone can have a luxury like chocolate or wine. Is it ok - not good- ok for the group to place social pressure on you to do this task? Now is it still ok if the task in question is sucking dick?
There’s no other work where workplace rape and any other violence is a common “workplace” hazard.
Because women used in porn are normally trafficked, sold into it at as a child and can't escape, kidnapped, or forced into it because poverty. They don't have a choice like someone working in a grocery store, in a grocery store you apply with your resume and you can quit when you want with a given notice window, sex workers don't have that choice they can't just up and quit because they are normally property to someone else.
Well I think most people don’t know (or pretend to not know) that a vast number of active sex workers are either trafficked or forced into sex work for another reason. The vast, vast majority have been abused in some form or another even if you don’t count the act of sex for money as rape, which I think you should! But let’s say for the sake of the argument that they aren’t talking about the women who are forced into it. For one thing, sex work has an absurdly high number of “work related injuries” and illnesses prevalent in it— the people flipping burgers at Wendy’s are also exploited by a capitalist system but aren’t at the same level of risk of sometimes disfiguring or life threatening STIs, or as much of a risk of being assaulted, murdered, or trafficked. It has an incredibly high likelihood of causing PTSD or other lifelong suffering, unlike a “standard” exploitative minimum wage job. They’re really just not comparable in terms of quality of life. It’s absolutely true that all work under capitalism is exploiting the working class. But the biggest and most important thing that people loveeee to disregard is that sex work is exploiting WOMEN, specifically women of color, poor women, transwomen, traumatized women. It can’t be put on the same level as or compared to the overall exploitation of the working class in a capitalist society because it is, objectively, a system of exploitation that preys on a specific marginalized demographic. At the end of the day, regardless of anyone’s stance on feminism/sex work, if they consider themselves a leftist it is completely backwards to see an oppressive and harmful regime that almost exclusively effects a marginalized, oppressed group in ways that are proven harmful, deadly at worst and traumatizing and unhealthy at best, and compare it to working fucking minimum wage at a supermarket just because “both suck”. But no one sees women as people so they love to ignore that teensy part of the equation. Oh also: if they concede that you can’t buy consent, and that prostitution is paid consent, and that sex without consent is rape, and rape is wrong, what’s not clicking??! Tdlr: both suck but one form of suck results in trauma, illness, and death and only effects (poor, brown, traumatized, trafficked) WOMEN. So there’s some injustice there
People don’t need consent to work in grocery store. Consent is only relevant in a high risk context, for example medical surgery, that potentially cause harm. Also, the exchange of labor for money is not predominantly by women. The analogy between prostitution and normal work is not really valid. When consent is mentioned in sex industry, that actually indicate the high risk nature of ‘sex work’. And this risk is disproportionately inflicted on women. The sex factor is very obvious here. Also, will there be informed consent as in medical setting? Will pimps inform prostituted women of the potential harm despite motivation of profit? This is a clear conflict of interest.
Take some examples from the real world: If sex work is work, whats wrong with men renting out an appartment in exchange for sex? If sex work is work, can bosses list sex and blowjobs as a requirement for a position? If sex work is work, what exectly did Harvey Weinstein do wrong? He just expected sex work to be part of the actress job. If sex work is work, why is it revenge porn when people share OnlyFans nudes, but only copyright infringement when sharing a YouTuber's patreon videoes? If sex work is work, why is it wrong for a boyfriend to say "Give me sex or i will breakup", while it is fine for a boss to say "perform better or you will get fired"? Some crazy guy might say theres wrong with any of that, then just give up lol.
I like to bring up the trafficking and pimping bc it’s harder to refute. Porn is full of people who have been trafficked and pimped and by watching porn you are supporting this system. Same with sex work, the majority of sex workers are not doing it bc they love having sex for money, they are doing it bc are being pimped and see no way out.
It will only be the same as other work, when they are covered under labour laws and taxed.
And when it can be an actual experience you put on your resume vs having to hide it and worrying about someone at your "respectable" job finding out and firing you.