The real problem is why do we still consider sex work, by any gender, to be shameful? That's the root. Well, that and the whole consent thing here, I mean there really wan't any meaningful...
The real problem is why do we still consider sex work, by any gender, to be shameful?
That's the root. Well, that and the whole consent thing here, I mean there really wan't any meaningful consent. This was on par with "stealthing".
Going to? There was a lot of talk of an algorithim that did just this a couple months ago. On mobile, so this article will have to do. There is also this reddit thread making similar claims from a...
Going to? There was a lot of talk of an algorithim that did just this a couple months ago. On mobile, so this article will have to do. There is also this reddit thread making similar claims from a year ago I found.
I know there’s a whole thread derailing into promiscuity going on beneath this but I felt like I needed to respond to this. I agree with your point that sex work should not be looked down upon as...
The real problem is why do we still consider sex work, by any gender, to be shameful?
I know there’s a whole thread derailing into promiscuity going on beneath this but I felt like I needed to respond to this.
I agree with your point that sex work should not be looked down upon as it is currently, but strongly disagree that this is “the real problem”. This is absolutely a safety issue for these people and even if all of society suddenly was fine with sex work, this would still be a safety issue.
When folks are sexualized at scale there are going to be unwell people who want to extend past the line of the computer screen and do something unsafe. Situations in which these people who have desired anonymity are then dox’ed, and not prepared to handle the result, is absolutely a huge problem.
I suspect you agree with this based on what you’ve said so far; I think this is mostly around the trope of “the REAL problem”. I think it so often masks very real problems in complex situations. In this case there are humans actively undergoing harm, so it bothered me enough to want to call it out.
That's a fair assesment, too. I mean, the right to anonymity is a good right to have, as well as the right to privacy. I think this keys into the "not having consent"... These women were told they...
That's a fair assesment, too. I mean, the right to anonymity is a good right to have, as well as the right to privacy.
I think this keys into the "not having consent"... These women were told they would be displayed in private collections, not the internet at wide. So, it was essentially rape. Not by the other actor, but by the corporate entity.
Because it goes against the values that humanity evolved around, which have been adopted by almost every world religion. A lot of people find promiscuity disgusting and consider sex work to be a...
The real problem is why do we still consider sex work, by any gender, to be shameful?
Because it goes against the values that humanity evolved around, which have been adopted by almost every world religion.
A lot of people find promiscuity disgusting and consider sex work to be a form of degeneracy, and that is a view that I increasingly hold, having seen the sheer amount of cam girls invade platforms like Twitch, Tinder, Twitter, Instagram and Patreon.
There's just something infuriating about being a sexually unsuccessful man; whilst watching moderately attractive women sell their used undergarments, lewd photos via premium $30+ a month Snapchats, and even their own dirty bath water for top dollar prices.
I don't know if this information will help or hinder, but it's not just women engaging in sexual business. There are plenty of cam guys too, selling similar items and making thousands off thirsty...
Exemplary
I don't know if this information will help or hinder, but it's not just women engaging in sexual business. There are plenty of cam guys too, selling similar items and making thousands off thirsty audiences.
I think sexuality is something that is easily exploitable, and if I'm being presumptuous enough to speak to your situation without really knowing you, I'd say that's possibly where your frustration lies. I've had similar frustrations myself. It's tough when you live with this unfulfilled compulsion within you that seems to be activated at every turn, and I think it's actually acutely difficult for those who are attracted to women.
I remember one time I had a friend over at my apartment for an evening. We were chilling and I had some pop radio station playing in the background on the TV, which cycled through the album art for each song as it played. I noticed that, for three or four songs in a row, the covers all had attractive women in revealing clothing. Some of the songs were even overtly suggestive with their lyrics.
This didn't blip for me at all as a gay man, but I asked my straight friend about it, and his answer stuck with me. He simply said it was exhausting. He explained that images of women like that were so common, and you can't really turn your internal response off, so you just learn to be "activated", at a low level, frequently, and in nearly any situation. It could be an advertisement in a newspaper, a display at the mall, or, like we experienced, a song on the radio.
His comment really stuck with me, and it actually made a lot of sexualized mass media stick out for me like sore thumbs. I'd been almost wholly ignorant of it simply because men aren't sexualized in nearly the same way or nearly as often, so its prevalence had never adequately pinged for me. I could list dozens of pop songs where a female singer entreats the listener to do something to sexual to them, but I don't know that I could list even one by a male singer.
To understand how absurd this is, reverse the genders. When's the last time you heard a male artist begging you for a fuck (much less a kinky one) while you browsed the cereal aisle? It would be considered anathema. Transgressive. Wholly inappropriate.
And, at the risk of sounding prudish or sex-negative, I agree that it should! The problem isn't that we aren't achieving parity in sexualizing men--the problem is that we far too readily sexualize women, and that has an impact on people who are sexually attracted to them! Sexualizing women has become almost omnipresent background noise, when it should really be something more focused and special. When I check r/all on reddit, I have to skip over a porn post every 15-20 entries. When I search for games on Steam I have to dodge a bunch of eroge titles. These don't even excite or interest me and I'm still bothered by their prevalence, so I can imagine how much more impactful they would be if I had a latent compulsion towards their contents.
I say all of this because I think your frustration might come from living in a culture that feeds your compulsions to an unhealthy degree. Desire should be an enjoyable thing for those who experience it. It's intended to be a good, exciting feeling. But, because it's something we can't control, it's all too easy to fall prey to a culture that attempts to command your desire for you. I actually wrote about a similar experience I had recently, where my media services learned I was gay and then started recommending me male-male romances with shirtless men everywhere. I'm not necessarily opposed to them, but they're far from the only media I want to consume, and I don't want to be met with that kind of titillation every time I go to watch a documentary, nor do I want anyone's view of me--even an algorithm's--to be that I am but a shell for sexual impulses, devoid of other drives, interests, or complexities.
I wouldn't use the same words you would, as I don't believe widespread sexuality is "degeneracy", but I agree that there's a detriment to living in a sex-saturated culture. It can promote an unfulfilling, frustrating form of overstimulation. It can pressure you to feel like sex should be your only personal priority. It can deemphasize all the other riches of life by using your biology against you to drown out their pulls with a much stronger primal urge. I'm fine with some places being focused on sex, and I think we need to eliminate a lot of societal hangups we still have about it, but I'd also like for there to be plenty of places where we can exist free from overt sexualization. You know, like the grocery store.
I realize I wrote a lot, and much of what I said might not even be applicable to you since I was more just processing my own thoughts, but I share these here because I feel like your post directed some anger at women, and I think that's an ultimately unfair conclusion to come to. The issue isn't women. Like I said at the opening, there are plenty of guys who do exactly the same thing. Netflix and Amazon tried to exploit my sexuality the moment they found out I was gay, and they weren't using women to do it. Britney and Rihanna didn't even write their songs, and Ariana only co-wrote hers. Even the ones conveying sexual imagery exist inside and are subject to the forces of a culture of sexualization (EDIT: @hungariantoast's comment here tackles this idea well). We tell women their worth comes from their bodies, but then we resent them for using those bodies for what we told them they were worth! The issue isn't capitalizing on a body, the issue is the undue attention and unfair premium we put on that body in the first place.
The issue is an omnipresence of sexualization, particularly when it is then used as a method of persuasion or extraction, and particularly when that's done to overstimulated and underfulfilled people seeking relief through the very thing that's frustrating them.
I agree with you. Outside of the anglo-saxon sphere, amongst young females, there's disgust and disdain for modern popstars and other merchants of ubiquitous nudity/sexual stuff. I'm not prude; I...
I agree with you. Outside of the anglo-saxon sphere, amongst young females, there's disgust and disdain for modern popstars and other merchants of ubiquitous nudity/sexual stuff. I'm not prude; I spent 3/4 of my life so far only partially clothed or not at all. Where I am now, others in this agebracket, all from various northern-european countries (incl. Russia/Ukraine) have no qualms re. normal nudity either, but the wave of vulgarians cheapening what's supposed to be intimate and private between people are despicable to all.
That's extremely judgmental and doesn't even seem to make much sense to me. If someone is able to regularly sell things like that, doesn't that mean that (on some level) they're "satisfying"...
That's extremely judgmental and doesn't even seem to make much sense to me. If someone is able to regularly sell things like that, doesn't that mean that (on some level) they're "satisfying" hundreds or thousands of people's sexual desires? So if they weren't doing that, things would be even worse in terms of how many people are "sexually unsuccessful"?
Edit: for the people continuing to Malice-flag the above comment: I agree with you, but I think we can attempt to talk about this.
It sounds here like you're arguing that any instance of someone selling sex proves that they are living under illegitimate coercive influences. I'm just not sure this is true. Don't get me wrong,...
The commodification of sex.
So, what I'm saying is that, yes, selling your used underwear just to make a buck is degenerate behavior. It isn't okay. It isn't something we should be coerced into doing by the systems we live under.
It sounds here like you're arguing that any instance of someone selling sex proves that they are living under illegitimate coercive influences. I'm just not sure this is true.
Don't get me wrong, I think most of the time sex work is coercive, and in those cases it's clearly wrong. However, could I imagine that there could be women that are fine with the work, assuming it could be done safely and fairly? Sure. My guess is, some of these people exist, too. And I don't want to call that degeneracy, if consent is actually respected, just because money is in the mix.
There's a girl who went to my college who did porn. I don't believe it was because she needed the money, and she wasn't forced into the career long term. But there was so much judgement of her, even by people who were having casual sex, due to this view that commoditizing sex makes a dirty thing dirtier. I know you don't want to blame the women who are coerced into this system, but this view that commoditizing sex (as opposed to more explicit coercion) is morally wrong also hurts the women engaging on their own terms.
There is something wrong with being coerced by the socioeconomic conditions of your society to sell yourself to survive.
I've always been uncomfortable with this logic and phrases like "sell yourself", "sell your body", etc. People on the Left have been trying to change the narrative so that women don't feel like their body, sexuality, and/or virginity is themselves, but are only characteristics of a more complicated whole person. Additionally, manual labor of any kind is exactly "selling your body", but we view that as a hard day's work.
For most of human history, ditches were dug by slaves. And, I'd wholeheartedly agree that was morally illegitimate labor, just as I'd agree about most previous and current prostitution. However, for the first time in human history, when I want a ditch dug for a new irrigation system, I talk to and pay a guy who doesn't feel oppressed by me and likes his work reasonably well. He's good at it and takes pride in it. It's very different than the ditch diggers of times past.
(You could argue that even that is coercive because he has to do labor to survive, but then the universe as-is is coercive to every living thing, and it seems pointless to call out prostitution in particular.)
Could we imagine getting to a point where we can respect the autonomy and consent of sex workers in the same way?
We shouldn't punish the behavior, we should remove necessity as a factor of the desire to engage in it.
And what if some still choose to do it?
It's possible that the dirtiness of money still sullies the sanctity of sexuality, but in that case, I think it would be like other cheapening commodities: self help books that improperly sell the names of Eastern religions, small internet communities growing to the point they need ad-funding, cycles of planned obsolescence for smartphones. These aren't coercive, just... cheapening and disappointing. But, that's not degeneracy.
there are absolutely people like this. philosophytube's video on sex work features a few people like that, for example, because it's a consistent, significant paycheck which nearly anybody can do.
Don't get me wrong, I think most of the time sex work is coercive, and in those cases it's clearly wrong. However, could I imagine that there could be women that are fine with the work, assuming it could be done safely and fairly? Sure. My guess is, some of these people exist, too. And I don't want to call that degeneracy, if consent is actually respected, just because money is in the mix.
there are absolutely people like this. philosophytube's video on sex work features a few people like that, for example, because it's a consistent, significant paycheck which nearly anybody can do.
Exactly, a false choice isn't really freedom. As long as workers don't own their labor, and instead, it's owned by corporate masters, this will be a problem, regardless of the industry.
Exactly, a false choice isn't really freedom. As long as workers don't own their labor, and instead, it's owned by corporate masters, this will be a problem, regardless of the industry.
They're really not satisfying anything. The kind of person that would pay money for someone's used underwear or dirty bath water is not totally well. They're people that are so desperate for...
They're really not satisfying anything. The kind of person that would pay money for someone's used underwear or dirty bath water is not totally well. They're people that are so desperate for sexual or personal contact that it's become an obsession. People like that don't get their product, do whatever they're going to do with it, and then decide that they're satisfied. They just escalate, because human sexuality, just like most other human desires, isn't something that can just be satiated if its become an obsession.
It's about the same thing as saying that drug dealers are satisfying people by giving them heroin.
About liquor stores, sure. Alcoholism destroys people's lives. I don't know of many people who have spent their life savings on a caffeine addiction though. If you're selling a product known to be...
About liquor stores, sure. Alcoholism destroys people's lives. I don't know of many people who have spent their life savings on a caffeine addiction though.
If you're selling a product known to be highly addictive and in some cases destructive to people's lives, I don't think it's responsible to just wipe your hands and decide that it was the consumer's choice at the end.
i have to ask: what exactly is degenerate about sex work, other than that abrahamic religions find sex icky and gross in general? arguably, the shit people get up to on their own time with their...
A lot of people find promiscuity disgusting and consider sex work to be a form of degeneracy, and that is a view that I increasingly hold, having seen the sheer amount of cam girls invade platforms like Twitch, Tinder, Twitter, Instagram and Patreon.
i have to ask: what exactly is degenerate about sex work, other than that abrahamic religions find sex icky and gross in general? arguably, the shit people get up to on their own time with their significant others tends to be more 'degenerate' from a morally puritan standpoint than most of the stuff that goes on with sex workers, especially when you actually let sex workers do any sort of self-regulation.
I'd like to provide a different angle on this. Let's assume that you're 100% right: women are gaining unfair advantages in non-sex-related fields due to their sex appeal. Now, think about what...
There's an argument to be made here about how women sex appeal can give them unfair advantage, especially in fields where sexuality is not and should not be the main focus
I'd like to provide a different angle on this.
Let's assume that you're 100% right: women are gaining unfair advantages in non-sex-related fields due to their sex appeal.
Now, think about what that means. If women are gaining advantage due to their sex appeal... who are they appealing to? Who is giving them that advantage?
Men, that's who.
If it's true that women are gaining advantage due to sex appeal, then that means they're using their sex appeal on men, and men are responding by giving those women advantages. This implies two things:
It's men who are providing the unfair treatment, not women. If men were 100% scrupulous and fair and impartial in all their decisions, then it wouldn't matter if some women flaunted their sex appeal, because it wouldn't gain them anything. The only reason those women are able to gain advantage is because men give it to them. Or, more bluntly, women are just taking advantage of the fact that men think with their dicks.
Men must have the power, in order to bestow advantage on anyone. In order to give someone an unfair advantage, one must have the power to make decisions and influence outcomes. If men are giving women an unfair advantage, it's because men are the ones who have the power to do so.
In short, the only reason women can use sex appeal to gain advantage is because the world is built for and by men, with men holding the power, and men using their dicks to make decisions.
I disagree. Notice how he said "being a sexually unsuccessful man" and not "being an unsuccessful man." to me, it seems more like he's frustrated that, in our culture (from his perspective), it's...
I disagree. Notice how he said "being a sexually unsuccessful man" and not "being an unsuccessful man."
to me, it seems more like he's frustrated that, in our culture (from his perspective), it's much easier for a women to be sexually successful than a man, to the point where they can sell some of that sexuality to men who are unsuccessful without having to do actual work.
so it's not about him thinking women are supposedly favored in the workplace or whatever, it's him frustrated at seeing women being sexually succesful, almost in his perspective mockingly, while he himself is sexually unsuccessful.
I'm not the OP you're asking, and I'm not going to judge others for what they do when it's not actively harming others. That being said, I can see how it's harmful to the cohesive makeup of our...
I'm not the OP you're asking, and I'm not going to judge others for what they do when it's not actively harming others.
That being said, I can see how it's harmful to the cohesive makeup of our family units, which is an important survival trait of humans. One of our strengths is working together to overcome bigger issues (a lion, say).
Sexual promiscuity as it stands now, in general causes discord in our connection with others. Maybe not for you(the reader, no one specifically), and maybe you don't agree, but I think that's true for the general population.
So our attempts to shun it and keep it seen as bad, to prevent it from becoming more and more popular I think is our attempt to keep the peace as it were.
That's my take anyhow. I don't think we should treat anyone poorly for what they choose to do, but there are things we place boundaries on to keep us all organized and together.
Right now it seems like we're falling apart at the seams, because there are SO MANY differing beliefs and ways of being that are living side-by-side, and we haven't figured out how to keep it all cohesive. Look at The Handmaids Tale. One group looks to fix it by locking that shit down and keeping it tight - follow this exact belief structure or else. That doesn't work, and is horrible obviously. But I would question whether this anything-goes philosophy isn't taking us to the same place by different means. shrug Personally I'm a fan of balance. What that looks like I don't know.
So, it's a problem today, because stone age mythology declared it to be an issue? PS Not every world religion originally had an issue with prostitution. In fact, there's very little in the...
So, it's a problem today, because stone age mythology declared it to be an issue?
PS Not every world religion originally had an issue with prostitution. In fact, there's very little in the christian bible or the quran speaking against it, just some rules around it.
Many world religions actually hold "Women of the Temple" in high accord.
And, I'm sorry for sexually unsuccessful men. That doesn't mean it should be shameful to be a sex worker.
And if those sexually unsuccessful men are buying pics, videos, chat, and dirty bathwater, that just means there's a solid market for that.
I'm not sure why you think religions are somehow the yardstick by which we should measure morality. But let's just skip this as a distraction, and go to what I think is your main point: With all...
which have been adopted by almost every world religion.
I'm not sure why you think religions are somehow the yardstick by which we should measure morality. But let's just skip this as a distraction, and go to what I think is your main point:
A lot of people find promiscuity disgusting and consider sex work to be a form of degeneracy, and that is a view that I increasingly hold
With all due respect, I think you're projecting your own personal views onto "a lot of people". You're assuming that, what you think, other people also think. That's not necessarily true.
Consider this. Those women (and men) who do pornography and sex work do not operate in a vacuum. They have viewers and/or customers. People - mostly men - are paying to see these porn performers do their thing on screen, or paying prostitutes to do the same thing in real life. Without those paying customers, the whole porn and sex industry would come to a crashing halt. And then, with regard to pornography, there are the non-paying customers: the people who watch free porn on the internet, or who obtain pirated copies of porn videos. While these people might not be paying to support the industry, they are still viewing the pornography.
Over $180 billion is spent each year on the global sex trade, with over 10 million women providing services as prostitutes.
Your claim that "most people [...] consider sex work to be a form of degeneracy" doesn't have a lot of plausibility in the face of statistics like that.
And, then we come to the pièce de résistance:
There's just something infuriating about being a sexually unsuccessful man; whilst watching [...]
Here, I think, is the core of your complaint. It's not that these women are selling their sexual services: it's that they're selling them to other people while you're doing without. It's like being the stereotypical street urchin with your nose pressed against the window of a restaurant, watching wealthy people gorge themselves on steak and lobster while you're starving to death. That would naturally raise feelings of resentment and jealousy. But that doesn't mean those gourmands are doing anything wrong. It just means you want a seat at the table.
Bold assertion, considering that "almost every world religion" with such hang-ups around sex and sexuality mostly consists of the Abrahamic ones, which are to blame for our current state of "sex...
Because it goes against the values that humanity evolved around, which have been adopted by almost every world religion.
Bold assertion, considering that "almost every world religion" with such hang-ups around sex and sexuality mostly consists of the Abrahamic ones, which are to blame for our current state of "sex bad, unless it's hetero sex in the missionary position for the exclusive purpose of reproduction".
A lot of people find promiscuity disgusting and consider sex work to be a form of degeneracy, and that is a view that I increasingly hold,
Which is an incredibly silly view to hold, considering that there is not enough pressure anywhere on this planet to support any form of degeneracy. Have you considered putting it down?
I assume, because it takes something which we associate strongly with love, or at the very least romance, and turns it into something calculating and profit-driven. It's a fairly natural belief to...
why do we still consider sex work to be shameful
I assume, because it takes something which we associate strongly with love, or at the very least romance, and turns it into something calculating and profit-driven. It's a fairly natural belief to hold that sex should be reserved for the people with whom we share the strongest emotional connection. Therefore, while I in no way support the stigmatisation or shaming of sex workers, I can understand why it elicits such reactions in some people.
We associate caring with love: the mother caring for her child, the man caring for his elderly parents, and so on. And then we pay people like nannies and nurses to care for children and old...
I assume, because it takes something which we associate strongly with love, or at the very least romance, and turns it into something calculating and profit-driven.
We associate caring with love: the mother caring for her child, the man caring for his elderly parents, and so on. And then we pay people like nannies and nurses to care for children and old people. Does that make nursing a degenerate profession?
I know they're different types of love. So it's only sex and romantic love which shouldn't be commercialised, but it's okay to commercialise other forms of love like parental love and filial love?...
I know they're different types of love.
So it's only sex and romantic love which shouldn't be commercialised, but it's okay to commercialise other forms of love like parental love and filial love? Why is romantic love and sex different in that regard? Why is it so beyond the pale to commercialise sex but not parental care or filial care?
I think there is an argument to be made that due to its carnal nature sex is more intimate. Again, I must stress this isn't my opinion - I just think it's one that someone could reasonably hold.
I think there is an argument to be made that due to its carnal nature sex is more intimate.
Again, I must stress this isn't my opinion - I just think it's one that someone could reasonably hold.
A.S. I myself enjoy softcore and do not consider harder content (the subject is hardcore) inherently wrong. From the article it is clear that the real culprit, and the party sued, is not PornHub...
A.S. I myself enjoy softcore and do not consider harder content (the subject is hardcore) inherently wrong.
From the article it is clear that the real culprit, and the party sued, is not PornHub but Girls Do Porn, and, indeed, their practices described are quite disgusting, especially this (emphasis mine):
The agreements they signed with Girls Do Porn are multi-page contracts full of fine legal print, and make no mention of the videos being posted online or even the name "Girls Do Porn," according to O'Brien. "So they do sign something, but they never get a copy of it. The first time they ever see it is in this litigation"
As for PornHub itself,
…Corey Price, a VP at Pornhub, said in a statement that…“We here at Pornhub have always been proactive about providing individuals and performers with the resources to flag non-consensual material so that it may be taken down expeditiously… We have always strongly condemned uploading non-authorized content to our platform and all uploaders must adhere to the same regulatory requirements that other businesses do. Our TOS only allows for users to upload content that they themselves own.”
I must mention that under the infamous FOSTA/SESTA law, a platform that knowingly facilitates sex trafficking is liable. Thus, any platform, and especially an adult content platform, is much safer if it does not moderate content (because nothing happens knowingly for the platform) than if it does (surprise?).
After reading the article, I am rather confused as to why the comments here are primarily discussing questions of pornography. Pornography seems as though it is only one context of many in which...
After reading the article, I am rather confused as to why the comments here are primarily discussing questions of pornography. Pornography seems as though it is only one context of many in which these wider problems can manifest themselves: the same thing could have happened, for example, with political interviews, or videos of any sort not meant for public viewing.
The first, which far predates the internet entirely, is the supremacy of contracts in society, along with the assumption that individuals entering into contracts are entirely rational actors, with infinite reading speed and legal knowledge, who have read them, completely understand all their implications, and completely agree with them.
We know these assumptions to be untrue. The legal environment of the internet is built around the assumptions being untrue: it would be impossible for someone to use the internet and satisfy those assumptions, simply from a reading speed problem alone. And the failure of the assumptions has long been a topic in both nonfiction and fiction. The problems here are simply those tropes with a pornographic context: the conman who plies their victim with drinks, who befriends them, who makes verbal assurances that the contract contradicts, who tells them not to be worried about the contract when they should be very worried.
In a legal system that views contracts as supreme agreements made by rational actors, I can't see how these women could win their case. While they say they didn't consent to this open publication, they signed contracts stating that they did consent to it, and likely stating that they consented to much more that they didn't intend to consent to.
It would be simple to say that the solution here is simply better education about signing contracts, but I would argue that that can't work. Our society seems, at this point, to be built around a requirement that individuals will not read most contracts, or understand them, but will agree to them anyway.
There is also a second problem here of breaking anonymity, and then harassing targets en masse. This problem also far predates the internet, but the internet has vastly increased its scale to the point where a rare and often relatively minor problem has become a frequent and major problem. As others have noted, this case is actually one where a response can be that "outmoded views of sex" can be blamed for the shame and harassment involved, and I think we are starting to see this change somewhat: one could point to Bezos' recent incident, or the recent incident of a celebrity I'm not familiar with publicly posting private nude photographs of herself in response to a blackmailer threatening to release them to harass and shame her, as challenging the idea that these things should be seen as damaging. In other cases, however, and I'd argue particularly in cases of issues surrounding politics, identification-and-mass-harassment isn't simply an issue of outmoded views.
Porn is definitely harming our society and not just due to the ethics (or lack thereof) of the industry. That being said, I really hope these ladies win their case.
Porn is definitely harming our society and not just due to the ethics (or lack thereof) of the industry. That being said, I really hope these ladies win their case.
We pay for hamburgers today, and have an obese society in the US, so I don't think that's the problem... The rooting of the problem is puritanical, outmoded views. It's "taboo". But the question...
We pay for hamburgers today, and have an obese society in the US, so I don't think that's the problem...
The rooting of the problem is puritanical, outmoded views. It's "taboo". But the question is,"Why is it taboo?"
And, there are a lot of things that trigger the reward cycle. And lots of things that people "can" become addicted too. I watch porn. I also have a healthy sex life. As do many people. In fact, the vast majority of males watch porn, and many of them have healthy sex lives.
So, yeah, it just boils down to "Outmoded views of sex".
The real problem is why do we still consider sex work, by any gender, to be shameful?
That's the root. Well, that and the whole consent thing here, I mean there really wan't any meaningful consent. This was on par with "stealthing".
Going to? There was a lot of talk of an algorithim that did just this a couple months ago. On mobile, so this article will have to do. There is also this reddit thread making similar claims from a year ago I found.
I know there’s a whole thread derailing into promiscuity going on beneath this but I felt like I needed to respond to this.
I agree with your point that sex work should not be looked down upon as it is currently, but strongly disagree that this is “the real problem”. This is absolutely a safety issue for these people and even if all of society suddenly was fine with sex work, this would still be a safety issue.
When folks are sexualized at scale there are going to be unwell people who want to extend past the line of the computer screen and do something unsafe. Situations in which these people who have desired anonymity are then dox’ed, and not prepared to handle the result, is absolutely a huge problem.
I suspect you agree with this based on what you’ve said so far; I think this is mostly around the trope of “the REAL problem”. I think it so often masks very real problems in complex situations. In this case there are humans actively undergoing harm, so it bothered me enough to want to call it out.
That's a fair assesment, too. I mean, the right to anonymity is a good right to have, as well as the right to privacy.
I think this keys into the "not having consent"... These women were told they would be displayed in private collections, not the internet at wide. So, it was essentially rape. Not by the other actor, but by the corporate entity.
Because it goes against the values that humanity evolved around, which have been adopted by almost every world religion.
A lot of people find promiscuity disgusting and consider sex work to be a form of degeneracy, and that is a view that I increasingly hold, having seen the sheer amount of cam girls invade platforms like Twitch, Tinder, Twitter, Instagram and Patreon.
There's just something infuriating about being a sexually unsuccessful man; whilst watching moderately attractive women sell their used undergarments, lewd photos via premium $30+ a month Snapchats, and even their own dirty bath water for top dollar prices.
I don't know if this information will help or hinder, but it's not just women engaging in sexual business. There are plenty of cam guys too, selling similar items and making thousands off thirsty audiences.
I think sexuality is something that is easily exploitable, and if I'm being presumptuous enough to speak to your situation without really knowing you, I'd say that's possibly where your frustration lies. I've had similar frustrations myself. It's tough when you live with this unfulfilled compulsion within you that seems to be activated at every turn, and I think it's actually acutely difficult for those who are attracted to women.
I remember one time I had a friend over at my apartment for an evening. We were chilling and I had some pop radio station playing in the background on the TV, which cycled through the album art for each song as it played. I noticed that, for three or four songs in a row, the covers all had attractive women in revealing clothing. Some of the songs were even overtly suggestive with their lyrics.
This didn't blip for me at all as a gay man, but I asked my straight friend about it, and his answer stuck with me. He simply said it was exhausting. He explained that images of women like that were so common, and you can't really turn your internal response off, so you just learn to be "activated", at a low level, frequently, and in nearly any situation. It could be an advertisement in a newspaper, a display at the mall, or, like we experienced, a song on the radio.
His comment really stuck with me, and it actually made a lot of sexualized mass media stick out for me like sore thumbs. I'd been almost wholly ignorant of it simply because men aren't sexualized in nearly the same way or nearly as often, so its prevalence had never adequately pinged for me. I could list dozens of pop songs where a female singer entreats the listener to do something to sexual to them, but I don't know that I could list even one by a male singer.
Ariana Grande sings "a little less conversation and a little more touch my body." Rihanna steps up the kink by letting us know "whips and chains excite me." Britney Spears uses the thinly-veiled line "if you seek Amy" to literally spell out a carnal directive. And these are all top 40 songs that received widespread, repeated play on the radio! In public! I heard the Britney song in a grocery store.
A grocery store.
To understand how absurd this is, reverse the genders. When's the last time you heard a male artist begging you for a fuck (much less a kinky one) while you browsed the cereal aisle? It would be considered anathema. Transgressive. Wholly inappropriate.
And, at the risk of sounding prudish or sex-negative, I agree that it should! The problem isn't that we aren't achieving parity in sexualizing men--the problem is that we far too readily sexualize women, and that has an impact on people who are sexually attracted to them! Sexualizing women has become almost omnipresent background noise, when it should really be something more focused and special. When I check r/all on reddit, I have to skip over a porn post every 15-20 entries. When I search for games on Steam I have to dodge a bunch of eroge titles. These don't even excite or interest me and I'm still bothered by their prevalence, so I can imagine how much more impactful they would be if I had a latent compulsion towards their contents.
I say all of this because I think your frustration might come from living in a culture that feeds your compulsions to an unhealthy degree. Desire should be an enjoyable thing for those who experience it. It's intended to be a good, exciting feeling. But, because it's something we can't control, it's all too easy to fall prey to a culture that attempts to command your desire for you. I actually wrote about a similar experience I had recently, where my media services learned I was gay and then started recommending me male-male romances with shirtless men everywhere. I'm not necessarily opposed to them, but they're far from the only media I want to consume, and I don't want to be met with that kind of titillation every time I go to watch a documentary, nor do I want anyone's view of me--even an algorithm's--to be that I am but a shell for sexual impulses, devoid of other drives, interests, or complexities.
I wouldn't use the same words you would, as I don't believe widespread sexuality is "degeneracy", but I agree that there's a detriment to living in a sex-saturated culture. It can promote an unfulfilling, frustrating form of overstimulation. It can pressure you to feel like sex should be your only personal priority. It can deemphasize all the other riches of life by using your biology against you to drown out their pulls with a much stronger primal urge. I'm fine with some places being focused on sex, and I think we need to eliminate a lot of societal hangups we still have about it, but I'd also like for there to be plenty of places where we can exist free from overt sexualization. You know, like the grocery store.
I realize I wrote a lot, and much of what I said might not even be applicable to you since I was more just processing my own thoughts, but I share these here because I feel like your post directed some anger at women, and I think that's an ultimately unfair conclusion to come to. The issue isn't women. Like I said at the opening, there are plenty of guys who do exactly the same thing. Netflix and Amazon tried to exploit my sexuality the moment they found out I was gay, and they weren't using women to do it. Britney and Rihanna didn't even write their songs, and Ariana only co-wrote hers. Even the ones conveying sexual imagery exist inside and are subject to the forces of a culture of sexualization (EDIT: @hungariantoast's comment here tackles this idea well). We tell women their worth comes from their bodies, but then we resent them for using those bodies for what we told them they were worth! The issue isn't capitalizing on a body, the issue is the undue attention and unfair premium we put on that body in the first place.
The issue is an omnipresence of sexualization, particularly when it is then used as a method of persuasion or extraction, and particularly when that's done to overstimulated and underfulfilled people seeking relief through the very thing that's frustrating them.
I agree with you. Outside of the anglo-saxon sphere, amongst young females, there's disgust and disdain for modern popstars and other merchants of ubiquitous nudity/sexual stuff. I'm not prude; I spent 3/4 of my life so far only partially clothed or not at all. Where I am now, others in this agebracket, all from various northern-european countries (incl. Russia/Ukraine) have no qualms re. normal nudity either, but the wave of vulgarians cheapening what's supposed to be intimate and private between people are despicable to all.
That's extremely judgmental and doesn't even seem to make much sense to me. If someone is able to regularly sell things like that, doesn't that mean that (on some level) they're "satisfying" hundreds or thousands of people's sexual desires? So if they weren't doing that, things would be even worse in terms of how many people are "sexually unsuccessful"?
Edit: for the people continuing to Malice-flag the above comment: I agree with you, but I think we can attempt to talk about this.
It sounds here like you're arguing that any instance of someone selling sex proves that they are living under illegitimate coercive influences. I'm just not sure this is true.
Don't get me wrong, I think most of the time sex work is coercive, and in those cases it's clearly wrong. However, could I imagine that there could be women that are fine with the work, assuming it could be done safely and fairly? Sure. My guess is, some of these people exist, too. And I don't want to call that degeneracy, if consent is actually respected, just because money is in the mix.
There's a girl who went to my college who did porn. I don't believe it was because she needed the money, and she wasn't forced into the career long term. But there was so much judgement of her, even by people who were having casual sex, due to this view that commoditizing sex makes a dirty thing dirtier. I know you don't want to blame the women who are coerced into this system, but this view that commoditizing sex (as opposed to more explicit coercion) is morally wrong also hurts the women engaging on their own terms.
I've always been uncomfortable with this logic and phrases like "sell yourself", "sell your body", etc. People on the Left have been trying to change the narrative so that women don't feel like their body, sexuality, and/or virginity is themselves, but are only characteristics of a more complicated whole person. Additionally, manual labor of any kind is exactly "selling your body", but we view that as a hard day's work.
For most of human history, ditches were dug by slaves. And, I'd wholeheartedly agree that was morally illegitimate labor, just as I'd agree about most previous and current prostitution. However, for the first time in human history, when I want a ditch dug for a new irrigation system, I talk to and pay a guy who doesn't feel oppressed by me and likes his work reasonably well. He's good at it and takes pride in it. It's very different than the ditch diggers of times past.
(You could argue that even that is coercive because he has to do labor to survive, but then the universe as-is is coercive to every living thing, and it seems pointless to call out prostitution in particular.)
Could we imagine getting to a point where we can respect the autonomy and consent of sex workers in the same way?
And what if some still choose to do it?
It's possible that the dirtiness of money still sullies the sanctity of sexuality, but in that case, I think it would be like other cheapening commodities: self help books that improperly sell the names of Eastern religions, small internet communities growing to the point they need ad-funding, cycles of planned obsolescence for smartphones. These aren't coercive, just... cheapening and disappointing. But, that's not degeneracy.
EDIT: misspelled word
there are absolutely people like this. philosophytube's video on sex work features a few people like that, for example, because it's a consistent, significant paycheck which nearly anybody can do.
Exactly, a false choice isn't really freedom. As long as workers don't own their labor, and instead, it's owned by corporate masters, this will be a problem, regardless of the industry.
They're really not satisfying anything. The kind of person that would pay money for someone's used underwear or dirty bath water is not totally well. They're people that are so desperate for sexual or personal contact that it's become an obsession. People like that don't get their product, do whatever they're going to do with it, and then decide that they're satisfied. They just escalate, because human sexuality, just like most other human desires, isn't something that can just be satiated if its become an obsession.
It's about the same thing as saying that drug dealers are satisfying people by giving them heroin.
Do you feel the same way about liquor stores and coffee shops?
About liquor stores, sure. Alcoholism destroys people's lives. I don't know of many people who have spent their life savings on a caffeine addiction though.
If you're selling a product known to be highly addictive and in some cases destructive to people's lives, I don't think it's responsible to just wipe your hands and decide that it was the consumer's choice at the end.
i have to ask: what exactly is degenerate about sex work, other than that abrahamic religions find sex icky and gross in general? arguably, the shit people get up to on their own time with their significant others tends to be more 'degenerate' from a morally puritan standpoint than most of the stuff that goes on with sex workers, especially when you actually let sex workers do any sort of self-regulation.
I'd like to provide a different angle on this.
Let's assume that you're 100% right: women are gaining unfair advantages in non-sex-related fields due to their sex appeal.
Now, think about what that means. If women are gaining advantage due to their sex appeal... who are they appealing to? Who is giving them that advantage?
Men, that's who.
If it's true that women are gaining advantage due to sex appeal, then that means they're using their sex appeal on men, and men are responding by giving those women advantages. This implies two things:
It's men who are providing the unfair treatment, not women. If men were 100% scrupulous and fair and impartial in all their decisions, then it wouldn't matter if some women flaunted their sex appeal, because it wouldn't gain them anything. The only reason those women are able to gain advantage is because men give it to them. Or, more bluntly, women are just taking advantage of the fact that men think with their dicks.
Men must have the power, in order to bestow advantage on anyone. In order to give someone an unfair advantage, one must have the power to make decisions and influence outcomes. If men are giving women an unfair advantage, it's because men are the ones who have the power to do so.
In short, the only reason women can use sex appeal to gain advantage is because the world is built for and by men, with men holding the power, and men using their dicks to make decisions.
I disagree. Notice how he said "being a sexually unsuccessful man" and not "being an unsuccessful man."
to me, it seems more like he's frustrated that, in our culture (from his perspective), it's much easier for a women to be sexually successful than a man, to the point where they can sell some of that sexuality to men who are unsuccessful without having to do actual work.
so it's not about him thinking women are supposedly favored in the workplace or whatever, it's him frustrated at seeing women being sexually succesful, almost in his perspective mockingly, while he himself is sexually unsuccessful.
I'm not the OP you're asking, and I'm not going to judge others for what they do when it's not actively harming others.
That being said, I can see how it's harmful to the cohesive makeup of our family units, which is an important survival trait of humans. One of our strengths is working together to overcome bigger issues (a lion, say).
Sexual promiscuity as it stands now, in general causes discord in our connection with others. Maybe not for you(the reader, no one specifically), and maybe you don't agree, but I think that's true for the general population.
So our attempts to shun it and keep it seen as bad, to prevent it from becoming more and more popular I think is our attempt to keep the peace as it were.
That's my take anyhow. I don't think we should treat anyone poorly for what they choose to do, but there are things we place boundaries on to keep us all organized and together.
Right now it seems like we're falling apart at the seams, because there are SO MANY differing beliefs and ways of being that are living side-by-side, and we haven't figured out how to keep it all cohesive. Look at The Handmaids Tale. One group looks to fix it by locking that shit down and keeping it tight - follow this exact belief structure or else. That doesn't work, and is horrible obviously. But I would question whether this anything-goes philosophy isn't taking us to the same place by different means. shrug Personally I'm a fan of balance. What that looks like I don't know.
So, it's a problem today, because stone age mythology declared it to be an issue?
PS Not every world religion originally had an issue with prostitution. In fact, there's very little in the christian bible or the quran speaking against it, just some rules around it.
Many world religions actually hold "Women of the Temple" in high accord.
And, I'm sorry for sexually unsuccessful men. That doesn't mean it should be shameful to be a sex worker.
And if those sexually unsuccessful men are buying pics, videos, chat, and dirty bathwater, that just means there's a solid market for that.
I'm not sure why you think religions are somehow the yardstick by which we should measure morality. But let's just skip this as a distraction, and go to what I think is your main point:
With all due respect, I think you're projecting your own personal views onto "a lot of people". You're assuming that, what you think, other people also think. That's not necessarily true.
Consider this. Those women (and men) who do pornography and sex work do not operate in a vacuum. They have viewers and/or customers. People - mostly men - are paying to see these porn performers do their thing on screen, or paying prostitutes to do the same thing in real life. Without those paying customers, the whole porn and sex industry would come to a crashing halt. And then, with regard to pornography, there are the non-paying customers: the people who watch free porn on the internet, or who obtain pirated copies of porn videos. While these people might not be paying to support the industry, they are still viewing the pornography.
So... how many customers are paying for, watching, and participating in, the porn and sex industries? Here are some "Mind-Blowing Stats About The Porn Industry":
And, according to this academic study:
Your claim that "most people [...] consider sex work to be a form of degeneracy" doesn't have a lot of plausibility in the face of statistics like that.
And, then we come to the pièce de résistance:
Here, I think, is the core of your complaint. It's not that these women are selling their sexual services: it's that they're selling them to other people while you're doing without. It's like being the stereotypical street urchin with your nose pressed against the window of a restaurant, watching wealthy people gorge themselves on steak and lobster while you're starving to death. That would naturally raise feelings of resentment and jealousy. But that doesn't mean those gourmands are doing anything wrong. It just means you want a seat at the table.
Bold assertion, considering that "almost every world religion" with such hang-ups around sex and sexuality mostly consists of the Abrahamic ones, which are to blame for our current state of "sex bad, unless it's hetero sex in the missionary position for the exclusive purpose of reproduction".
Which is an incredibly silly view to hold, considering that there is not enough pressure anywhere on this planet to support any form of degeneracy. Have you considered putting it down?
I assume, because it takes something which we associate strongly with love, or at the very least romance, and turns it into something calculating and profit-driven. It's a fairly natural belief to hold that sex should be reserved for the people with whom we share the strongest emotional connection. Therefore, while I in no way support the stigmatisation or shaming of sex workers, I can understand why it elicits such reactions in some people.
We associate caring with love: the mother caring for her child, the man caring for his elderly parents, and so on. And then we pay people like nannies and nurses to care for children and old people. Does that make nursing a degenerate profession?
Once again, the English language falls short of the mark.
s/love/erosI know they're different types of love.
So it's only sex and romantic love which shouldn't be commercialised, but it's okay to commercialise other forms of love like parental love and filial love? Why is romantic love and sex different in that regard? Why is it so beyond the pale to commercialise sex but not parental care or filial care?
I think there is an argument to be made that due to its carnal nature sex is more intimate.
Again, I must stress this isn't my opinion - I just think it's one that someone could reasonably hold.
I think wiping someone's arse when they're unable to take care of themself (because they're too young or too old) is also quite intimate.
I don't think that's quite accurate, tbh.
A.S. I myself enjoy softcore and do not consider harder content (the subject is hardcore) inherently wrong.
From the article it is clear that the real culprit, and the party sued, is not PornHub but Girls Do Porn, and, indeed, their practices described are quite disgusting, especially this (emphasis mine):
As for PornHub itself,
I must mention that under the infamous FOSTA/SESTA law, a platform that knowingly facilitates sex trafficking is liable. Thus, any platform, and especially an adult content platform, is much safer if it does not moderate content (because nothing happens knowingly for the platform) than if it does (surprise?).
After reading the article, I am rather confused as to why the comments here are primarily discussing questions of pornography. Pornography seems as though it is only one context of many in which these wider problems can manifest themselves: the same thing could have happened, for example, with political interviews, or videos of any sort not meant for public viewing.
The first, which far predates the internet entirely, is the supremacy of contracts in society, along with the assumption that individuals entering into contracts are entirely rational actors, with infinite reading speed and legal knowledge, who have read them, completely understand all their implications, and completely agree with them.
We know these assumptions to be untrue. The legal environment of the internet is built around the assumptions being untrue: it would be impossible for someone to use the internet and satisfy those assumptions, simply from a reading speed problem alone. And the failure of the assumptions has long been a topic in both nonfiction and fiction. The problems here are simply those tropes with a pornographic context: the conman who plies their victim with drinks, who befriends them, who makes verbal assurances that the contract contradicts, who tells them not to be worried about the contract when they should be very worried.
In a legal system that views contracts as supreme agreements made by rational actors, I can't see how these women could win their case. While they say they didn't consent to this open publication, they signed contracts stating that they did consent to it, and likely stating that they consented to much more that they didn't intend to consent to.
It would be simple to say that the solution here is simply better education about signing contracts, but I would argue that that can't work. Our society seems, at this point, to be built around a requirement that individuals will not read most contracts, or understand them, but will agree to them anyway.
There is also a second problem here of breaking anonymity, and then harassing targets en masse. This problem also far predates the internet, but the internet has vastly increased its scale to the point where a rare and often relatively minor problem has become a frequent and major problem. As others have noted, this case is actually one where a response can be that "outmoded views of sex" can be blamed for the shame and harassment involved, and I think we are starting to see this change somewhat: one could point to Bezos' recent incident, or the recent incident of a celebrity I'm not familiar with publicly posting private nude photographs of herself in response to a blackmailer threatening to release them to harass and shame her, as challenging the idea that these things should be seen as damaging. In other cases, however, and I'd argue particularly in cases of issues surrounding politics, identification-and-mass-harassment isn't simply an issue of outmoded views.
Porn is definitely harming our society and not just due to the ethics (or lack thereof) of the industry. That being said, I really hope these ladies win their case.
How is porn harming our society, exactly?
We pay for hamburgers today, and have an obese society in the US, so I don't think that's the problem...
The rooting of the problem is puritanical, outmoded views. It's "taboo". But the question is,"Why is it taboo?"
And, there are a lot of things that trigger the reward cycle. And lots of things that people "can" become addicted too. I watch porn. I also have a healthy sex life. As do many people. In fact, the vast majority of males watch porn, and many of them have healthy sex lives.
So, yeah, it just boils down to "Outmoded views of sex".