> And please, your citation should not just justify your socially conservative talking point, but also falsify the converse perspective, which is that laws against sex work marginalize those who perform it, opening them up to exploitation from criminals and persecution from law enforcement.
Laws against sex work do marginalize the people who perform it. It's a trade off. Liberals tend to place a strong emphasis on that harm to the minority, and devalue the harm to the majority from breaking down the taboo. Conservatives, meanwhile, tend to focus more on the benefit to the majority of the norms, and devalue the harm to sex workers.
> I'd also like to understand what you're saying about minimum wage laws.
> That's magical conservative thinking, the belief that an unregulated marketplace creates a positive sum game and not an exploitative economy. The belief that removing protection for labour creates better jobs for everyone, and not more exploitation of employees. The belief that removing regulations around commerce will get rid of fraud, not incentivize it.
I'm just applying the same arguments that you're applying about minimum wage laws to sex work. In both cases, the laws make it illegal to do certain kinds of work--it limits individual freedom because some people may be willing to do that work--in order to prevent a race to the bottom and exploitation of the population as a whole.
What you're describing as "magical conservative thinking" is, more accurately, "magical libertarian thinking." And liberals are quite often inclined to engage in such magical libertarian thinking--the idea that maximizing individual freedom maximizes social welfare--just in different contexts.
Can someone please make a memo somewhere that "magical thinking" is not an argument it's just a new thing people say to devalue someone's argument. I don't care what side people are on this phrase is WAAAAY overused.
For the same reason workers do sub-minimum wage jobs or work in unsafe conditions: because of economic duress. Additionally, keeping it illegal helps society as a whole prevent vulnerable people from being coerced or manipulated into such work.
People have these libertarian notions of rational people making enlightened decisions to do sex work, but for the most part the women (and men) ensnared into such work have various vulnerabilities that predators in the industry manipulate. They are typically young (remember, humans don't have fully developed rational faculties until they're 25: https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?Con...). They may have been abused, etc. Society needs to be able to protect vulnerable people, sometimes from their own decisions.
The economic duress creates the pressure, and legalizing/decriminalizing sex work doesn't change the economic duress. An expanded social safety net would decrease the economic duress. Legalizing sex work just makes the option to deal with that economic duress safer.
Decriminalization might increase the number of people coerced and manipulated into such work. But criminalization definitely doesn't prevent people from being coerced or manipulated into sex work, and it makes it more dangerous for the ones who are.
Pros
You'd make it safer for sex workers, both voluntary and coerced ones.
You'd probably reduce rates of sexual assaults/abuse outside of sex work.
Sex workers would be more easily able to escape sex work because they won't have prostitutions charges on their record keeping them from getting a job.
Cons
Maybe more people would be coerced or manipulated into it.
Andrea Dworkin, a prominent feminist, wrote poignantly about her experiences with being coerced into sex work starting at age 15 by a 21 year old boyfriend: https://newrepublic.com/article/122457/modern-magdalenes. That’s the kind of coercion you see over and over again in the sex industry. For the most part, it’s not highly educated women making empowered decisions, but women who are coerced, or do it out of financial duress, or do it impulsively and regret commoditizing themselves.
That's a heart breaking story, but there are plenty of ex sex workers, some of which were in even more coerced situations (not emotional pressure from a boyfriend but threats of physical violence from a gang) who prefer decriminalization because it would have made it safer for them and would have allowed them an easier exit from sex work.
Maybe women are more against decriminalization because they've dealt with sexual coercion. But given that much more women think it's morally wrong to be a sex worker or to buy sex work (which doesn't have to do with coercion) I suspect that has little do with the difference. Instead i think the majority of the difference is that women think prostitution is wrong even when entered into by two willing and consenting parties, and this is why they're against decriminalization/legalization.
> A taboo is a prohibition based in a cultural sensibility that perceives it as excessively repulsive, sacred, or allowed only by certain persons. Taboos are not about "harm," they're about enforcing so-called "cultural norms."
Cultural norms are typically an adaptation to the realities of human life. They may become outmoded in certain circumstances, but they're rarely completely gratuitous.
> Being homophobic is about taboos.
Taboos against homosexuality exist because until recently, sexual reproduction was non-optional. My dad grew up in a village in Bangladesh where 1 out of 4 kids died before age 5. If you didn't have kids to help you farm, you'd be dead in your old age and potentially sooner than that. There was no Social Security, and there weren't alternative social roles for people who couldn't contribute to the next generation of the village. (And, of course, surrogacy and other modern medical technology was non-existent.)
Think about it logically: if the taboo was purely gratuitous, like you suggest, why did it arise independently in many different civilizations?
> They were used to justify taboos against interracial marriage, pornography, short skirts, and woman having jobs. They were used to justify paying women less and segregating education. They were used to justify discrimination against men who grew their hair long or wore tattoos.
There is a joke along the lines of "they laughed at Einstein, but they also laughed at Bozo the clown." Sometimes society is wrong; more often, taboos simply become obsolete. For example, if it was 1945 and the backbone of the economy was still people lifting heavy car doors and bolting them into place, you can bet norms around workplace gender equality would look a lot different. It's important to see what taboos may be obsolete, but railing against taboos for the sake of doing so threatens society.
I'll point out that sexual liberalism has hardly been proven right by "history." Virtually every society to embrace it has seen birth rates collapse. The future of the world now belongs to Muslims and Africans, who for the most part still strongly embrace traditional sexual taboos.
> You can rant all you like about heterosexuals being "harmed" by homosexuals loving each other
rayiner hasn't said anything like that. You're putting invented words into his mouth, which is not just despicable, but also a clear violation of the site's rules (which you repeatedly do: see your "talking points" comment above where you basically deny him any ability to think by himself).
You’re misreading the comment and going off on a tangent. OP was giving another example of the behavior to illustrate a point, its very clear they are not implying that the person they are responding to has made that specific claim.
Laws against sex work do marginalize the people who perform it. It's a trade off. Liberals tend to place a strong emphasis on that harm to the minority, and devalue the harm to the majority from breaking down the taboo. Conservatives, meanwhile, tend to focus more on the benefit to the majority of the norms, and devalue the harm to sex workers.
> I'd also like to understand what you're saying about minimum wage laws.
> That's magical conservative thinking, the belief that an unregulated marketplace creates a positive sum game and not an exploitative economy. The belief that removing protection for labour creates better jobs for everyone, and not more exploitation of employees. The belief that removing regulations around commerce will get rid of fraud, not incentivize it.
I'm just applying the same arguments that you're applying about minimum wage laws to sex work. In both cases, the laws make it illegal to do certain kinds of work--it limits individual freedom because some people may be willing to do that work--in order to prevent a race to the bottom and exploitation of the population as a whole.
What you're describing as "magical conservative thinking" is, more accurately, "magical libertarian thinking." And liberals are quite often inclined to engage in such magical libertarian thinking--the idea that maximizing individual freedom maximizes social welfare--just in different contexts.