When social media silences sex workers, we all lose.
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Just a moment...
https://joanwestenberg.medium.com/when-social-media-silences-sex-workers-we-all-lose-203341e5fe87
A good article especially when it starts talking about platforms as infrastructure. It getting readily apparent for everyone that the centralized monopoly by a single large entity to regular control and profit off of these platforms doesn't work. I can't work profitability and the power imbalances cause issues. I am surprised they don't talk about open source or regulation. We should treat all social media platforms like we do email with a standard technical method that completely interconnects with any sources. Like we are doing here in the fediverse
I think social platforms should be allowed to regulate who they allow on their platforms. It is similar to not allowing a naked person to eat at a restaurant. As long as it isn’t a protected group that they are dismissing, it should be allowed.
I do think sex work should be legalized but I don’t think businesses should have to cater to that industry. Currently, you can choose to not let smoking products advertise on your website. I also think it is difficult to argue that social media is essential infrastructure. A person can easily live in our current society without it.
A lot of self serving twaddle masquerading as some socially concious manifesto. For ever OnlyFans model and camgirl there exists a hundred trafficking victims. What the author fails to grasp is that prostitution is a business, where the employee gets screwed figuratively and literally. Normalization of prostitution as any other venture leads will lead to an explosion of its shady side, with a couple of high class courtesans being paraded around as a proof that legalization works.
I am 100 percent behind "sex workers" abandoning their trade and becoming gainfully employed. Some things should not be normalized.
No, sex work should be legalized and become a protected trade, just like other work. Only by legalizing it can you get rid of a large chunk of the shady part of it. (never all of it, but legalized sex work is 100% better than Grey zone sex work like it is now in so many places...)
Legalization increases supply, which also increases the shady parts. Even in the placed where prostitution is legalized the sex trade iceberg is mostly composed of trafficking victims, with a tiny sliver of voluntary prostitution on the top. We should be focusing on harm reduction, not on normalization and legalization.
Do you have any proof of that?
Afaik in many European countries with legalized prostitution (eg Holland, Belgium,....) there is certainly no increase in illegal prostitution. But please, prove me wrong.
All research also indicates legalization upsides far outweigh the downsides.
Legalization of for example weed certainly has not increased the amount of shady dealers.
Why on earth would I go through the effort of finding a dodgy dealer if I can just walk to the nearest regulated clean coffee shop(weed shop) and get some that have been checked, plus I can get my money back if there is a problem.
Same for sex work, the only shady dealings would be people looking for intentionally abusive sex that would touch a shady establishment.
Why do you get to decide what is and is not gainful employment? Some of them probably make more money than you do.
You wouldn’t usually know where people are being silenced, since that’s kind of the point of silencing people. And if you’re in environments that celebrates sex workers, that’s your bubble, not the world.
The difference being when conservatives say it, 99.999% of the time we see the actual reason they were banned was for saying something like "it sure would be unfortunate if someone accidentally dropped an axe on Nancy Pelosi's head haha XD" as a figure with wide reach, or something similarly egregious.
Show me something similar happening here and I will also not take their complaints seriously.
Do you have any example of an "unpopular opinion" that has gotten you banned or any conservative banned? Also, probably the biggest reason I could see conservatives feeling like they're being "silenced" is because half of their platform is based on being racist(sometimes unintentionally), anti-lgbtq, etc.
This site is very one sided. Last Friday, the Canadian Parliament praised a litteral Nazi from Ukraine with Zelensky nodding his approval. I posted this and was called a Russian troll and then deleted. This site is no better than Reddit. The only difference, no ads here. You won't find open discussion here, which I REALLY REALLY want.
I mean, I'm not anti-sex-worker by any means, but hero?
Genuinely curious how you came to that conclusion
The sex workers who don't toe the line that sex work is great are the ones who are silenced on social media in my experience. My guess is that the trafficking victims, the drug addicts, the mentally ill and the destitute are seen as 'no true sex workers'.
i remember times, when we encouraged women to get out of selling their bodies instead of celebrating it and tell our daughters as a society that it's fine to do a few years of onlyfans and porn. i miss those times.
also, not technology.
We encourage women to use their bodies for sport, for fashion, for art, for drama, for motherhood... who are you to say that they shouldn't by their own free-will do another profession or service?
Sex work is still work. People will choose to do it for a wide variety of reasons. Online they can be completely in control of how they do it and who they choose to work with and for.
You can be a prude if you wish, but sex work is one of, if not the oldest profession out there. It's going to exist whether you like it or not. Let's just make sure people aren't exploited against their wishes and that they can work safely and in full control of their own actions
"We encourage women to use their bodies for sport, for fashion, for art, for drama, for motherhood…" - stopped reading there.
"I have an opinion and I refuse to hear any other perspectives incase they cause me to think about anything".
look, the moment you put motherood into the discussion about the pros and cons of prostitution i don't care about what you have to say about it.
Yes, you really didn't read anything else I wrote did you. Good to see that Lemmy is just as full of people who feel the need to spout their opinions but don't actually want to engage with anyone else's. Why should people listen to you if you don't want to listen to anyone else?
i don't care about some online dudes explaining why (self)exploitation of girls and women can be stunning and brave, you can gaslight yourself as much as you want, i won't buy it. reminds me of a radio program i heard about a year ago when they tried to make a case how child labour isn't such a bad thing as long as they are allowed to unionize.
Many people sell their bodies which we celebrate. Construction, heavy labor, mining etc. are regular people who sell their body for their living and they are all protected and regulated. We celebrate selling your body every time we watch sports for these athletes who entertain us. Every Sunday most of the US celebrates men who sell their body on the football field for our entertainment. Why is selling nude any different?
The fact that South Park discussed a point isn’t itself an argument against that point.
I guess the difference is selling your body because you have no choice vs selling your body because it's a safe well paying alternative to being exploited in ways you have no control over.
sure buddy, being a prostitute is the safest way for a women to have her body and soul exploited AND it's very well paid, i guess most of them are just doing it wrong. dig your forced anticapitalist comment, really.
OnlyFans models are sex workers too, for instance. Maybe your view of what a sex worker is is a bit outdated?
can't wait for them to realize 10yrs later that they will never wipe their "content" from the web again.
People know that and still make the choice. Plus, your schadenfreude at the prospect of future suffering for former sex workers is fucking gross. You just want see people (women, specifically, I’d bet) who have sex you don’t like get harmed. That’s fucked up.
So here is the thing, why is it a problem or not if I was to post my naked ass online and it never got wiped off?
It would only be an issue if say governments and people like you decide to shame or prosecute me for it.
If we were to make it safe then it would not matter would it?
look, i get it, i'm the bad guy here, society moved on, etc - but unlike most of you i actually know woment who felt down this rabbit hole. i know women who thought they can just hustle low key "services" als independents on the side, poaching clients via social media, private ads and whatsapp. one of them got roughed up by a pimp for "not paying the fee", got roughed up a second time for talking to the cops and guess what happend, when she wanted to quit and refused to work for said pimp and his wider sex trafficking organisation? or another one who thought it would be easy money to do some onlyfans shootings until she got doxxed, catched a stalker and had to move.
and if you think legal prostitution is any better, think again. have you never wondered why the "girls" in brothels are mostly foreign women? human trafficking is a thing. it's slavery. always was, always will be.
but yeah, let's gaslight young women to prostitute themselves to several degrees under the disguise of "body positivity" and "freedom".