[HN Gopher] Sex workers explain why the Safe Tech Act will break...
___________________________________________________________________
Sex workers explain why the Safe Tech Act will break the internet
Author : elsewhen
Score : 101 points
Date : 2021-04-18 14:49 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
| everyone wrote:
| I was confused by the term 'sex worker' used throughout the
| article. Through context it seems like they simply mean
| 'prostitute' ... 'sex worker' sounds to me like an umbrella term
| for anyone working in sex industry. Is the word 'prostitute' not
| pc or something?
| jedimastert wrote:
| Prostitution has some unfortunate connotations (not all of
| which are warranted) and isn't the only way people make money
| by having sex. Pornographic acting and live shows immediately
| spring to mind, and I'm sure I'm missing more
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| I'm sure avoiding to trying to use "prostitutes" plays a part
| in using the term "sex worker" (this is after a PR battle -
| "prostitute" is a far more loaded term than sex worker... for
| now).
|
| But typically sex workers can also include porn actors,
| strippers, web-camers (if you want to count them separately
| from porn actors) and other professions.
|
| Basically it's both a broader term, as well as a PR move.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Also phone sex operators, though perhaps that's more a relic
| of the '90s
| smegger001 wrote:
| that has moved more to cams now i think
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _Through context it seems like they simply mean 'prostitute'
| ... 'sex worker' sounds to me like an umbrella term for anyone
| working in sex industry. Is the word 'prostitute' not pc or
| something?_
|
| An "internet sex worker" is a content creator on OnlyFans, for
| example.
| cardanome wrote:
| The term "sex worker" is a campaign spearheaded by pimps,
| brothel owners and similar creatures that profit form the
| exploitation of women to legitimize their so called industry.
|
| The goal is to make it seem like prostitution is work like any
| other work and should by that logic be legalized. They try to
| make it seem like it is about helping prostitutes and
| "empowering" them and try to appeal to liberals when in reality
| it is a campaign that legitimizes exploitation and violence
| against women.
|
| https://www.spectator.com.au/2017/08/the-sex-worker-myth/
|
| > One of the most disturbing discoveries I made was that the
| loudest voices calling for legalisation and normalisation of
| prostitution are the people who profit from it: pimps, punters
| and brothel owners. They have succeeded in speaking for the
| women under their control.
|
| > Legalisation of prostitution in Germany, Holland and
| Australia has not led to a decrease in violence, HIV rates or
| in fewer women being murdered. I met a former 'sex workers
| rights' activist in Melbourne, Sabrinna Valisce, who,
| confronted with the reality of decriminalisation, had a
| dramatic change of heart. 'I thought it would improve things if
| everything was legal and above board, but it just gave more
| power to the johns and the brothel-owners.
| devmunchies wrote:
| SaaS was already taken.
|
| So was PaaS.
| arctangos wrote:
| Sex worker is used as a term to describe someone working in the
| sex industry. This includes pornography actors, onlyfans
| models, prostitutes, and many other things. I believe that
| people working in the industry prefer this, as it emphasizes
| that what they do is in fact work.
| xg15 wrote:
| Instead of framing this as a free speech issue, maybe the US
| should get its act together and make clear what its stance on
| pornography and sex work is in general.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| As as outsider, the US view on sex is the most schizophrenic in
| the world. Can't permit Janet Jackson to show her nipple on TV,
| creates Games of Thrones and the modern porn industry (I was
| going to say runs the biggest ring of porn sites ever, but
| Mindgeek is actually Canadian).
|
| The US doesn't have an opinion on sex, it just has different
| fractions with enormously different pov that can't agree to let
| sleeping dogs lie.
|
| It also has the last serious Christians with political
| influence for any advanced nation, and they are still fighting
| the war on porn.
| rblatz wrote:
| The US doesn't have a singular stance on these things.
| Different law makers at different times take up issues around
| sex for numerous reasons. Then they try to wrap it in
| propaganda to make it pass.
| Klwohu wrote:
| As one of the many people who hold that sex work is _NOT_ real
| work, and is instead deeply exploitative and nasty, I 'm glad
| that this is being done. Sex workers in recent times have taken
| over Reddit, the sex worker spam is unrelenting. Not sure if it's
| bot-driven or what, but it's unacceptable.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| >sex work is NOT real work
|
| What a weird perspective. Do you consider performance music or
| performance artists to also not do real work? Do you think that
| successful internet sex workers are putting in less than 40
| hours a week? I can't speak for them directly, but I would bet
| successful sex workers are putting in at least that much if not
| more time than that per week to ensure their business is
| successful. In fact I would guess (and I'd love to hear from a
| professional) that they prob burning the candle if they expect
| to build their business.
|
| Such a weird perspective to have. What is it that makes sex
| work not work relative to other kinds of creative/ performance
| based 'work'? I mean, even a greeter at walmart is putting on a
| kind of show, at a fundamental level, whats the difference? Is
| it not enough effort in your perspective? Not enough time per
| unit effort? Is it that they get paid to much? Too little? In
| your perspective, what qualifies as 'real' work? Is a lecture
| at a university 'real' work (trading your time and a
| perspective, only communicated; nothing materially trades
| hands) not real work? Is a laborer putting up concrete block
| not real work (trading their body and their time for money)? Is
| marketing not real work (you don't create anything)? Is
| management not real work (you don't explicitly 'make' anything?
|
| Even just in asking the question, it makes me consider that you
| may have a poor definition of what 'work' is if you don't
| consider modern sex work as 'work'. I'm interested to hear how
| you define work.
| Klwohu wrote:
| You were more interested in delivering a canned lecture. I
| don't have to justify myself to such a rude person. Sex work
| is _NOT_ real work, that 's not just an odd perspective, it's
| the majority opinion.
| Alekhine wrote:
| 'Sex work is not real work'
|
| 'Elaborate'
|
| 'No'
| Klwohu wrote:
| My explanation eventually leads back to Marxism and
| destruction of the family unit and other cornerstones of
| public order and decency which form the core of
| Enlightenment Western civilization. This isn't the proper
| place to critique Marxism. I'm sure everybody feels the
| chilling effects in their own workplaces and on the
| Internet, as well. Some things are just not fit to talk
| about outside certain welcoming spaces, like 4chan.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > My explanation eventually leads back to Marxism and
| destruction of the family unit and other cornerstones of
| public order and decency which form the core of
| Enlightenment Western civilization
|
| As Marx himself pointed out, it is _capitalism_ which, by
| reducing the working class which composes the greatest
| part of society to consumables in the system of
| production, destroys the family unit and other
| cornerstones of public order and decency of the society
| in which the Enlightenment emerged, and the capitalist
| habit of blaming opponents of capitalism for that is a
| diversionary tactic.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| As an abuse survivor, let me say that lawmakers and LEO did not
| begin to care about sex abuse, until gobs of money and power
| started to come with it (during 80's-90's). Before then, women
| and children knew (from exp) that few/no police or officials were
| there to protect them.
|
| Given what internet+sex-trafficking bills actually accomplish,
| it's fairly clear they're designed to cripple the power that the
| internet brings to the electorate. The trafficking rhetoric is
| little more than marketing.
| xg15 wrote:
| > _let me say that lawmakers and LEO did begin to care about
| sex abuse, until gobs of money and power started to come with
| it_
|
| * did -> did not ?
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| fixed. thnx.
| awb wrote:
| What are the gobs of money and power that came in the 80s and
| 90s?
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Lawmakers/LEO/Press (created and) amplified each other's
| narratives about child sex abuse. With that came fatter
| agency budgets and the rise of related orgs that could raise
| huge amounts of cash.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Glad you said this. If the 'government' wanted to protect sex
| workers a better strategy is what numerous other countries have
| done. Legalize the sex trade with strong provisions to protect
| the workers and support systems for escaping that life if they
| so choose.
|
| When a sex worker gets a record for being a sex worker it makes
| it a lot harder to escape that life.
|
| Having safe houses and required STD testing are other
| supportive measure for sex workers.
|
| The government does not care about the sex workers in the
| slightest.
|
| This is about censorship and control in the name of 'safety'.
|
| Gives them the power to take a website down in the name of
| safety if there's ANY questionable content on it even if
| there's millions of users. They will cudgel sites with it to
| give in to their demands for data requisition and to remove
| messages that they don't like...or suddenly the site will be
| brought down by force of law due to one person out of millions
| posting something questionable.
|
| Just like what Duterte did in the Philippines with his bloody
| drug crusade that also happened to not so coincidentally kill a
| bunch of his political rivals.
|
| Anytime the government tells you it's doing something for you
| in the name of 'safety' chances are you're about to get
| screwed.
|
| The average ignorant human's fear of whatever nightmare
| scenario the government and the media has created playing out
| in their head, is what ruins the world.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Legalize the sex trade with strong provisions to protect
| the workers and support systems for escaping that life if
| they so choose.
|
| There's strong indications that the immediate effect of a
| jurisdiction trying to do that is to make the jurisdiction a
| magnet for sex trafficking. Now, you can argue that the long
| term effects will be better, or its a matter of fine tuning
| protections, or that the effect is in part illusory because
| it makes detecting trafficking easier, or that it actually
| makes things net better, and that the trafficking it reduces
| is greater than the trafficking it diverts in from other
| jurisdictions; I personally think _all_ of those arguments
| have truth to them. But those are things that are less
| apparent from the data, so its a hard sell.
| smegger001 wrote:
| however once you legalize something you can regulate it.
| Require all sex-workers to work with registered brothels,
| require government issued licensing and certification. I
| men it you have to get a licence to cut hair requiring a
| licence to sleep with clients is an easy sell. It a lot
| harder to traffic people when they have to go into a
| government office and register with government issued ID.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > however once you legalize something you can regulate
| it.
|
| Yes, but no one haa found a way to regulate it thst
| doesn't result in an apparent increase of trafficking
| activity compared to prohibition.
|
| Again, I'm pro-legalization and subscribe to the whole
| list of reasons I cited upthread for _not_ considering
| that appearance decisive. But it makes legalization a
| hard sell.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| This hasn't led to a decrease in trafficking in the countries
| that have tried it though. Many of them in Europe have become
| trafficking destinations for women from other countries.
| There's lots and lots of studies out there that show that
| decriminalizing prostitution does not lead to lower
| trafficking or better outcomes for prostitutes.
|
| Also the rhetoric we use here (defeatist, people are going to
| solicit sex and break the law so let's make it easier for
| them, etc.) is in stark contrast to how we talk about
| problems we actually want to fight in our societies like
| obesity, racism, worker mistreatment by employers, etc. In
| those situations we never say that people are going to do
| such things anyways and criminalizing it just makes those who
| do those crimes more unlikely to change, more unlikely to get
| back into society, more distrustful of the system, etc. In
| those situations we spend tons and tons of money at the
| corporate and the government level trying to teach people
| these behaviors are wrong and to not engage in them.
|
| Why can't we do that with people who solicit prostitutes?
| karaterobot wrote:
| Agreed that decriminalizing prostitution is not a fix to
| sex trafficking, or the other attendant problems of sex
| work.
|
| However, we know very well that making prostitution illegal
| has no effect on those either. All else equal, it's more
| expensive to fight something you can't stop or even really
| slow down very much, which is why I think less money should
| be spent on enforcement than, say, treatment of the
| inevitable consequences.
|
| (Or better yet, trying to address the underlying factors
| that drive demand, though we almost never try that)
|
| I think there are legitimately different classes of
| problems, and some are better addressed through regulation,
| and others are just made worse.
|
| Racism (read: systematic racism at an organizational or
| policy level) and worker mistreatment are likely in the
| former: problems that are possible to at least noticeably
| mitigate through legislative changes, incentives, and
| punishments.
|
| Alcohol and drug prohibition I would put into the latter
| class: things people will continuing doing no matter how
| illegal they are.
|
| Prostitution seems like it clearly belongs with drugs and
| alcohol, though I would love to hear the reasons you
| disagree.
|
| By the way, I have no idea why your comment got downvoted.
| I disagree with it so far, but it's a coherent argument and
| not particularly nasty. It's hard to have discussions on HN
| when dissenting opinions just get buried.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| > Why can't we do that with people who solicit prostitutes?
|
| We completely agree about the purpose of government.
|
| The government exists to provide education and support for
| people to escape toxic situations, NOT more LAWS backed by
| the threat of violence, with over reaching questionable
| authority to force people to do what a subset of people
| believe is morally right, based on sensationalized media
| reporting, whether that's prostitution, drug use, abortion,
| gun laws, mask usage...etc.
|
| Unless there's unquestionable hard science to make a law
| over, with data effecting the majority of the population,
| the federal government should not be involved in a
| legislative capacity.
|
| There's already an uncountable number of federal laws(you
| can google it).
|
| We need to err on the side of freedom not safety and
| morality.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| > obesity, racism, worker mistreatment by employers
|
| Not going to lie, but I feel most people don't care about
| these either. All I see are platitudes.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| It's politics.
|
| For example, the criminal justice system is all messed
| up. Over-criminalization, coercive plea bargains, law
| enforcement unaccountability etc. But we focus on police
| shootings of black men, which aren't actually
| disproportionate to the number of police encounters with
| black men.
|
| Because it's a thing you can put video of on the
| television and get people frothy about, but it's not a
| thing you can solve on its own because it's a consequence
| of all of those other things and not a cause in itself.
|
| By getting people to focus on the wrong thing, they can
| get votes without having to do the hard work of solving
| the underlying problems. Instead they give you empty
| symbolism -- take down statues, rename stuff -- which
| doesn't fix anything. More than that, because the
| underlying problems never get solved that way, they can
| keep campaigning on it forever.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Exactly. Just like the rise of domestic extremism is a
| consequence of young men being left behind by
| technological progress and algorithmic echo chambers.
| Seeing no way for themselves in the world they are easily
| radicalized on social media. The mentally ill carry out
| spectacular displays of violence once they are nurtured
| by these groups. "Cracking down on domestic extremism" is
| a convenient way to maintain favor with the upper classes
| who are fearful of the discontent and militant attitudes
| and supposed actions of these groups (people are claiming
| membership in movements that have no central authority).
| It does not address the problem though and actually
| "cracking down" will only further inflame it. The
| solution is finding a way to offer these discarded people
| a way forward, real opportunity where they can see
| themselves being somebody that matters in their
| community. Attaching themselves to an extreme ideology is
| a cheap, last ditch effort to be somebody.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| There are prostitutes consenting to have paid sex. It's not
| necessarily a job borne of desperation.
|
| I would imagine a vanishingly small percentage of people
| are consenting to be on the receiving end of racial
| discrimination or hate crimes.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| Two different things are never going to be exactly the
| same. That's why this is a comparison. You're right,
| about the difference of consent vis a vis racism and
| prostitution, but the link I established between them was
| not related to consent, that's just a different feature
| of the two things.
|
| Consent isn't the issue here. It's about human behavior
| and how we can convince humans to work towards better
| outcomes. In that sense, both prostitution and racism
| were popular and disadvantaged one group for the
| advantage of the other (no amount of consent diminishes
| the disadvantage levied upon women who become
| prostitutes).
|
| Prostitution damages society (and so to did racism).
| Prostitution damages society because it spreads STDs no
| matter how safe one wants to be about it. It's not
| possible to get STD tests between every client a
| prostitute wants to have. It's also cost prohibitive,
| especially in a country like the US where there isn't
| even universal healthcare. Those who solicit prostitutes
| enable the entire industry, so why, as a society can't we
| see that, just as racism is socially destructive in
| practice and is enabled by powerful actors acting on a
| less powerful group, so too is prostitution.
|
| Finally, the link between prostitution and racism is that
| both are bad for society, both are enabled by a powerful
| group whose bad actions harm a less powerful group, and
| both are not going to be made "safe" for anyone to
| practice as their effects are always going to be harmful
| for society. With that in mind, why treat differently the
| actions of the powerful groups which enable both
| destructive behaviors.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| You can't kill the oldest profession in the world. It will
| never happen.
|
| You know what FOSTA/SESTA did? Push it deeper underground.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Specifically it made sex trafficking victims harder to
| rescue, by eliminating the means that LEO used to find
| them.
|
| Evidence indicates that lawmakers don't care about
| victims in a meaningfully helpful way. They absolutely
| crave the power/cash that anti-trafficking rhetoric
| brings.
|
| A competent press would examine the history of
| trafficking laws and report the actual outcomes - instead
| of parroting the PR that pols hand to them.
| otterley wrote:
| What evidence can you point to? Genuinely curious, not
| shitposting.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Here's a start. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2018070
| 5/01033440176/more-...
| otterley wrote:
| I was specifically referring to your claim that
| "lawmakers don't care about victims in a meaningfully
| helpful way. They absolutely crave the power/cash that
| anti-trafficking rhetoric brings." This article says
| nothing about that, and TechDirt isn't exactly a
| reputable, well-researched newsgathering organization.
| Sure, they're great at pointing out hypocrisies and
| weaknesses for our amusement, but I don't think I've ever
| seen them do any in-depth analysis or reporting.
| wonnage wrote:
| This reply is basically a shitpost. You asked for a
| source and got it, and then complained it wasn't good
| enough. The linked article actually sources from a local
| news report. Where's your evidence that this report is
| incorrect?
| Supermancho wrote:
| TechDirt is a SELF-PROCLAIMED rumor mill. It is not a
| reputable source for anything and the owners make no
| qualms about it.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > TechDirt is a SELF-PROCLAIMED rumor mill.
|
| I think you may be confused. The articles' consistent and
| well done sourcing is a solid opposite of rumor-mill
| behavior.
|
| > It is not a reputable source for anything and the
| owners make no qualms about it.
|
| Obviously not true as even a casual read will attest. As
| evidence I offer the site, in partial or it's entirety.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > As evidence I offer the site, in partial or it's
| entirety.
|
| TechDirt has been on a backslide in readership for years,
| primarily from it's crappy "we just post what we hear"
| nonsense. What you see now is a rebranding (eg* "free
| speech") which has served them better than the previous
| _snicker_ journalism that they are known for. The fact
| that they have seemingly well-sourced articles is
| incidental to the past, which you seem wholly ignorant
| enough to assume was a quality source.
|
| *It does seem to be working as other sites are
| increasingly linking to it.
| wonnage wrote:
| This is the source:
| https://www.wrtv.com/longform/running-blind-impd-arrests-
| fir...
|
| From this article:
|
| > "We assume it's a great thing that Backpage closed
| down," Stefanie Jeffers said. "And it is, because it's
| horrible that Backpage existed and so much trafficking
| occurred through the users of Backpage. But I do think
| that it comes with its dangers too."
|
| > Jeffers, the founder of the nonprofit Grit Into Grace,
| works with women who are engaged in street prostitution
| in Indianapolis to help them get out of the life. She
| says Backpage's closure came as a shock to the women she
| talked to.
|
| I don't get why you're hung up on whether TechDirt is
| reputable or not, just read the actual article?
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Compulsive Techdirt hatred is a weird thing. Without
| fail, I see it 'evidenced' with w/ unsubstantiated
| innuendos - pretty much what the haters say TD does.
| otterley wrote:
| In my view, a person making a claim--especially one
| stating there is "evidence" of this-- that a group of
| people have improper motives in contradiction to the
| default-held position that their motives are generally
| good bears the burden of persuasion.
|
| It is one thing to claim that we are passing laws in good
| faith that end up not working as well as we hoped. It's
| quite another make unsubstantiated claims that people are
| acting in bad faith.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > I was specifically referring to your claim that
| _lawmakers don 't care about victims in a meaningfully
| helpful way._
|
| Lawmakers were warned that shuttering Backpage would harm
| LEO efforts to rescue trafficking victims and they passed
| SESTA/FOSTA anyway.
|
| The law has been used exactly one time.
|
| > I was specifically referring to your claim that _They
| absolutely crave the power /cash that anti-trafficking
| rhetoric brings_
|
| Is your assertion that lawmakers do not crave the
| power/cash that comes with anti-traffic rhetoric? If so,
| why do you believe that?
|
| > TechDirt isn't exactly a reputable, well-researched
| newsgathering organization.
|
| That's an interesting opinion about one of the few news
| orgs that actively documents their analysis in every
| article (inc court filings), consistently targets all
| administrations (inc popular ones) - and (unlike most
| news orgs) isn't at all known for parroting Gov/Corp/LEO
| PR w/o contextual or historical analysis.
|
| > Genuinely curious, not crapposting.
|
| okay
| otterley wrote:
| > Lawmakers were warned that shuttering Backpage would
| harm LEO efforts to rescue trafficking victims and they
| passed SESTA/FOSTA anyway.
|
| I'll stipulate to that. But it's a pretty long logical
| leap to deduce from the fact that they heard a lot of
| opinions and made a (perhaps incorrect) judgment call
| that they don't care about sex trafficking victims.
|
| Also, linking to other news sources and commenting on
| them isn't "newsgathering." That's just operating a blog.
| If they perform their own investigations, then my opinion
| might change.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > it's a pretty long logical leap to deduce from the fact
| that they heard a lot of opinions and made a (perhaps
| incorrect) judgment call that they don't care about sex
| trafficking victims.
|
| Before passage: LEO warned lawmakers and those lawmakers
| minimized and gaslighted their expert concerns - concerns
| voiced by the exact people in the best possible position
| to know.
|
| After passage: LEO exampled the harm done by FOSTA/SESTA
| and how the law was further endangering sex trafficking
| victims. In response, lawmakers crowed about the success
| of the law - w/o offering anything at all that might
| indicate success.
|
| Creating a law that further harms and endagers sex
| trafficking victims while pretending the opposite - this
| seems like a fairly stellar example of not caring about
| the well being of sex trafficking victims.
| msla wrote:
| The only way legalized sex work can fail to reduce
| trafficking in sex workers is if there's insufficient
| background checks on sex workers. I'm familiar with the
| facts you're citing, and that's the only thing that makes
| sense. It makes precisely no sense to imagine it's a reason
| to keep sex work illegal.
| afturkrull wrote:
| You make some very interesting points. I don't know why it
| was modded into invisibility. Speaking for myself, the
| prostitutes, sorry that should be 'sex workers', don't
| benefit from the job. Who does are the pimps who control
| the industry. In the case of the Internet that woud be the
| cyber-pimps. It's a very self-destructive 'lifestyle'.
| You'd be better off flipping hamburgers. I know this is a
| novel concept to some on here but prostitution is degrading
| both to the 'sex workers' and their clients.
|
| -------
|
| Quoting @notsureaboutpg: "This hasn't led to a decrease in
| trafficking in the countries that have tried it though.
| Many of them in Europe have become trafficking destinations
| for women from other countries. There's lots and lots of
| studies out there that show that decriminalizing
| prostitution does not lead to lower trafficking or better
| outcomes for prostitutes.
|
| Also the rhetoric we use here (defeatist, people are going
| to solicit sex and break the law so let's make it easier
| for them, etc.) is in stark contrast to how we talk about
| problems we actually want to fight in our societies like
| obesity, racism, worker mistreatment by employers, etc. In
| those situations we never say that people are going to do
| such things anyways and criminalizing it just makes those
| who do those crimes more unlikely to change, more unlikely
| to get back into society, more distrustful of the system,
| etc. In those situations we spend tons and tons of money at
| the corporate and the government level trying to teach
| people these behaviors are wrong and to not engage in them.
|
| Why can't we do that with people who solicit prostitutes?"
| standardUser wrote:
| "I know this is a novel concept to some on here but
| prostitution is degrading both to the 'sex workers' and
| their clients."
|
| You seem very confident that this is an indisputable
| fact. Can you explain to us why paying for sex work and
| performing sex work are always degrading acts?
| Zancarius wrote:
| This doesn't surprise me at all. From what a poster said down
| thread from your remark, it's largely platitudes.
|
| I never appreciated the nature of abuse until a friend of mine
| confided in me about their own experience being an abuse
| survivor from something that happened when they were a child.
| The Internet is just a high profile target. I won't say that
| the overwhelming majority of abuse happens among people who
| know the victim, but it's almost certainly close. Of the
| survivors I've spoken with, while this is anecdotal, it seems
| to me that they all knew the perpetrator personally either
| through church, school, family, etc. The Internet wasn't
| involved.
|
| If anything, targeting the Internet may actually _impede_ one
| 's ability to speak out against abuse and seek out others to
| help encourage them to speak out, find help, or approach the
| appropriate authorities.
|
| It reminds me of a sad story. A number of years ago, there was
| a pastor who found out that there had been some abuse of a
| child in his church. So he reported it and the perpetrator to
| the authorities. When the dust settled, the church committee
| fired him for sewing division and dissent when all he did was
| follow the law. That's kind of what bills like this feel like.
| toyg wrote:
| _> I won 't say that the overwhelming majority of abuse
| happens among people who know the victim_
|
| Well, one could argue about "overwhelming", but I believe on
| the "majority" part there is no question, statistically
| speaking. So let's say it: the majority of abuse cases
| involve people familiar to the victim and their immediate
| relatives, regardless of any factor connected to the
| internet.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > the majority of abuse cases involve people familiar to
| the victim and their immediate relatives...
|
| This is and has always been true.
|
| >... regardless of any factor connected to the internet.
|
| The LEO narrative seems something like 'We didn't sex abuse
| before the internet so the internet must be responsible.'
|
| The flaw with that perspective is that police did not see
| sex abuse because (historically) they overwhelmingly Did.
| Not. Care. about children's (or women's) well being.
|
| As evidence, I offer a century of clergy (and other) sex-
| scandals that were rarely (or possibly never, ever, ever,
| ever) shut down by police - even tho the cops were the
| people who's actual damn job it was to put a stop to it.
| mncharity wrote:
| > they're designed to cripple the power that the internet
| brings to the electorate.
|
| IIUC, they're part of _Hollywood 's Righteous War on Tech and
| its Wild-West Internet_. Based on SESTA/FOSTA lobbying. So
| perhaps "to media consumers" rather than "electorate". Perhaps
| roughly: Hollywood fighting to bring law and order to the
| Internet (there's little good about it, and it's mostly just
| video packets), against media consumers steeped in entitlement
| and illegality, Google/BigTech's unconscionable power, and
| their corrupted mendacious supporters in Congress.
|
| That much press writes about this, and it's discussed here, as
| if trafficking was the issue... oh well. I'm reminded of a,
| IIRC, a Columbia Journalism Review column, roughly "why a
| liberal dislikes the NYTimes", describing each morning getting
| it and Financial Times, skimming NYT, throwing it out, and
| reading FT... because while FT was "of the enemy", at least it
| didn't misdescribe political issues as conflicts of ideas
| rather than of interests.
| Jan454 wrote:
| Porn & Sex-Workers are a neccessity to our society. Without it
| forced sex / rape would be even more prevalent. So if you are
| against either, you (scientifically) support rape!
| DC1350 wrote:
| Sex for money is coerced sex, which is also a form of rape.
| standardUser wrote:
| Can you explain precisely why someone offering you a handjob
| for $40 is rape and someone offering you a foot rub for $40
| is not?
| DC1350 wrote:
| A foot rub isn't a sex act? All conditional sex is rape. If
| the other person doesn't enthusiastically and
| unconditionally consent, then it's rape. This is obvious,
| and if you're having a hard time getting it then you're
| probably a sex offender.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| On that account, any work for money is a form of slavery. Of
| course this is absurd, and so is your claim.
| cardanome wrote:
| It is pretty shocking how common this incel ideology shown here
| is. Instead of making man responsible for their own actions,
| they are made into poor victims that suffer terrible from the
| lack of sexual satisfaction that is apparently their
| birthright. They have no other choice but to act out. No, they
| do.
|
| Nobody ever died from lack of sexual satisfaction. You can
| always pleasure yourself. Rape is not sex. People with violent
| tendencies need to get therapy not some outlet.
| smitty1e wrote:
| Without exactly contradicting you, I wonder at the implication
| of your post on the concept of free moral agency and
| accountability for actions.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| It implies that all people act and react according to
| circumstances (long-term and short-term). And this is
| something the law already acknowledges - note all the
| different types of homicide that exists in law.
|
| Rape is rape. But sometimes the rapist can also be a victim
| of something else. They can both by guilty of rape (and
| therefore accountable), but also a victim in need of help at
| the same time. In the law, we have ways to distinguish that -
| there is a reason why judges (a human) is typically given
| authority to choose actual punishment - to in take into
| account circumstances.
|
| Where "weird implications" start appearing is when this
| interacts our current popular trend of blanket applying
| "evil" status to people who commit certain actions. My gut
| feel is that this is a (understandable) response/backlash to
| abuse of the structure of moral relativism thinking and other
| post-modernist thinking by various groups. Or perhaps it's
| backlash against to the perceived failures of moral
| relativism to deliver any benefits "to the common person".
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Reframe it in marginal terms:
|
| - No one says there must be sex work in the utopia. But we
| have it in this world, and prohibitions of vice do not work.
|
| - We utterly fail at catching and convincing rapists, let
| alone preventing rape with deterrence or something. The
| orthodox ways to prevent the crime are not working.
|
| If there is already a failure of justice and prevention, and
| if sex work isn't inherently bad, what's wrong with improving
| the lives of sex workers and getting less rape as a side
| effect? And even without any utilitarianism, the key would be
| to focus on the unpatholization of sex work as something good
| in its own right, with the rape reduction side effect as not
| being decisive.
| mindslight wrote:
| Emotional reductions are only effective when there is power
| behind them, constantly pushing to make them a dominant
| narrative. Authoritarianism thrives on asymmetry and
| inconsistency - fighting back by imitating its techniques is
| ineffectual.
| hansvm wrote:
| Source? My layman's understanding was that sex isn't a primary
| motivator for rapists and that for other kinds of impulsive
| behaviors the use of a surrogate strengthened rather than
| quelled, e.g., violent tendencies. Is that not a correct
| worldview?
| freeflight wrote:
| Japan under US occupation was a depressing case-study of
| this:
|
| _> Immediately after the Japanese surrendered in 1945, the
| Japanese Ministry of the Interior made plans to protect
| Japanese women in its middle and upper classes from American
| troops. Fear of an American army out of control led them to
| quickly establish the first "comfort women" stations for use
| by US troops._
|
| _> By the end of 1945, the Japanese Ministry of Home Affairs
| had organized the Recreation Amusement Association (R.A.A.),
| a chain of houses of prostitution with 20,000 women who
| serviced occupation forces throughout Japan._
|
| _> Five months after the occupation began, one in four
| American soldiers had contracted VD. The supply of penicillin
| back in the U.S. was low. When MacArthur responded by making
| both prostitution and fraternization illegal, the number of
| reported rapes soared, showing that prostitution and the easy
| availability of women had suppressed incidents of rape._
|
| _> John Dower, in his Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of
| World War II, cites author Yoshimi Kaneko 's claim that while
| the U.S./Japanese-sponsored brothels were open "the number of
| rapes and assaults on Japanese women were around 40 a day,"
| but after they were closed, the number rose to 330 a day._
|
| https://apjjf.org/-Terese-Svoboda/3148/article.html
|
| Fair warning about the source: There are descriptions of some
| really nasty incidents in there.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| There are lots of articles out there supporting this idea.
| Here is one:
|
| https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-
| sex/201601...
|
| I used the search term "study porn reduces incidence of rape"
| cardanome wrote:
| Porn is not prostitution.
|
| There is no evidence that the later leads to an decrease in
| violence. Also considering that prostitutes are very often
| on the receiving end of violence this arguments only makes
| sense if you don't consider prostitutes to be people. We
| should not allow violent men to act out their fantasies.
| They need therapy. They can not be allowed to act out their
| fantasies on other human beings.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| The definition of _rape_ hinges on the detail of
| _consent_ not how violent the encounter is.
|
| Longer version:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26854884
| cardanome wrote:
| Maybe think about why people call you a rape apologist.
|
| You are not technically wrong but the context in which
| you present this makes it very tacky.
|
| We can always talk about corner cases and what not but in
| a civilized society always ensuring the consent of both
| parties to the fullest extend is a reasonable stance to
| take. And yes, violating this rule and failing to acquire
| to get consent from the other party is a form of
| violence.
| alanfranz wrote:
| Not OP and from mobile I can't search an exact link, but
| search for the so called "Rhode Island experiment" and its
| impact on rape and sexual violence.
|
| The tldr is that at least a part of sexual violences DOES
| seem caused by a need for sex, and if you can buy it legally
| such violences can become fewer.
| hansvm wrote:
| Thank you!
| [deleted]
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| Another article that examines the evidence that rape isn't
| about sex, finds it lacking: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/
| abs/10.1080/0022449880955147...
|
| It's interesting how bad ideas gain widespread purchase in
| society. The idea that porn increases rape doesn't even pass
| the smell test, but its widely believed for some reason.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| The idea that otherwise well-behaving members of society would
| resort to rape without sex workers is, first, pretty fucked up,
| but more importantly not backed by any reputable scholarship
| that I'm aware of.
|
| And plus I mean even if it were true that's not a solution to
| anything. If some significant portion of the population has an
| apparently uncontrollable urge to sexual violence (not a
| worldview I share!) then sacrificing our most vulnerable to
| them to ensure the safety of the rest of us is not a position I
| can support.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| > but more importantly not backed by any reputable
| scholarship that I'm aware of.
|
| See what the other reply linked:
|
| https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-
| sex/201601...
|
| > The idea that otherwise well-behaving members of society
| would resort to rape without sex workers is, first, pretty
| fucked up
|
| Well change the framing. Yes preventing the tradeoff in
| absolute term raises icky moral issues. But we don't live in
| a trolley problem world. Instead use the language of "harm
| reduction" i.e. marginal gains, and also drop the "otherwise
| well-behaving".
|
| "otherwise well-behaving" is a bit fraught. I don't want to
| get into "there's tons of a bad people", because I don't want
| to prop of criminality as a immutable aspect of character.
| But explanation is not justification: just because some
| denial of something empirically pushes people towards crime,
| doesn't mean it is or isn't a justified excuse.
|
| > then sacrificing our most vulnerable to them to ensure the
| safety of the rest of us is not a position I can support.
|
| This is flat-out wrong. Sex work != trafficking.
| "Sacrificing" implies once a sex worker, always a sex worker,
| which is no law. The fact is in a world of shitty service
| jobs, alienating gig economy, etc., sex work often does pay
| better.
|
| Vice prohibitions never work, so if one really wants sex work
| to go away, the only solution is to simply make other things
| and the social safety net pay better.
| GB7813AB wrote:
| You're looking at it wrong. There's plenty of people that
| appear "well-behaved" but they exist on the precipice of
| "right and wrong" in their psyche. Obviously there are plenty
| of very criminal people - the c-suite and politicians are
| disproportionately psychopathic if we're to follow the
| narrative that psychology has been spinning. And you can see
| it, there's a wide gamut of extortion and wars. And you'd do
| well to consider the number of people in prison and those
| outside of prison simply due to favorable probability. And
| that's what it boils down to. The probability that some
| unsexed, psychically distal individual is pushed to the point
| where they consider the risk reward to be favorable.
| Introducing sex work into the equation eliminates that
| specific group, and may buffer, to some extent the truly
| sinister people who are inclined to exercising their power
| wantonly. As far as evidence is concerned, do you need a
| study to do a study to produce evidence that man lives in
| fear of death?
|
| Of course if one really wanted to present the curative, we'd
| do well to trivialize sex, but that would destroy marketing
| culture.
| jonfromsf wrote:
| When Rhode Island accidentally legalized prostitution, rape
| dropped dramatically. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/w
| onk/wp/2014/07/17/when-...
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| The definition of _rape_ hinges on the detail of _consent_
| and in many countries the laws are written such that only a
| man can be guilty of rape and only a woman can be a victim.
| Many such laws specify that rape occurs when forced vaginal
| sex occurs and forced anal sex would be called _sodomy_ in
| many cases.
|
| Lots and lots of "first time sex" acts -- by which I mean
| first time sex between two specific people -- involves
| alcohol. Alcohol is the number on date rape drug and men
| sometimes ply women with so much alcohol that they are
| falling down drunk and incapable of legally consenting.
|
| Most people imagine that _rape_ involves violent assault
| where some thug drags a woman by her hair screaming into a
| dark alley. Most incidents of rape aren 't even violent. Date
| rape and acquaintance rape are probably far more common than
| violent assault of that sort.
|
| Rape is a hard topic to discuss and there is lots of
| misinformation out there and people are very uncomfortable
| with someone trying to educate them. I've had people accuse
| me of being a _rape apologist_ for talking about what really
| goes on.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| So our current model for any legislation on this topic boils down
| to "Sex is bad. Sex in exchange for money is downright evil. We
| must discourage sex from happening at all and especially punish
| people exchanging money for sex."
|
| Historically, you see more prostitution in "Victorian" style eras
| of prudery. During "Hippie" style eras where ordinary women will
| put out _for free_ because they actually enjoy sex, you see less
| sex in exchange for money.
|
| Let me remind people that marriage is the only contract that is
| considered _void_ and annullable if it is not consummated with an
| act of sex and dividing up marital assets and monies is a big
| part of concerns about divorce and rightly so. Historically, a
| man was hired to a lot of jobs more or less on the assumption
| that he had a wife at home to cook for him, do the grocery
| shopping and clean up after him so he could focus on his job and
| then his money was viewed as "family money" not his personal
| income. She had a right to it and those rights have eroded over
| time.
|
| This is not at all a simple topic because if you assume that
| couples must marry for life ("until death do us part") and cannot
| divorce and yadda, then you are saying people have to stay in
| abusive relationships and that's all kinds of problematic.
|
| Anyway, our laws surrounding topics like this generally do a poor
| job of protecting the people we claim to be protecting because
| our mental models aren't actually about human rights. They aren't
| actually about things like agency, quality of life etc for women
| and children.
|
| They are about prudery and an assumption that sex is bad and
| somehow adding money to the mix makes it pure evil.
|
| And, yet, men tend to be expected to pay for dates and men tend
| to be expected to support their wives financially, etc. So there
| are lots of ways in which money is already tied to sex and in a
| gendered fashion. Sex workers are typically women. Their clients
| tend to be men.
|
| There is a lot of growing that needs to happen before we can get
| to a point of actually giving a damn about the welfare and agency
| of people who are at risk of ending up sex workers for various
| reasons.
|
| At the risk of having this misconstrued as usual:
|
| When I was homeless, men would straight up offer me money for sex
| based solely on being pretty plus very obviously poor while at
| the same time trying to network via HN and figure out how to
| adequately support myself some other way has gone very poorly for
| a lot of years. There are lots of factors suppressing my income.
| It's not just my gender. But my gender is a factor and most of
| the time when I bring that up, I get a lot of not great replies
| that boil down to people trying to deny that men here are somehow
| guilty of something .
|
| I'm not trying to point fingers and say "men are bad people." But
| the reality is that simply being female makes it hard to figure
| out how to connect with businessmen in a way that helps improve
| my bottom line and doesn't get misconstrued as me offering to
| date someone, in essence.
|
| I don't know how to solve that. I've worked on it a lot of years
| and things are less crazy making than they used to be, but I
| haven't found any slam dunk wins substantially moving the needle
| on my bottom line.
|
| So if you are inclined to be all "La la la not listening, not my
| problem" about how the highest ranked woman on HN finds HN not
| fertile ground for trying to establish an income when lots of men
| have no problem using it that way, then you are part of the
| problem here. Women tend to do sex work because it pays better
| than a lot of jobs that are open to women and it's amazingly hard
| to keep "choosing the high road" when that involves literal
| starvation. (For those who did not get the memo: I was openly
| homeless for nearly six years and an active participant here for
| most of that time.)
|
| So think on that. This issue is complex and cannot be resolved by
| just focusing on sex work per se. It isn't going to be resolved
| until there are other avenues for women to readily support
| themselves, among other things. "Just say no to sex work" when
| there are no ready replacements for such income for so many women
| is simply not a viable method of fixing the underlying social
| stuff that fosters current outcomes and statistical trends for
| this issue.
| strken wrote:
| I have no idea how to get you a job or help you found a company
| unless you live in Australia and know a lot about either
| software development or niche areas of healthcare, but what's
| your skillset, what have you tried so far, and what do you want
| to do?
|
| I remember reading your comments pretty frequently, but the
| ones I see are about being an abuse survivor or a woman[0]
| rather than tech or any other industry, and a quick look at
| your HN bio, twitter, and blog doesn't show a portfolio or a
| company.
|
| [0] which are fine things to talk about, I just have no idea
| what you want to do for a living
| tolbish wrote:
| You're right in that we can't fix the "issue" of women needing
| to do sex work until we fix the issue of how we view female
| autonomy compared to male autonomy. Generally, we set a lot of
| people in our society up for failure. I think we could do
| better at openly addressing how people are targeted for
| exploitation, particularly those in vulnerable positions such
| as homeless persons or those on the autism spectrum.
|
| Although I'm not sure if HN is fertile ground for establishing
| an income. It would be less than 1% of users, I imagine.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I am going to ask that people not do this in reply to my
| comment:
|
| _Although I 'm not sure if HN is fertile ground for
| establishing an income. It would be less than 1% of users, I
| imagine._
|
| The top answer to the question 43 days ago of _Ask HN: What
| tangible benefits did you get from spending time on HN?_ is:
|
| _I did a Show HN for the idea of a SaaS for GitLab and I'm
| now the CEO of a $6b company._
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26366538
|
| There are people here who are not interested in using HN to
| make money. But there are many men who do, in fact, make tons
| of money because of their relationship to HN. This is
| extremely well documented to the point that it just makes me
| nuts that people try to tell me that doesn't go on.
|
| They do monthly hiring threads. They advertise jobs here for
| YC companies. They do a _Freelancer? Seeking Freelancer?_
| thread every month. I 've seen comments by individuals that
| talked about having no problem making money via HN from
| people who had been here about the same amount of time as me
| and had lots less karma.
|
| Men can come here, connect to other businessmen and make
| money if that's what they are looking for. I appear to be the
| only openly female member to have ever spent time on the
| leaderboard and I remain dirt poor with terrible prospects
| for the time being and this has been true for a lot of years.
|
| Please do not do this. Address the issue of sex work. Don't
| add comments politely dismissing the idea that men make money
| via HN or something. Men make money via HN. It's common
| knowledge that men make money via HN, sometimes scads and
| scads of it. Meanwhile, the highest ranked woman here still
| has to put up with this kind of crap where people act like
| I'm imagining things and this isn't a real problem.
|
| It makes me feel like the entire forum is intentionally
| gaslighting me because, wow, can 5 million people actually
| all be that completely oblivious to how much men use HN to
| line their pockets? I have enormous trouble believing that.
|
| Edit: I will add that even if it is "only 1 percent", with 5
| million monthly visitors, that would be 50,000 people.
|
| 2nd edit: There was also this question two days ago that got
| overwhelming support for a young _man_ who is having trouble
| getting hired and it stuck in my craw because there has not
| been overwhelming support by HN of people trying to help me
| solve my problem:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26825017
|
| Instead, I continue to get amazingly shitty replies
| implicitly suggesting "It's not a real problem. She's
| exaggerating and the problem is her _imagining_ that
| participating on HN has any real power to positively impact
| your income. Ha ha ha. "
| csomar wrote:
| > Men can come here, connect to other businessmen and make
| money if that's what they are looking for. I appear to be
| the only openly female member to have ever spent time on
| the leaderboard and I remain dirt poor with terrible
| prospects for the time being and this has been true for a
| lot of years.
|
| HN makes you money only if you use HN to make money. At the
| end of the day, Hacker News is a public forum. Some people
| use it to launch their startup, or get hired. Some people
| use it to find news. Some people do not read the articles
| and instead read the comments.
|
| It's up to you to use HN as you see fit as long as you are
| within the site guidelines. I think your confusion is
| stemming from the fact that HN Karma and the amount of
| dollars you make from HN are correlated. They are not.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _I think your confusion is stemming from the fact that HN
| Karma and the amount of dollars you make from HN are
| correlated. They are not._
|
| No, I have no such confusion.
|
| I mention my karma as shorthand for "I appear to have
| done the best job for figuring out how to participate as
| a woman here and can't turn it into adequate income
| though it's an explicit goal of mine."
|
| I'm well aware you have to seek to use it that way and
| karma score does not directly correlate with success in
| using it that way. I've sought to use it that way. It has
| not gotten satisfactory results. I have good reason to
| believe my gender is a factor in that failure to achieve
| what I would like to achieve.
| csomar wrote:
| > I have good reason to believe my gender is a factor in
| that failure to achieve what I would like to achieve.
|
| This is solely your depiction and doesn't make it a truth
| (and I don't think it's anywhere close to being true). I
| also think if you keep thinking that, you are unlikely to
| achieve satisfactory results (and subsequently shift the
| blame to your gender instead of your strategy).
| loldk wrote:
| Neoliberals, video game companies, social media companies, and
| big tech are ALL FOR controlling their customers and trying to
| control what can and can't be said on a platform.
|
| This will get abused heavily by large corporations with shady
| amoral behaviors like Amazon, and plunge us deeper into dystopia.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| The person pushing this bill is a Democrat.
|
| I used to be a Democrat.
|
| When did the Democrats suddenly become the party of morality and
| knowing what's best for you?
|
| They used to be the party of freedom.
| mindslight wrote:
| Neither _party_ is a party of freedom, despite their members
| themselves wanting freedom. The function of the parties is to
| appeal to the basic desire for freedom present in most of their
| constituents (differentiating based on cultural pain points),
| and then sell a similarly-flavored agenda of non-freedom in its
| place. Whether it 's "compromises" that totally undermine the
| goal of a movement, or simply that pro-freedom pushes stall
| legislatively while the anti-freedom pushes move along well
| funded (by those who stand to gain).
|
| edit: I think I'm being heavily downvoted for "both sidesism"
| after the Trump trainwreck. But if you cannot accept the idea
| that what motivates the Trumpists is the desire for freedom as
| well, then we're doomed to repeat the same cycle.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| As a person who finds no home in either party is's eye
| opening to see both parties demonizing the other.
|
| Outrage and Sensationalism instead of statistics, seems to
| drive most of the voters, whether that be on the left or on
| the right.
|
| The media is complicit in this with the 'if it bleeds it
| leads' mentality,
| ralusek wrote:
| There are obviously some conservative elements to the
| Republican party, but it is fundamentally a liberal party.
|
| Democratic party, obviously, is not remotely liberal, but that
| has been the case for some time. That doesn't mean good or bad,
| just not liberal.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| It's not totally clear to me how you're using some of these
| words and their meanings can change a lot depending on
| context.
|
| Like I would consider both the republican and democrat
| parties to be conservative, in the sense of generally
| resisting change, and liberal, in the sense of generally
| believing in market-based solutions to most problems.
|
| The degree to which they're devoted to those things differs,
| but I think what differentiates them from each other is not
| their stances on these items.
| ralusek wrote:
| "Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on
| liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the
| law. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on
| their understanding of these principles, but they generally
| support free markets, free trade, limited government,
| individual rights (including civil rights and human
| rights), capitalism, democracy, secularism, gender
| equality, racial equality, internationalism, freedom of
| speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion."
|
| I would say the vast majority of these principles are more
| associated with today's Republican party than today's
| Democrat party. I think two that might trip people up are
| "gender equality," and "racial equality," because the
| Democrats are the ones typically arguing for things
| approximating reparative justice/affirmative action/quotas,
| etc, but that is rather classified as "equity" rather than
| "equality." Equality, in the liberal sense, means equality
| before the law. Obviously reparative justice/affirmative
| action/quotas are the near opposite of equality before the
| law.
|
| Internationalism and free trade are the two remaining
| principles that I wouldn't associate or disassociate with
| Republicans or Democrats, it basically just depends on what
| faction within the party. Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump
| are both against free trade, and more interested in
| prioritizing national workers over international trade. You
| also have free trade globalist types in either party.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The problem is that people continue to use words like "left"
| and "liberal" as a vague proxy for party platforms, but it
| was never a one dimensional axis like that.
|
| For example, twenty years ago you would expect to find
| Democrats arguing for "liberal" values like free speech and
| due process, and Republicans arguing for globalist foreign
| policy and military interventionism. Now it's going the other
| way. But which party is captured by the teachers unions and
| which party is captured by the oil companies hasn't changed,
| because it's not a one dimensional problem space.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Interesting observation.
|
| The party roles have flipped in the past as well.
|
| The Democrats used to be the southern pro-slavery party.
|
| I believe Lincoln was a Republican.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| That wasn't quite the same thing though. The impetus for
| the so-called flip was the Civil Rights Act.
|
| It was becoming increasingly obvious that the Republicans
| were going to pass the Civil Rights Act and the racists
| were on the wrong side of history. But the racists made a
| final push to put it off and managed to put the Democrats
| in the majority.
|
| Then the Northern Democrats voted with the Republicans to
| pass the Civil Rights Act anyway. The racists were livid.
| Their party betrayed them.
|
| Nixon (yes, that Nixon) realized that it made the South
| his for the taking, so he took it. It was a realignment.
|
| The Democrats like to portray this as the racists
| switching parties, but it was really the process of the
| racists losing and dying out. In 1880 the Democrats were
| the party of slavery and Jim Crow. In 1980 there was no
| party of slavery and Jim Crow. They lost.
|
| That was the point when racism dissolved into classism.
| It's why Democrats insist on calling classism "structural
| racism" -- they've convinced people the "racists" are
| cardboard Republicans from the South, even though they're
| the ones tying schools to housing and restricting multi-
| family zoning in blue cities.
|
| Not to say that the Republicans are saints. War on Drugs
| has been a predominantly Republican dung fire, for
| example.
| smitty1e wrote:
| My surmise is that debt is slavery and those controlling the
| debt seek to add to their thrall collection.
| [deleted]
| melff wrote:
| I haven't read the Act myself but judging from the information in
| the article framing this as having a special impact Sex Workers
| in specific seems odd to me.
|
| Talking about the role and responsibilities of platforms, whether
| we should think of them as a "space" where people can talk, like
| ISPs or the Mail Service or more like a publisher, the
| implication on freedom of speech vs freedom not to be offended,
| etc, would be more productive and cover the impact of this Act
| more broadly and more accurate than trough the lenses of a
| specific profession.
|
| The issue of over policing and censorship hasn't anything to do
| with sex work, they just a one group that will likely be affected
| but many, many more people who are not sex workers will be
| affected too.
|
| To me it sounds like talking about the performance implications
| of a processor design decision for fortan-based web servers, I
| mean yes sure they will be affected by reducing core count in
| favor of a bigger cache, but so will a lot of things and there is
| nothing special about them to warrant them being the focus of
| such an article.
|
| If this article was targeted at sex workers and/or their clients
| specifically it would make sense, but vice is a mainstream thing
| isn't it?
|
| Also I hate this kind of click-bait articles SAFE TECH will not
| break the internet and even if it did, engineers, tech-pioneers,
| relevant companies like Google or Microsoft, etc would be way
| more qualified to explain why it will than sex workers.
| andy9775 wrote:
| How do these laws affect companies like SquareSpace[1] (companies
| which provide a site builder and hosting)? If someone builds a
| site which violates these laws is SquareSpace held responsible?
| Is it up to SquareSpace to police the content on their customers
| sites (comments sections, content, etc.)? Or do they have some
| sort of immunity or contractual immunity from these laws which
| places the responsibility of content on the end customer/site
| owner?
|
| [1] I'm using SquareSpace as a placeholder. I think netfliy,
| wordpress builders and hosts, and other similar companies could
| also be impacted(?)
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| IANAL so take what I say with a grain of salt.
|
| Because of SESTA/FOSTA, Section 230 no longer provides immunity
| for websites or website infrastructure from civil or criminal
| liability with regards to knowingly hosting trafficking-related
| content (however how "knowingly" and "trafficking-related"
| would be defined/interpreted in a court case, I'm not aware).
| Square space would theoretically be liable even if it is an
| intermediary/provider of infrastructure but neither a producer
| nor direct provider of content.
|
| Before SESTA/FOSTA, SquareSpace would have legal immunity from
| suits regarding user-generated content and only users would be
| held liable if the content was determined to be criminal.
| SquareSpace has not and is not legally responsible to police
| content of it's users. Doing so would violate the SquareSpace's
| 1st amendment rights as a private company. However, under third
| party doctrine, SquareSpace could be subpoenaed for
| (theoretically)narrowly tailored and relevant user information
| by a court of law. Netlify, wordpress and other hosts would
| similarly be held liable to the degree SquareSpace is:
| knowingly hosting trafficking-related cotent.
|
| However bigger question is how far does this go? To the
| registrar level (e.g. Namecheap)? The DNS (ICANN/IANA)? What
| about Internet Exchanges and Peering (e.g.AMS-IX)? While
| SESTA/FOSTA hasn't been tested at these levels, it
| theoretically implicates the entire infrastructure of the
| Internet should just one site host sex-trafficking related
| material. This would violate the sovereignty of other nations
| and gives the US government universal jurisdiction. Hopefully
| this can be resolved at some point by the Supreme Court.
| Hopefully.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Because of SESTA/FOSTA, Section 230 no longer provides
| immunity for websites or website infrastructure from civil or
| criminal liability with regards to knowingly hosting
| trafficking-related content
|
| SS230 explicitly never limited criminal liability, and
| arguably didn't limit civil liability for knowingly
| distributing unlawful content (publisher liability, which it
| expressly prevents, applies without knowledge; distributor
| liability, which some courts have found it implicitly
| prevents as well [IIRC, only the 11th Circuit had ruled on
| this, at the federal appellate level] applies to knowing
| distribution).
|
| And FOSTA-SESTA adds no-knowledge civil liability for owning,
| managing, or operating an information system with "reckless
| disregard of the fact that such conduct contributed to sex
| trafficking".
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| >>SS230 explicitly never limited criminal liability,
|
| Thank you for the correction.
|
| >>and arguably didn't limit civil liability for knowingly
| distributing unlawful content
|
| Prior to FOSTA/SESTA, would a search engine be considered
| liable for knowingly distributing unlawful content? The 1st
| Circuit argued that was not the case[1] by citing Fair
| Housing Council of San Fernando Valley vs Roommates.com.
| Trafficking-related content would require
| inducement/incitement of action by the website (not mere
| advertisement, invitation or facilitation thereof) in order
| to be deemed unlawful. Trafficking-related content on a
| website was not, on its own, per se unlawful to distribute
| knowing or unknowingly. That was the case until Backpage's
| founders were indicted and FOSTA/SESTA was passed.
|
| >>And FOSTA-SESTA adds no-knowledge civil liability for
| owning, managing, or operating an information system with
| "reckless disregard of the fact that such conduct
| contributed to sex trafficking".
|
| And this is the concerning bit I had in my last paragraph.
|
| [1]https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/5914f772add7b04934
| 9953...
| known wrote:
| Sweden bans the purchase, but not the sale of sex because all sex
| work is exploitative https://archive.is/CsMX4
| PeterisP wrote:
| While it may seem that such a policy that criminalizes
| purchasers but decriminalizes sex workers is pro-sex-worker,
| the sex workers themselves in Sweden were and are against this
| policy as it de facto makes their work more risky from customer
| violence.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| It's a terrible policy:
|
| - Making only one side of a transaction illegal is absurd.
|
| - Because the customer assumes more risk, they are often more
| antagonistic. Sex workers have to more explicitly offer to
| protect their customers from legal repercussions to maintain
| their business, rather than the the mutualism of same risk
| (with legal or illegal for all).
|
| - Legal work is always the least exploitative; that's why big
| agriculture wants migrant workers etc.
| fwip wrote:
| If all sex work is exploitative, then all work is exploitative.
|
| There's no great difference between giving a person a massage
| and a hand-job. Nor between an attractive person modelling for
| a clothing shoot, vs modelling nude to sell sexy photos. Sex
| hotlines are not exploitative if advice hotlines are not - it's
| simply a person using their skills to provide a service.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Ad absurdum fallacy
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| fallacy fallacy
| drewbug01 wrote:
| "Reductio ad absurdum" isn't a fallacy, it's a form of
| argument that's been in use since the ancient times.
| Whether or not it's effective certainly doesn't mean the
| logic isn't sound.
| hilbertseries wrote:
| I think exploitative in this context refers to the prevalence
| of sex trafficking in sex work.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| But that's always been a straw man. There are tons of non
| profits that just assume this to get on with their moralist
| agenda. All the organizations actually involved with
| current or former sex workers strongly rebut this non-
| truth.
|
| The history of vice criminalization is also informative.
|
| - Prohibition was anti-irish, and anti-immigrant in
| general. KKK resurgence in the 1920s involved in part them
| being anti-alcohol vigilantes too.
|
| - Original criminalization of cannabis after in the 1930s
| to not abolish the prohibition bureaucracy saw Mexicans as
| expendable scapegoats. This is why there is little use of
| "marijuana" in English before this time.
|
| - Current drug war initiated in conjunction with the
| "southern strategy".
|
| Now I think a lot of the bad morality is genuinely held,
| just as there were probably non-nativist teetotalers a
| century ago. But the clear negative structural consequence
| of anti-sex-work is to continue to try to keep the public
| sphere and less shitty parts of the formal economy male-
| dominated.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| >>Prohibition was anti-irish, and anti-immigrant in
| general. KKK resurgence in the 1920s involved in part
| them being anti-alcohol vigilantes too.
|
| Is that true? From my understanding, Prohibition on a
| national scale was championed by women's movements and
| temperance activists (Susan B Anthony was a leader of
| both) as states across the entire country were enacting
| these laws on there own. If the KKK was involved, that
| wouldn't explain why Massachusetts and Maine were among
| the first to initiate such laws.
| fwip wrote:
| Then it was clearly incorrect to say "all sex work,"
| because the vast majority of it is done without sex
| trafficking.
| [deleted]
| msla wrote:
| That's a great way to ensure diseases spread through sex work
| due to the legal implications of saying you caught something
| from a sex worker. It isn't exactly a good way of doing things.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| Why would you need to say where you got it from...?
| msla wrote:
| To keep them from giving it to others.
|
| Basic epidemiology.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| Nope.
|
| Telling the state in no way keeps you from giving it to
| others. The existing legal requirement to disclose STIs
| to partners is targeted at that. In terms of actual
| epidemiology, the government just needs to know O() how
| many new cases have been found in a population, not
| specifically who has been diagnosed with what.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| Contact testing
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| I understand that's why the government would want to
| know. My point (thus the word "need" in my question) is
| that at least in the United States there are very few
| groups of people (largely healthcare/childcare workers)
| who are _required_ to disclose to the state. You 're
| frequently required to disclose to partners, but that's
| obviously a completely different thing. Even then,
| disclosing where you got it from is not a legal
| requirement, merely the fact of the infection.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I wonder how much cheaper the entire system would be if the
| government just paid them to not have sex.
| drdeadringer wrote:
| Honest question:
|
| How has that worked out for [at least certain types of]
| religion?
| sokoloff wrote:
| How much would the government pay everyone to not be a sex
| worker? (If we've learned anything, it's that when the
| government starts giving away money, lots of people are willing
| to take it. If all they need to do to get it is agree to not be
| a specific type of sex worker, I think lots of people would be
| interested.)
| mikhailt wrote:
| There are at least three issues with this idea:
|
| 1. Not every sex worker are doing it for the money only. Many
| do enjoy doing this. Not every person goes to sex workers for
| sex but more of a "hired" companionship. 2. Demand for sex
| would not just disappear. Sex is human nature and sex work has
| been around since the beginning, it will never "stop". 3. This
| would increase human trafficking and more abuse to women
| because of 2 and it has already happened thanks to previous
| laws like this as mentioned in the article.
|
| This means increased costs for us taxpayers to pay for
| increased policing due to 3.
|
| You want to make the system cheaper? Decriminalize sex work
| and/or go after the sex buyers instead.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I'm not arguing on point number one, all this policy would do
| is make sure that the only workers that are doing this are
| the ones there for the reasons you state.
|
| This would reduce/filter out anyone there for necessity.
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