We have a lot of center right politicians, most of the Democratic Party fits that description. They’re only “left” of the Republican party. They are not objectively on the left. The furthest left flank of the party (like Pramila Jayapal or Adelita Grijalva) could maybe be seen as center left, but the majority of the party is firmly right of center.

Clearly you don’t love having the giant Bronze-age patriarchal bullshit sized holes in your reasoning pointed out.

Go on pretending anyone who isn’t exactly the same kind of ascetic you are is just a “Treatlerite”. It definitely doesn’t make you look ridiculous to leftists and liberals alike.

I think people should have sex with who they want. Not who they are forced to because of poverty.

Fine. Me too. But I also think people should speak to and do nice things for who they want, not who they’re forced to because of poverty. But you put sex work in a different category from customer service or the service industry in general. The only way that works is if you think sex is magical and different from conversation or service. And the only way that makes sense is if you’ve swallowed the bronze age bullshit sexual mores that dominate most of the world today.

And you’re still absolutely refusing to engage with the actual point, so I have to just assume you’re being disingenuous at this point.

Ok, I get it, you believe very passionately in bronze age sexual mores. You don’t have a persuasive case to make that the things you’ve listed here are unique to sex work, nor have you addressed my point about other forms of exploitive labor and marginalized people. I suspect that’s because deep down you know there is no case to make there, unless you start from the position that sex is special and magical, and you’re simply not used to arguing against someone who explicitly rejects that presupposition.

Also. My previous Links were from university websites. Research articles about published peer reviewed articles and Wikipedia articles to define definitions.

Literally everyone can just scroll up a few replies to see that it’s exactly what I said: two Wikipedia articles, one opinion piece by an anti sex work crusader org with literal cops and Neoliberal politicians on its board, and a study that doesn’t control for any confounding factors (most such studies are funded by the LDS or Catholic Church, so they don’t control for those factors bcs they know they won’t get the results they’re being paid for if they do. Didn’t read far enough to know of your study is one of those, but statistically speaking the odds are good).

Have you ever considered which systematic aspects of our society fuel the patriarchy and inequality or do you think it just appeared one day and stays around for no reason?

I’ve read extensively on the subject and I will say again what I’ve said several times in this thread: 100% of patriarchy comes from the belief that sex is special and magical and from that the ideas of virginity and purity come to guarantee paternity and maximize the selling price of daughters, from there comes almost all of the forms of patriarchy.

Now if you can explain without any magical thinking or putting sex into a special category just why you think that sex workers arearginallzed and exploited in a way that is materially different from undocumented farm workers, please do so. If not, please shut the hell up, because it’s now painfully obvious to everyone that your magical thinking doesn’t hold up to any scrutiny.

Sex is categorically not “uniquely intimate”. A stimulating conversation about a subject you’re both passionate about is a far more intimate thing that a drunken bar bathroom hookup.

That kind of magical thinking is the problem. It’s an incredibly slippery and not very long slope from “sex is a magical and unique form of human interaction” to “daughters are property of their fathers until they are sold and become property of their husbands”.

leaves you with less options in your social life, pays barely enough to get by, and is way way more intrusive to the laborer. it’s clearly not like other work.

Yeah, I forgot about all the incredibly fulfilling fast food and coffee jobs that pay a living wage and are easy to get by on.

It clearly is like any other service work, unless you believe sex is a magical, special sphere of human activity. And if you do, then you’re thinking magically and not materialistically.

I literally gave multiple resources links in my original comment.

Wikipedia articles and opinion pieces by political advocacy groups run by Neoliberal politicians and literal cops aren’t very strong evidence of anything. The one actual study you linked, like most others in its (usually church funded) genre, just proves something anyone could have told you: marginalizing a group of workers makes them more vulnerable to exploitation and less able to seek legal help when it happens. Any undocumented farm worker could tell you the same thing.

I mean, I didn’t decide that, that’s just kind of how it works.

Magical thinking bullshit. Sex is exactly as sacred as a one on one game of basketball, and almost every bit of the Patriarchy rests on the foundation of denying that basic truth.

Nah, they’re right about this one and you’re wrong.

the oppression required to maintain their treatlerite life.

If you don’t feel the same way about fast food workers, convenience store clerks, and baristas, your problem isn’t with the exploitation, it’s with the sex.

Because thinking about it magically leads you to idiotic conclusions like “maybe the bronze age goat fuckers really did discover the ultimate truth of sexual morality, and it’s just coincidence that it just so happened to lay the foundation for millennia of Patriarchal bullshit”.

perpetuates the very systems that harm us under the guise of “sexual empowerment”.

No matter how you spin it as “empowerment” or anything else.

When you’re using the same “arguments” as an evangelical televangelist to rebut an argument no one is making, I suspect you’re probably not arguing in good faith.

You keep making claims, but you don’t bring any evidence. I suspect that’s because you know how utterly unscientific most of the “studies” that support your position are and how the only thing they really prove is that exploitation of labor is bad regardless of the kind of labor. But since you’re really dedicated to the “sex is special and magical” kind of bullshit magical thinking, I’m sure they seem very persuasive to you.

People who think metaphysically about sex are not ever going to see the logical inconsistencies in their world view. To them that actually is different, because to them sex is magic and not biochemistry.

Because I have dignity and self-respect.

Not of you’re publicly announcing that you’re so backwards-minded that you look down on sex workers, you don’t. Imagine being that gross of a person and proud of it.

How so?

What’s the difference between Halle Berry getting an extra million to take her top off in Swordfish and an Onlyfans girl, aside from the number of zeroes on the check?

It’s something young women/men should be aware of that they automatically exclude themselves from a huge part of the dating pool when they make a decision like that.

And nothing of value is lost. Who wants to date someone with weird moralistic hangups about sex, unless they share those hangups?

Please explain what those differences are without using any magical thinking that places sex into a sacred sphere of human activity that is holy and sacrosanct?

Or don’t. My point is you can tell how serious a person is when they start talking about the morality of sex by replacing every mention of sex in their point with “boxing”. It’s still a highly physical one-on-one activity that’s a crime of both participants haven’t consented, so if the exact same argument doesn’t make sense when made about boxing then they are thinking magically about sex and not materialistically.

Okay so you don’t actually know anyone who has aged out of sex work .

And obviously neither do you. But I do know men women and enbys still doing and enjoying sex work at the age you specifically picked as the age where they “can’t” do it anymore and their life will be over for having done sex work. Which was my point, and one you’ve utterly failed to engage with since you now know you were very wrong.

My “puritanical views”. Is this a joke?

No, it’s a quote, and I apparently misremembered it, since the original word was “moralistic” not “puritanical”.

To be clear: sex work is as bad as any other form of labor coerced by capitalism, it just isn’t worse than any other form of labor coerced by capitalism. Only the kind of magical thinking that says sex is some special sphere of human activity that should be considered sacred would ever tell you otherwise.

And the pimps, Epsteins, and human traffickers of the world benefit directly from moralistic views of sex. If we treated sex exactly the same as any other full contact sport, there would be far less danger for sex workers who report bad behavior from clients or employers, and there would be far less demand from creeps who want to buy children, because there is a definite correlation (even if no proven causal link) between heavily moralistic views of sex and CSA. This is why religious leaders so often wind up being child rapists.

Finally if you think there’s anything strawman or whataboutism in comparing sex work to any other form of work under capitalism, then you do not understand the point I’m making at all, which is that there is no moral difference between the sex worker and the coal miner in a capitalist society. In a socialist society there’s a discussion to be had about whether sex work is socially necessary labor, but there is no question it is labor.

Because most cultures have been heavily influenced by cultures descended from the bronze age sheep fuckers who came up with the idea of virginity as a way of ensuring paternity and maximizing the price they could charge for selling their preteen daughters to old men.