I ain’t gonna judge how one chooses to sell their body, time, safety, health, etc. But we do need to treat sex workers like other workers and ensure they have safe working conditions and the freedom to leave their employment at will. Heck while we’re at it we should extend it to agricultural labor too
Farm workers in Ontario, Canada are not entitled to:
minimum wage
daily and weekly limits on hours of work
daily rest periods
time off between shifts
weekly/bi-weekly rest periods
eating periods
three-hour rule (if you show up for work and are sent home before you’ve been there for three hours, most jobs are required to pay you for three hours)
Are you suggesting we don’t give it to sex workers because farmers don’t have it or we give it to farmers too.
Technically I think most farmers are their own business so if they want to have holidays off they can. The alternative is state run farms which I support fully and completely.
I’m just saying what farm workers don’t get. Farm workers and sex workers both deserve better than they get. This is specifically for people employed on farms and not for people who own farm businesses. Most of our food is grown by people making less than minimum wage. The people who own the farms aren’t the ones doing most of the work.
I feel people who equalise sex work with other jobs downplay (immensely) the toll sex work has on the majority of sex workers.
It is really not comparable to construction work or any other job. Even in countries were sex work has long been legalised, there is no other job, by a long shot, which has so many people suffering from PTSD, drug and alcohol abuse.
That’s why I was not saying they shouldn’t have the same rights as everybody else. But instead I said what I said?! That this type of comparisons to other jobs downplays in my opinion that sex work is not just like any other job.
Are you aware of any sources specifically evaluating participation in sex work as a causal factor in mental and substance disorders (as opposed to sex work represented more prominently in populations already affected)?
Yes, this study corrected for reports of CSA, lower income, etc. in people who are drug addicts. For those who are additionally sex workers they found:
increased rates of mental and physical health problems (eg, suicide attempts, anxiety, STDs, and bloodborne infections) and use of some health services (eg, emergency department visits for women and mental health services for men)
There aren’t many studies done which correct for mental health issues before someone starts as a sex worker. Even less which achieve a long-term study over a cohort of sex workers where not ~80 % can’t be found anymore for various reasons.
But there are a few on how to protect the Johns sex workers from STDs. I leave the interpretation of this inbalance in research to you.
:-)
If two effects are correlated, then three possible causal relationships are possible.
A first effect may cause the second, or the second may cause the first, or a so-called third variable may cause both.
It is possible that an individual who has been afflicted by certain difficulties is more likely to participate in sex work.
It is also possible that individuals from certain populations are more likely to participate in sex work, and also, due to being associated with the population, are also more likely to be afflicted by certain difficulties.
Both possibilities must be considered as alternative to sex work causing such difficulties, to explain the correlation.
I do know how correlation works.
The study above shows that, when you correct for previous mental health issues, for lower socioeconomic status, low income, drug abuse, etc. sex work increases various mental and physical health risks and mortality.
Right. The remaining possibility is the third variable. Membership in certain populations may be associated with increased likelihood of becoming a sex worker and also of experiencing difficulties that you are suggested are caused directly by being a sex worker. Such difficulties may appear after someone has become a sex worker, even while having an independence cause.
Sure, but that is true for ever job then. An unknown and hidden confounding factor explaining job choice and the problems of the job can always exist.
Police officer or fire fighter aren’t actually dangerous. It is simply that people who are more likely to make bad decisions that get them killed also are those that choose to be police officer or fire fighters.
Burnout does not affect teachers with higher probability than it affects hairdressers. It is because people who get burnouts are also the people who choose to be teachers.
Sure, but that is true for ever job then. An unknown and hidden confounding factor explaining job choice and the problems of the job can always exist.
The general principle may apply to any job, but you wanted to study the population of sex workers in particular, and doing so requires collecting and analyzing data, in regard to sex workers, properly and sufficiently, toward a conclusion.
I only suggested that your conclusion may not be robust if sex work is disproportionately represented by populations that carry broader vulnerabilities to some of the difficulties that you inferred were directly consequences of sex work.
Not to say PTSD and unhealthy coping problems aren’t a valod concern, but if we’re going to try to reduce jobs based on how taxing they are on the human psyche, there are a number of fields that are respected that also qualify.
Off the top of my head, schoolteacher and service industry worker. Cooks amd wait staff.
When you consider that even in countries like Germany it’s almost exclusively poor women from other countries, often single mothers and/or already with mental health issues, who do sex work, I think it’s very naive to believe the job is the same like flipping burgers or construction work. Or that these issues only stem from stigma and working conditions.
Unless I missed them, I don’t see comparisons to war veterans, at most the second one compares them to civilian survivors.
In any case, I don’t think anyone is questioning the fact that sex workers need way safer working conditions, it was the very point of the first commenter. “Treating them like other workers” was meant in a good sense, as they’re currently treated worse.
These jobs don’t come close, though. They also don’t attract primarily people who are already poor and mentally unwell to put them into a situation hard to leave that further increases their problems.
I feel like you’re ignoring the reality that the prostitution industry avoids formal recognition by its very nature. Clients want to stay anonymous, pimps want to stay underground, and many prostitutes want to remain under the radar. Formal recognition is a necessary prerequisite for regulation and labor law.
That’s the point, isn’t it? If the term wasn’t specifically coined for this, it’s been long used to shame sex workers. Which is sort of funny, considering all labor involves selling your body in some form or another.
Like I said, that is the point of the idiom. It’s historically been used specifically towards sex work in a derogatory fashion.
However the reality of the phrase, “selling your body,” is that it’s true for all labor. One could argue it is especially true when it comes to something like construction work, which can be very hard on your body and impart long term health effects.
I think there’s plenty of use in taking an idiom that’s been used to harm others and flipping it back the other direction.
The idiom is not “true”, or false, for particular varieties of labor.
An idiom carries the meaning understood from broader usage patterns.
Your analysis is not particularly accurate, that the intrinsic content of the phrase describes particular labor better than other, especially in the way you have argued.
At any rate, sex work is the context of the discussion, and how the phrase was employed specifically, from which my objection was raised.
As such your emphasis may seem to be misdirection, perhaps seeking pedantry or virtue signaling, more than engagement that is honest and substantive.
I’m well aware of what an idiom is and how they’re used. I understand that traditionally the phrase, “selling your body,” is employing the idiom that means to engage in sex work. I also understand that this is what you’re referring in the initial comment I replied to. I understand the idiom itself doesn’t refer to other forms of labor because that’s not how idioms work.
My point is that if you take the literal phrase “selling your body,” you can very easily construe it to be just as true about any labor. Like I said, I’d argue this point is illustrated particularly well manual labor. You are commodifying the physical use of your body to achieve a task, often at a heavy cost to your body if done in the long term.
This is not me changing the context of the discussion. I’d very much argue that this is actually a very useful point to make in the context of sex work.
We are taking an idiom that has been historically used to harm people, and deconstructing it. The intent being to point out how sex workers aren’t any more, “selling their body” than people in other forms of socially accepted work.
Again I understand the idiom refers specifically to sex work, but if we deconstruct it we can use it to point out a hypocracy in the thought process of those using it.
This is not me changing the context of the discussion.
We are taking an idiom that has been historically used to harm people, and deconstructing it.
You were deconstructing the idiom, and in doing so, you were erasing the context.
The comment that initially invoked the idiom employed it as a reference to sex work, following the original usage of the idiom, which is understood stigmatically.
I raised an alarm, and indeed, an exceedingly mild one, but instead of meeting my remarks on their merits, you preferred to engage in pedantry and virtue signaling, by attacking a straw man.
More, no one sells one’s body, taken as the “literal phrase”.
You can’t do it. You can sell a car, a house, the shirt off your back, but everyone has exactly one body through life. I have mine and you have yours.
It is not particularly meaningful to analyze which labor is described accurately versus not by the phrase of the idiom, because the phrase has no coherent literal meaning. Hence, the phrase is understood only idiomatically.
Hooo boy, you’re continuing to perfectly misread me and gloss over what I’m trying to say at key points, it feels. But I’m just going to skip over the first two points instead of continue to try and clarify them seemingly fruitlessly.
It is not particularly meaningful to analyze which labor is described accurately versus not by the phrase of the idiom, because the phrase has no coherent literal meaning. Hence, the phrase is understood only idiomatically.
Let me try a different approach here since it seems I’m not communicating with you effectively.
First off, seems like we’re both on the same side here: Sex work is real work, and it should be destigmarized. Cool? Cool.
The idiom, “selling your body,” is derogatory phrase used to refer to engaging in sex work. It’s used to separate or, “otherize,” sex workers.
Pretty sure we’re still on the same page.
So, actually, I guess my first question to you is if the string of words, “selling your body” has no meaning outside of the idiom, how did it come to refer to sex work specifically in the first place? Obviously it was just a figure of speech someone used first right? And their implied meaning was that there is something wrong or immoral about selling sex, and specifically sex. Which is what got rolled into the idiom.
So, bare with me, and just humor me for a minute here.
Take just the figure of speech, drop the part where it’s specifically about sex work. Can you explain to me how sex work is “selling your body,” so to speak, where other work isn’t?
It is “literally” what is being done. I went to work today and “sold my body”. That was a use of my time and energy that I can not get back in exchange for money I need to survive.
Arguably labour is intrinsically linked to the body providing the labour BUT selling does suggest handing over property on a more permanent basis. Would you be happier with SpaceNoodle saying they leased their body, given they committed to a set time period that their body could be used for their employer’s (lessor’s) purposes?
Yes I no longer have those cells that were replaced while I was working, if you want to go the ship of Theseus route. That’s not what I’m referring to though and you know that.
I ain’t gonna judge how one chooses to sell their body, time, safety, health, etc. But we do need to treat sex workers like other workers and ensure they have safe working conditions and the freedom to leave their employment at will. Heck while we’re at it we should extend it to agricultural labor too
Farm workers in Ontario, Canada are not entitled to:
Are you suggesting we don’t give it to sex workers because farmers don’t have it or we give it to farmers too.
Technically I think most farmers are their own business so if they want to have holidays off they can. The alternative is state run farms which I support fully and completely.
Think they were referring to the last sentence from the comment they replied to:
So most definitely just supporting agricultural workers rights.
Only 47% are self employed actually, and 30% are temporary foreign workers that can get screwed pretty bad
Does this count family members?
I’m just saying what farm workers don’t get. Farm workers and sex workers both deserve better than they get. This is specifically for people employed on farms and not for people who own farm businesses. Most of our food is grown by people making less than minimum wage. The people who own the farms aren’t the ones doing most of the work.
You’re crazy! /s
Especially agricultural work, as there is equally as much (sexual) exploitation happening!
I feel people who equalise sex work with other jobs downplay (immensely) the toll sex work has on the majority of sex workers.
It is really not comparable to construction work or any other job. Even in countries were sex work has long been legalised, there is no other job, by a long shot, which has so many people suffering from PTSD, drug and alcohol abuse.
To be blunt, that’s not at all relevant to the fact that they should have the same rights as everyone else if they do choose to do it.
That’s why I was not saying they shouldn’t have the same rights as everybody else. But instead I said what I said?! That this type of comparisons to other jobs downplays in my opinion that sex work is not just like any other job.
Are you aware of any sources specifically evaluating participation in sex work as a causal factor in mental and substance disorders (as opposed to sex work represented more prominently in populations already affected)?
Yes, this study corrected for reports of CSA, lower income, etc. in people who are drug addicts. For those who are additionally sex workers they found:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/482625#SEC2
There aren’t many studies done which correct for mental health issues before someone starts as a sex worker. Even less which achieve a long-term study over a cohort of sex workers where not ~80 % can’t be found anymore for various reasons.
But there are a few on how to protect the
Johnssex workers from STDs. I leave the interpretation of this inbalance in research to you. :-)If two effects are correlated, then three possible causal relationships are possible.
A first effect may cause the second, or the second may cause the first, or a so-called third variable may cause both.
It is possible that an individual who has been afflicted by certain difficulties is more likely to participate in sex work.
It is also possible that individuals from certain populations are more likely to participate in sex work, and also, due to being associated with the population, are also more likely to be afflicted by certain difficulties.
Both possibilities must be considered as alternative to sex work causing such difficulties, to explain the correlation.
I do know how correlation works. The study above shows that, when you correct for previous mental health issues, for lower socioeconomic status, low income, drug abuse, etc. sex work increases various mental and physical health risks and mortality.
Right. The remaining possibility is the third variable. Membership in certain populations may be associated with increased likelihood of becoming a sex worker and also of experiencing difficulties that you are suggested are caused directly by being a sex worker. Such difficulties may appear after someone has become a sex worker, even while having an independence cause.
Sure, but that is true for ever job then. An unknown and hidden confounding factor explaining job choice and the problems of the job can always exist.
Police officer or fire fighter aren’t actually dangerous. It is simply that people who are more likely to make bad decisions that get them killed also are those that choose to be police officer or fire fighters.
Burnout does not affect teachers with higher probability than it affects hairdressers. It is because people who get burnouts are also the people who choose to be teachers.
The general principle may apply to any job, but you wanted to study the population of sex workers in particular, and doing so requires collecting and analyzing data, in regard to sex workers, properly and sufficiently, toward a conclusion.
I only suggested that your conclusion may not be robust if sex work is disproportionately represented by populations that carry broader vulnerabilities to some of the difficulties that you inferred were directly consequences of sex work.
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deleted by creator
Um, law enforcement comes to mind.
Not to say PTSD and unhealthy coping problems aren’t a valod concern, but if we’re going to try to reduce jobs based on how taxing they are on the human psyche, there are a number of fields that are respected that also qualify.
Off the top of my head, schoolteacher and service industry worker. Cooks amd wait staff.
No, apparently not even war veterans have similar high rates of PTSD.
For sources you can look here, for example: https://bmcwomenshealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12905-017-0491-y
Or here: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-459170/v1.pdf
When you consider that even in countries like Germany it’s almost exclusively poor women from other countries, often single mothers and/or already with mental health issues, who do sex work, I think it’s very naive to believe the job is the same like flipping burgers or construction work. Or that these issues only stem from stigma and working conditions.
Unless I missed them, I don’t see comparisons to war veterans, at most the second one compares them to civilian survivors.
In any case, I don’t think anyone is questioning the fact that sex workers need way safer working conditions, it was the very point of the first commenter. “Treating them like other workers” was meant in a good sense, as they’re currently treated worse.
These jobs don’t come close, though. They also don’t attract primarily people who are already poor and mentally unwell to put them into a situation hard to leave that further increases their problems.
I feel like you’re ignoring the reality that the prostitution industry avoids formal recognition by its very nature. Clients want to stay anonymous, pimps want to stay underground, and many prostitutes want to remain under the radar. Formal recognition is a necessary prerequisite for regulation and labor law.
I agree, but I for one am not enamored with the idiom of selling one’s body.
That’s the point, isn’t it? If the term wasn’t specifically coined for this, it’s been long used to shame sex workers. Which is sort of funny, considering all labor involves selling your body in some form or another.
I am not following your explanation. The phrasing is extremely unclear.
The idiom is at least somewhat derisive, both historically and intrinsically.
Like I said, that is the point of the idiom. It’s historically been used specifically towards sex work in a derogatory fashion.
However the reality of the phrase, “selling your body,” is that it’s true for all labor. One could argue it is especially true when it comes to something like construction work, which can be very hard on your body and impart long term health effects.
I think there’s plenty of use in taking an idiom that’s been used to harm others and flipping it back the other direction.
The idiom is not “true”, or false, for particular varieties of labor.
An idiom carries the meaning understood from broader usage patterns.
Your analysis is not particularly accurate, that the intrinsic content of the phrase describes particular labor better than other, especially in the way you have argued.
At any rate, sex work is the context of the discussion, and how the phrase was employed specifically, from which my objection was raised.
As such your emphasis may seem to be misdirection, perhaps seeking pedantry or virtue signaling, more than engagement that is honest and substantive.
Good lord, you must be fun at parties.
I’m well aware of what an idiom is and how they’re used. I understand that traditionally the phrase, “selling your body,” is employing the idiom that means to engage in sex work. I also understand that this is what you’re referring in the initial comment I replied to. I understand the idiom itself doesn’t refer to other forms of labor because that’s not how idioms work.
My point is that if you take the literal phrase “selling your body,” you can very easily construe it to be just as true about any labor. Like I said, I’d argue this point is illustrated particularly well manual labor. You are commodifying the physical use of your body to achieve a task, often at a heavy cost to your body if done in the long term.
This is not me changing the context of the discussion. I’d very much argue that this is actually a very useful point to make in the context of sex work. We are taking an idiom that has been historically used to harm people, and deconstructing it. The intent being to point out how sex workers aren’t any more, “selling their body” than people in other forms of socially accepted work.
Again I understand the idiom refers specifically to sex work, but if we deconstruct it we can use it to point out a hypocracy in the thought process of those using it.
You were deconstructing the idiom, and in doing so, you were erasing the context.
The comment that initially invoked the idiom employed it as a reference to sex work, following the original usage of the idiom, which is understood stigmatically.
I raised an alarm, and indeed, an exceedingly mild one, but instead of meeting my remarks on their merits, you preferred to engage in pedantry and virtue signaling, by attacking a straw man.
More, no one sells one’s body, taken as the “literal phrase”.
You can’t do it. You can sell a car, a house, the shirt off your back, but everyone has exactly one body through life. I have mine and you have yours.
It is not particularly meaningful to analyze which labor is described accurately versus not by the phrase of the idiom, because the phrase has no coherent literal meaning. Hence, the phrase is understood only idiomatically.
Hooo boy, you’re continuing to perfectly misread me and gloss over what I’m trying to say at key points, it feels. But I’m just going to skip over the first two points instead of continue to try and clarify them seemingly fruitlessly.
Let me try a different approach here since it seems I’m not communicating with you effectively.
First off, seems like we’re both on the same side here: Sex work is real work, and it should be destigmarized. Cool? Cool.
The idiom, “selling your body,” is derogatory phrase used to refer to engaging in sex work. It’s used to separate or, “otherize,” sex workers. Pretty sure we’re still on the same page.
So, actually, I guess my first question to you is if the string of words, “selling your body” has no meaning outside of the idiom, how did it come to refer to sex work specifically in the first place? Obviously it was just a figure of speech someone used first right? And their implied meaning was that there is something wrong or immoral about selling sex, and specifically sex. Which is what got rolled into the idiom.
So, bare with me, and just humor me for a minute here.
Take just the figure of speech, drop the part where it’s specifically about sex work. Can you explain to me how sex work is “selling your body,” so to speak, where other work isn’t?
Yeah, it’s probably more akin to a rental or timeshare setup (or so I’ve heard).
It would be a more direct and accurate metaphor, though of course still potentially stigmatizing for the same reasons.
Unfortunately, others are often unwilling to engage thoughtfully or sensibly.
They lurk on the shadows, ready to pounce on a straw man, in order that they may claim they slew Goliath.
Their tactics are successful in the same way as clickbait.
It’s literally done daily by sex workers, manual laborers, models, actors …
Very true. I sold my body at work today and now I’m just a disembodied consciousness floating around in the ether, posting on Lemmy.
You can always save for a new one.
What is being done is not one in the same as the idiom chosen to describe what is being done.
They certainly are one and the same, you’re just scared of stigma.
Stop imposing your judgments on me.
Do you understand the concept of an idiom?
It seems not, as you have insisted the particular idiom describes what is being done “literally”.
You’re the one uncomfortable with the phrase, buddy.
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My restating what you said is not a “personal attack,” and does not warrant uncouth insults.
It is “literally” what is being done. I went to work today and “sold my body”. That was a use of my time and energy that I can not get back in exchange for money I need to survive.
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Arguably labour is intrinsically linked to the body providing the labour BUT selling does suggest handing over property on a more permanent basis. Would you be happier with SpaceNoodle saying they leased their body, given they committed to a set time period that their body could be used for their employer’s (lessor’s) purposes?
Weren’t you having a go at someone for pedantry earlier in this thread…?
Yes I no longer have those cells that were replaced while I was working, if you want to go the ship of Theseus route. That’s not what I’m referring to though and you know that.