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)
- overtime pay
- public holidays or public holiday pay
- vacation with pay
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:
Heck while we’re at it we should extend it to agricultural labor too
So most definitely just supporting agricultural workers rights.
Technically I think most farmers are their own business so if they want to have holidays off they can
Only 47% are self employed actually, and 30% are temporary foreign workers that can get screwed pretty bad
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.
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.
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)
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 Johns sex workers from STDs. I leave the interpretation of this inbalance in research to you.
:-)
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.
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.
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.
What is being done is not one in the same as the idiom chosen to describe what is being done.
I believe that all work under capitalism is coercive and workers do not fully consent to wage labor. Sex work is work under capitalism, therefore many sex workers are not fully consenting during sex due to the coercive nature of capitalism. Sex without full consent of both participants is rape.
workers do not fully consent to wage labor
This right here! Okay so to consent to something you need to be reasonably informed. There is no such thing as perfect knowledge so the standard is what a reasonable person (the legal definition, not the colloquial one). I’ll bet you that very few people are actually reasonably informed when we take and work out jobs. How much value does your individual labour add to the economy? Not what you’re paid, how much money does your work make total? Do any of us know, or even have an idea? We negotiate away our labour without knowing what that labour is actually worth. Worse than that, the person who does know will never tell you because they also pay you and it’s not in their interests to tell you how much your worth.
Workers do not fully consent to wage labour because we literally can’t. We’re giving concent without being informed, any other aspect of civil society that would be a crime. For employment it’s just the way it goes.
This is one part of it. I also think it’s important to think about how all labor under capitalism is coerced under the implicit threat of starvation and homelessness. Decisions made under duress cannot count as full consent.
If sex work is bad because a woman’s sexuality should be saved for her husband,
And if the husband’s role is to provide work in turn for his wife’s sexual access,
And if being gay is bad,
What does it make you when you go work for another man?
“some guy”
Meh. That’s not inevitable. Some jobs are empowering, constructive and contributing.
