As opposed to waiting tables, selling finance products, working to deny people insurance coverage programming on surveillance on websites, working in retail, nursing, or any other activity where you're working hard barely scraping so some rich guy can buy 37th private jet?
Because it really is a psychological mindfuck in a way those other professions aren't. My wife is a former camgirl. After six years of it, she was a mess. I was very pro sex-work before I met her, even during our first year or two together then she started needing therapy and then I just offered to support her because watching your wife's mental health deteroriate every day was pretty rough.
I know the kind of people who frequent HN are very pro sex work but there is another side of it that is hushed or pushed aside and that is former sex workers speaking out. It is psychologically punishing to turn yourself into a sex object, repeatedly in front of the unslaking thirst of thousands. It changes how you view men, it changes how you view your own body, it changes how you value this "thing" out from which you peer.
Go listen to what old construction or steel mill workers will tell young kids about how their bodies are physically shredded to nothing. Entire joints literally ground down & deteriorated to dust. There is zero recovery from this, not to say that there also aren’t cases where there’s zero recover from mental damages.
Are you anti-any of these professions? They for the most part definitely knew what they were getting into as well.
I did a short stint of continuous improvement engineering at a steel mill in Pittsburgh… it was an arguably decent place, but so many those labor workers gave zero fucks about the money they were making & would’ve left so long ago if they didn’t have family completely reliant on them.
I specifically called out the psychological harm that is a frequent companion of sex work. I have no doubt that manual labor, day in and day out, breaks down the body: I have my fair share of stories doing such tasks when I was younger.
The mistake is in making like for like comparisons as you just did. Sex is not a simple commodity. We would do better to listen to the stories of the sex workers who have left the industry or who are offered therapy through orgs specifically created to help sex workers like Pineapple Support as part of workers' contracts with Streamate et al.
I suspect if one did look at the statistics, construction workers who are victim of human trafficking do not generally end up with wife's/husbands that write on HN. A social study about what happen to those people would likely be a quite depressing read.
There's no need for whataboutism. The issue raised is that this work is seen as empowering and liberating, and the message that it can take an enormous mental toll is not similarly publicised, or is dismissed as right wing moralising. No one's doing that to stories about steel mill workers.
Probably reducing wealth inequality, offering free education and health care would be a good start but I am neither a sociologist or political theorist.
> Probably reducing wealth inequality, offering free education and health care would be a good start but I am neither a sociologist or political theorist.
People in poor countries working for people in rich countries is how wealth is equalized. That's how developing countries develop and how developed countries stagnate. So the existence of an international market for this is probably already part of the solution. After they have enough wealth, they can give themselves free healthcare and education without being a basket case forever depending on foreign charity.
Your argument is orthogonal to free healthcare and education being offered by the state. You don't need to be an immigrant to be poor in your country of birth, such as the US.
I was responding to a specific question, “what makes this
dirty work” and specifically made no moral judgement or assertions.
Obviously, there’s a chip on your shoulder about the topic. Camgirls have a shitty job and aren’t nurses. That doesn’t mean that camming is uniquely shitty or that it’s some sort of act of personal liberation.
because -- for many humans, actual sex is intimate and touches the "soul" much more than those other activities. Repeated defense of ugly and abusive sex comes from a vocal minority on the Internet
How is taking nude photos of yourself "ugly and abusive sex"? I feel like you're regurgitating stale anti-porn talking points rather than actually engaging with the topic at hand.
A cam girl is her own boss, picks her own hours, works from home, sets her own boundaries as to what she's comfortable doing, and does not have to be involved in any office politics. All of the things which normally put the "soul-crushing" in "soul-crushing job" are absent. It's a great deal for a lot of people.
I find your appeal to spirituality shallow and unconvincing, especially given that lots of people engage in casual sex and don't end up with their souls crushed.
Yes, that is what I was expecting. The anti-sex people claim they are interesting in stopping exploitation or whatever, but in the end it is about regulating other people's sex lives and pushing their morality on them.
Read my other comment but this is honestly a weird take conflating a broader puritan anti-sex pattern with pushback on sex work.
It is not a wholly positive thing. There are advantages (remote work from anywhere, etc.) but it doesn't do any favors to the actual people doing this to place sex work on a pedestal.
As opposed to waiting tables, selling finance products, working to deny people insurance coverage programming on surveillance on websites, working in retail, nursing, or any other activity where you're working hard barely scraping so some rich guy can buy 37th private jet?
Most jobs are soul crushing.
Why single out camgirls?