Women are prostituted because they need money to eat and pay rent, and if they don't "consent" to sex they don't get to eat and live in a house. That's the harm.
How is this any different from any job? I need money to eat and pay rent and I am forced to offer my body as a tool for an employer in exchange for payment, regardless if that job entails sex or laying bricks, if I don't offer my body for work I can't eat or live in a house.
And keep in mind that prostitutes are not exclusively women, there are a lot of male prostitues.
>How is this any different from any job? I need money to eat and pay rent and I am forced to offer my body as a tool for an employer in exchange for payment, regardless if that job entails sex or laying bricks, if I don't offer my body for work I can't eat or live in a house.
It is no different in the sense that rape and assault (e.g. punching or kicking someone) are essentially similar physical acts. Nevertheless, we recognise that sex crimes are particularly heinous compared to other crimes. It isn't good or acceptable that people are threatened by others with starvation and homelessness if they cannot perform a given task and are therefore coerced into it; it is worse in a particular and special way if the thing they are forced into is sex.
>And keep in mind that prostitutes are not exclusively women, there are a lot of male prostitues.
I know, I have known some gay prostituted men during my time in the trade. The overwhelming majority of the sex trade is composed of prostituted women, even in places where it's highly legalised and regulated. It's a significantly more gendered industry than any other I can think of off the top of my head.
> It is no different in the sense that rape and assault (e.g. punching or kicking someone) are essentially similar physical acts
Correct and this is reflected by the fact that both are criminal acts. If the latter is particularly severe it might even carry a penalty even greater than rape. This example doesn't really do a good job making the case for why sex work harms participants or society as a whole, because unlike battery paying people who face starvation and homeless to do work is not only acceptable it's seen as totally normal. Save for people who have enough wealth live off for the rest of their lives, everyone is working to avoid homelessness and starvation.
This does not address the above commenter's point, "
...bystanders and society as a whole can be harmed by conduct between consenting adults." How doe a sex between two consenting adults harm people besides those two adults and society as a whole? Your comment doesn't explain this, it's focusing on the purported harms experienced by one of the participants, not the bystanders.
And regarding your point that paid sex is not consent because they need money to afford necessities: the same can be said about pretty much any job. My plumber probably needs money to eat and pay rent, too. Paying someone who needs money to do a job is not something that society by and large consideration unethical.
>This does not address the above commenter's point, " ...bystanders and society as a whole can be harmed by conduct between consenting adults." How doe a sex between two consenting adults harm people besides those two adults and society as a whole? Your comment doesn't explain this, it's focusing on the purported harms experienced by one of the participants, not the bystanders.
For one, we are members of society and harm done to us en masse is harm done to society as a whole. For another, if you need some narrow conception of who gets impacted that excludes us, then generally prostituted woman have family or friends who are impacted by us being prostituted and our eventual death. For another, society misses out on the productive labour of a large number of women when instead of being able to pursue education or work to the extent we otherwise could, women are prostituted.
>And regarding your point that paid sex is not consent because they need money to afford necessities: the same can be said about pretty much any job. My plumber probably needs money to eat and pay rent, too. Paying someone who needs money to do a job is not something that society by and large consideration unethical.
Yes, and if you're unwilling to consider it unjust that people face starvation and homelessness for the crime of losing the unemployment lottery, we can argue about that, sure. But even someone who thinks that's fine for whatever reason should be able to see that similar coercion into sex acts is worse.
Impacted how? How is the impact of a family member participating in sex work distinct from, say, a fisherman going out to sea for months at a time, and substantial risk of dying. Stigma would be a good answer, but that's a direct consequence of social rejection of sex work, not due to sex work itself. Again, you've just given a vague assertion of impact, but haven't actually explained why this is different from any other work.
Also, how does participation in sex work impede the ability of women to pursue an education? How is someone doing sex work 20 hours a week any less able to get an education than someone working at Starbucks 20 hours a week? In fact, there are people who can afford education because of the profits from sex work so sex work also enables some people to obtain education.
And who says sex work is not productive? Sure, it doesn't produce tangible goods like manufacturing or mining. But the same criticism can be made of all entertainment industries. The fact that people are willing to pay for sex workers is undisputable evidence that theze services are in demand.
"Losing the employment lottery" as you put it, isn't an exception, it's the norm for the vast majority of people. The fact that people need to work to earn money to live isn't even remotely unique to sex workers. Nearly everyone is in this situation.
Nobody is coerced into sex, outside of sex trafficking which I don't think anyone in this comment section is advocating. If someone can make minimum wage in a retail or service job, but would rather have sex with people for vastly greater pay, why should society prevent that transaction?
"So close"? Where do you think my understanding of labour comes from and why on Earth would you assume I don't apply the same analysis to other work?
As a society we acknowledge that sex crimes are worse compared to other crimes that are physically similar. "Rape is just assault" and "sexual assault is just assault" makes no sense even if it's technically true in some particular definitions you have, there is a reason we use a different word to describe crimes that include a sexual component, because we recognise sexual crimes as particularly heinous and degrading. Similarly, all labour is coerced but we recognise that coercing someone into filling out an Excel spreadsheet, while wrong, is not especially heinous in the way that coercing someone into sex is.
No. If I don't pay my plumber after a job, it's theft (or breach of contract, or something along those lines).
If snatch someone off the street, drag them into my condo, and force them to fix my toilet at gunpoint this is kidnapping and forced labor - something I'm going to guess has a much bigger penalty than breach of contract.
It's moderately funny, in an unpleasant way, that you had to invent a scenario that almost never happens to plumbers and does regularly happen to women in the sex trade as part of your argument that the sex trade isn't analogous to rape.
I'm not denying the existence of forced labour, it's horrific. I'm saying plumbing is a very contrived example of it, compared to things like the sex trade, construction, or mining.
Not religious, just a woman who has actually been prostituted unlike armchair theorists and johns.
We regularly recognise sex crimes as especially heinous for well-understood reasons. Pleading ignorance is unconvincing. All work is coercive, but as a society we recognise that coercing someone into sex is especially heinous compared to coercing someone into filling out an Excel spreadsheet.
