THIS is why Portland’s still THE BEST.
https://bsky.app/profile/sarahkite.bsky.social/post/3ks6fwbsi2c2q
Yeah, it has an awful "animals are not products, but our dancers are" feel to it
Someone should tell them that's worse. They know that's worse, right?
: I can excuse human sexual exploitation, but I draw the line at the exploitation and killing of animals.
: You can excuse human sexual exploitation?Wait, what's worse? For who? I'm not totally sure what you're saying here but as someone who has survived by doing sex work, who has been repeatedly sexually exploited*, and who has also been more than what I think most would just call exploited, I would not say that any of that was worse for me than being murdered on a factory farm. Can we just agree that exploitation and the objectification or commodification of sentient life is very bad and needs to be abolished?
*(Side note to make clear that sex work is not inherently exploitational either but that's a different ball of wax.)
I think he's saying harming a human being is morally worse than harming an animal, all else being equal. I was confused as well but I think it's just the Community meme wording. Had to reread it and look up the actual line from the show.
The line is "I can excuse racism but I draw the line at animal cruelty". I'd forgot the extra layer of irony, that it's a white woman implying cruelty to animals is worse than cruelty to black/brown people.
This fucking site strains my reading comprehension sometimes.
being murdered on a factory farm
I think a factory farm slaughtering people is considered outside the realm of possibility. I assume the vast majority of people would consider that morally worse.
Precisely what I was trying to get at, thank you for putting it into clearer words.
Friendly reminder that humans are animals too. Unnecessary exploitation of people is not vegan
Generally yes. It's possible to imagine some sort of society where sex work is just work, but it ain't this one.
Why not engage with one of the people who have already started on this topic? Because it would be a really bad look to try to debate their comments, so you chose the one that was more generalized and therefore easier to Just Ask Questions?
this is the stance sex workers usually take
I think it's important to recognise that sex workers (and owners) are arguing from a very different perspective than most other workers - not being able to open bank accounts, have the income treated as legitimate, being subjected to extreme police harrassment and imprisonment, or excessive licensing and mandatory testing in other places, etc.
I think it's obviously different in some respects (compare a 16 year old working in retail vs sex work) but I don't really see the value in arguing about the hypothetical form of ethical sex work under communism when sex workers are confronted daily with the violence of the state now
It also doesn't help that a lot of discussion of sex work stigmatises sex workers and removes their agency when most are just workers surviving capitalism like the rest of us.
consensual sex work
This is an oxymoron, coerced sex acts aren't consensual.
What's more likely, the average hexbear user is a bigot or that this shit is exploitative, gross, and wrong? All the highest voted comments on this post are expressing the same general sentiment.
I won't be replying in this thread any further, call me whatever names you want
Partly it comes from the weird and oversimplified "sex work" label. That label contains such a wide variety of fundamentally different things that you could have ten conversations about it while never referring to anything that's even remotely comparable to anything in a previous conversation.
Anyway, the point I'm getting at basically boils down to what someone already said in another reply to you. "Sex work" is obviously fundamentally different from other kinds of work, and all you have to do to demonstrate that is ask why it would be wrong for a 16 year old to do it.
A misogynist looks at a woman like she's a piece of meat. But what does a vegan misogynist look at her like? Hunk of tofu? Bean burrito?
Bad answers only.
Fantastic. This thread isn’t going to inevitably make me super uncomfortable at all.
All moral considerations aside, am I the only one who thinks it is weird to go to a strip club to eat?
ma'am please stop pointing your ass at my face, i'm trying to enjoy my jumbo mashed potatoes and corn
What's y'all's cognitive dissonance for not viewing the sex trade as inherently exploitative? What did Lenin, Castro, and Sankara have to say about it?
I'd rather hear from sex workers themselves.
I was involved in the past but my take on "listen to sex workers" is the same as my take on "listen to workers". You don't listen to the reactionary workers do you? You understand that they're misinformed and unaware of their own exploitation. The reaction you will get from most sex workers when you try to explain certain concepts to them is extremely defensive, because they currently rely on their sex work for an income. You get a completely different conversation with sex workers that have exited the industry compared to those currently in it.
I have made pro-sexwork users here very upset about this in the past because I hold the opinion that if work is coerced under capitalism then the "sex" in sex-work is also coerced and therefore SA. I continue to hold this opinion.
What do I think should be done about it? Nothing. You can't just end sex work. It must be phased out through radical changes in society until it is no longer a thing anyone needs to do and no longer has any fiscal factors involved driving its existence, this will then leave behind the people that are purely doing it out of hobbiest and enjoyment intentions. Very very very long-term outcome of socialism. In the meantime everything should be done under capitalism to protect these workers without compromising on the fact that the longterm goal should be to minimise the existence of this industry.
I was involved in the past but my take on "listen to sex workers" is the same as my take on "listen to workers". You don't listen to the reactionary workers do you?
You also don't only ask the richest of workers how it's going. If you ask a well paid software engineer at Amazon how it's like to work at Amazon, they'll say it's great. If you ask a factory worker from the global south/third world that makes goods for Amazon, or a warehouse worker making minimum wage, they'll have a different and much more negative opinion. Same principle applies here. If you ask a top 0.01% onlyfans creator, they'll say it's great. If you ask a women being prostituted in the third world/global south, they'll likely have a different and much more negative opinion.
The term "sex work" is also quite broad and you get people who do soft image stuff or streaming mixed in with street sex work mixed in with high end escort stuff mixed in with professional porn. All of which are going to be very different experiences.
Yes. Years ago I was also involved in this. Like dark web bitcoin come-to-the-apartment-to-fuck sort of things. This is such a drastically different experience than what most people, even those who ID as “sex workers”, think of, which is doing camming or onlyfans et al. Having this conversation with any of them is exhausting and I’ve given up. It may go without saying but I didn’t get into it willingly and I wouldn’t go back into it willingly and I don’t think anyone would if they were seriously given a choice that wasn’t “do this or starve”. I wish I had the eloquence and apparent patience you display here but I am so tired of arguing it. They want to “hear from sex workers” until one of them says “yeah this sucks and is bad”.
Hi, if you'd like to ask questions I'm here.
You seem curious in other comments so I'd like to hear your thoughts.Kinda hard to give you the full picture since I've never had a pimp, but I think the cognitive dissonance only really comes up when I'm talking to someone who wants to enter the industry and isn't understanding the ramifications. Otherwise it's kinda a "supporting each other's prison successes" vibe since we feel trapped in the world.
Kinda hard to give you the full picture since I've never had a pimp
i don't think anyone besides pimps (and people who have been abused into dependence) are pro-pimp
It's part of the western left cognitive dissonance. They reject the policies of every AES (actually existing socialist) state, refuse to understand or engage with them, and think that they know better. Pretty much every AES state has placed legal limits on sex work/prostitution and drugs, as well as other excesses and hedonistic behaviour. This was not done because of "authoritarianism", but because of the material conditions that occur during the long walk from capitalism to socialism,
For example, prostitution, pornography, and almost all recreational drugs are currently illegal in China today. Same with Vietnam. Same with Cuba. Same with Laos. Same with the DPRK. Literally every actually existing socialist state has policies restricting these activities, even those with socially progressive policies like Cuba.
Being "pushed underground" sounds more like there's less women and queer people being exploited by the sex trade.
Yeah I was 99.99999999999999999% sure this would be Portland https://casadiablo.com/
I wonder what it’s like there now, 15 years later. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4hShMEk1Ew
This city has way too many strip clubs and idk why. Is it a cultural thing, or does the city make it particularly easy to open one?
Pretty gross.
a lot of critics in the comments but this COULD be a sex worker owned co-op, just sayin', not necessarily a den of exploitation
i want to believe
In 2015, Lee and business partner Johnny “Diablo” Zukle were named in a lawsuit by dancers Matilda Bickers and Amy Pitts, claiming they were not receiving minimum wage and were subjected to touching by customers and bouncers.
I don't think it's owned by the workers, but it does seem like they set their own schedules (the dancers at least). Most only go on a few days a month.
Honestly it's not any worse than OnlyFans and it seems like a lot of them have those too.
Is sex workers setting their own hours gig economy? The alternative is sex workers punching in for a 9-5 and being forced to sell themselves in one of the more difficult lines of work without the option to leave.
Not really a fan of sex worker factory hours given that a structure like that implicitly removes the worker's ability to consent.
Juggling schedules at 5 different clubs to get enough hours to get enough money to keep a roof over your head is precarity, not freedom. Most dancers aren't just dancing at one club "a few days a month", they're doing the equivalent of working Uber, Lyft, and Doordash all at the same time.
You're right, didn't think about them moving around between clubs. Gig work is evil
I may be an Angel, but if opposites attract, I should have no problems with the demons
![[CW: Naked demon on a sign for a vegan strip club]](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/98f29667-0b06-4c43-b64a-996ea338e487.jpeg){kind=link}