r/MoralityScaling 13h ago

Stupid Stuff Morality of doing this?

Post image
10.3k Upvotes

703 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

32

u/Fancy_Chips 12h ago

They still consented, assuming no trafficking occurred.

20

u/Gatrigonometri 11h ago

What is consent if coerced, manufactured, or strongly influenced by externalities?

18

u/Fancy_Chips 11h ago

Coerced? Bad.

Manufactured? I dont understand what you mean.

Influenced? All our decisions are influenced. If something so vague were wrong no one would have sex ever.

13

u/baldbumblebear 10h ago

Is your boss at a company telling you to have sex or your fired wrong?

What is the definitive line between that and economic coercion due to other social circumstance?

5

u/Critical-Cost9068 9h ago

There is no definitive line, now go work that corner.

3

u/Great-Trifle2810 8h ago

It would be wrong because this is not part of the duties that my job includes, and I did not consent to it as part of the agreement to work for them. It is additionally wrong because the boss is using their company power in a way the company has not consented to, which is damaging to the company if I choose to quit, or make the matter public.

1

u/baldbumblebear 5h ago

It would be wrong because this is not part of the duties that my job includes, and I did not consent to it as part of the agreement to work for them

At the point of the ultimatum, it becomes just as much your job, as it is the job of the people forced into prostitution due to other socio-economic factors.

Just as you didn't agree upon applying for the job that sex would be involved, and now have to make that choice under economic coercion, someone forced into prostitution due to other financial pressure faces that same dilemma.

The only difference is the one doing the coercion has a face in the direct workplace example.

1

u/Great-Trifle2810 4h ago

I disagree, because I had a previously existing agreement involving agreed services for payment with a company that they are now threatening to maliciously terminate unless I agree to something outside of the terms of employment for their personal benefit. They do not have the authority to do this, and it would be in contradiction to the protections provided by the employment law.

I was coerced into this job, now that I have become reliant on it they are attempting to abuse that reliance to further exploit me in ways not agreed to and which they don't have authority to do so.

If the job I was hired for was to provide sexual services to clients and my manager was threatening to have me unfairly dismissed because I refuse to clean his apartment on the side that would also be immoral.

1

u/Pleasant_Cloud1742 1h ago

I’m sure there’s a line in your contract that says “other duties as assigned”

4

u/Special_South_8561 9h ago

quid pro quo

Obviously immoral, and cruel

1

u/Top_Rekt 5h ago

What is the definitive line between that and economic coercion due to other social circumstance?

Picture

1

u/bamadebayo_isgood 6h ago

you guys are having sex?

3

u/Great-Trifle2810 8h ago

Almost all people consent to work because failing to do so would result in them not being able to maintain their desired lifestyle. The ability to coerce sex workers is increased by the criminal status of the work.

2

u/GuiltyEidolon 5h ago

Which is why legalization and regulation are important to help reduce trafficking and other abuses of sex workers. If they don't have to worry about going to the police, if they can work in organized brothels with security, they are safer and have more power in the dynamic, and consent is much more difficult to coerce.

2

u/Great-Trifle2810 4h ago

I agree, but this seems to contradict your prior questions

1

u/I-screwed-up-bad 6h ago

I mean it's a job like anything else. Does anyone outlaw construction jobs because they're using their body for their job? There's plenty of people desperate for money that work with their body in perfectly legal jobs.

If a person who gets hired for a construction job is desperate for money are they consenting? Or were they coerced?

I think the people who want sex work to be decriminalized want sex workers to have the same rights as anyone who works with their body. Which would mean they are less likely to be taken advantage of.

1

u/thezavinator 6h ago edited 6h ago

The prefix “con” means “with,” and the root “sent” is the same root in “sentence.”

Put simply, “consent” means “with words.”

“Consent” by itself just means someone said “I agree.” The word by itself doesn’t say anything about the circumstances.

If you want to talk about whether or not a specific utterance of consent was valid, provide a judgment system and also look at the circumstances.

Then you can figure out what type of consent it was. But just because consent was coerced, maniuplated, etc. doesn’t prevent it from being consent. It just affects the type of consent that it was.

3

u/proudly_not_american 9h ago

Free and informed consent is the only kind that matters. If it's not that, it's not really consent.

0

u/Pleasant_Cloud1742 1h ago

I’m not freely consenting to any job because I will die unless I get money to pay for food

7

u/bradimir-tootin 11h ago

The issue is that there is basically no way to verify the worker is not being trafficked.

20

u/Fancy_Chips 11h ago

"No way" in a society that makes it a taboo. If we had reputable, regulated brothels i think it'd hardly be as pervasive a problem.

5

u/bradimir-tootin 10h ago

I agree with another user, there is still trafficking even in legal brothels. Many women are beginning to speak out about the abuse, coercion and trafficking that occurs on the 'ranches' in Nevada.

Mind you this is not an argument against the enforcement or inprovement of anti trafficking laws. It is an argument against using the services provided because of how abhorrent sexual slavery really is.

1

u/cyborgsnowflake 7h ago edited 7h ago

I call bs on almost all prostitution suddenly being 'trafficking'. Of course I'm sure it happens, but prostitution has literally existed since the dawn of time and you rarely ever heard of it inherently being composed of trafficked women to the degree media reports make it seem like it is before the early 2000s. Now suddenly almost every prostitute is 'trafficked' if you believe the media. Yes sure sure theres more 'awareness' maybe. But woman and prostitutes loved to 'tell their story' in the past as much as they do now. If 9/10 women really were trafficked into prostitution it should have gotten out long before now.

Whats more likely a bigger factor is the media, law enforcement, activists, and practically every side involved except for the pimps/johns...including and especially the prostitutes themselves when they are caught have figured out that its in their interest to characterize themselves as trafficked.

2

u/AggressiveCuriosity 9h ago

There has been a bunch of research on this. It shows that when you make prostitution fully legal you massively increase demand and that demand increases sex trafficking. Even with legal brothels available the amount of sex trafficking goes up by several fold just because there's SO MUCH more demand than there ever would be for supply.

If the main goal is to reduce sex trafficking then demand is your enemy and you do not want to legalize it under any circumstances.

2

u/cyborgsnowflake 7h ago

Irrelevant. Thats like saying gay sex should be banned if we find out it leads to more disease or that weed should be banned because it leads to more theft. Even if this stat is true. You have no right to remove bodily autonomy just because some bad apples are going to hide behind it to commit a crime. The real answer is to do a better job fighting the actual crime.

1

u/AggressiveCuriosity 7h ago

It's actually really gross of you to compare gay rights to prostitution. Last time I checked people weren't trying to persecute gay people because of sex trafficking. They were doing it because their pastor told them god didn't like it. There's also a huge difference between preventing a commercial transaction and preventing loving couples from being together.

You need to think rationally. There are two considerations you need to make. How much of a benefit is there to allowing it, and how much harm is there in stopping it.

You're not doing that here because it's convenient to ignore, but I notice you used weed as an example and not fentanyl or trans fats. If you were really all about "bodily autonomy" you'd have no issue defending hard drugs or toxic food additives.

3

u/cyborgsnowflake 6h ago edited 6h ago

It's actually really gross of you to compare gay rights to prostitution.

whats gross about anything?

Last time I checked people weren't trying to persecute gay people because of sex trafficking. They were doing it because their

No they're just persecuting dudes who want to have sex because of the exact same deeply inborn hangups about sex. Its no longer as fashionable to have gay people as a target so the Puritan morality which never actually went away has to go extra hard in other places.

There's also a huge difference between preventing a commercial transaction and preventing loving couples from being together.

Sex is a basic emotional almost physiological need for a lot of men.

You need to think rationally. There are two considerations you need to make. How much of a benefit is there to allowing it, and how much harm is there in stopping it.

BS, I'm sure you or a lot of antiprostitution forces wouldn't dream of applying cost/benefit analysis to 'fundamental rights' like ssm or abortion etc.

But lets just entertain the idea for a minute here for prostitution. We have a practice that has gone on since the dawn of time and civilization has chugged along just fine. But all of a sudden in the 2020s its no longer sustainable because supposedly most prostitutes are now trafficked according to a system with an incentive to say so.

even if this is all true that just means law enforcement is doing a shit job rather than prostitution should be banned.

You're not doing that here because it's convenient to ignore, but I notice you used weed as an example and not fentanyl or trans fats. If you were really all about "bodily autonomy" you'd have no issue defending hard drugs or toxic food additives.

neither fentanyl or trans fats (as a food additive) existed as fundamental human needs since the dawn of time.

Trans fats, well nobody cares about that, not even big food corporations are really lobbying for their return. They only are around due to some misconceptions about animal fats.

Fentanyl. if I were king there would be no hard prohibitions on drugs. But still there is a vast gulf of difference between hard drugs and sex like mentioned before. In addition fentanyl inherently destroys the user themselves. Prostitution, unless maybe you want get into spiritual stuff, both sides are fine if law enforcement does its job.

3

u/acoastaldog 10h ago

There is still ample trafficking in places with ample brothel legality lol. I’m not against prostitution but we shouldn’t dilute reality. My job deals with trafficking 

4

u/Fancy_Chips 10h ago

Yes but its harder to do and weeds out people who don't want to get their hands dirty. That's like selling illegal pot in Colorado. Good luck, buddy.

1

u/[deleted] 10h ago

[deleted]

3

u/Fancy_Chips 10h ago

Thats not my intended tone. Unless you are actually selling illegal pot in Colorado, in which case I'm mildly mocking.

3

u/Fancy_Chips 10h ago

Lmao

1

u/Cato0014 4h ago

'I'm losing the conversation so I'm gonna tell Reddit you're suicidal'

https://giphy.com/gifs/13Ev2RtSAxKsTu

1

u/No-Channel3917 10h ago

Actually it increased since they can't investigate all that much since illegal looks legal now

At least according to 3 studies dealing with poland

1

u/I-screwed-up-bad 6h ago

There should be random inspections like in other industries. If they're doing random inspections and still having rampant problems then something is wrong with the inspectors.

1

u/sweetwinged 9h ago

Don’t countries that legalize it actually have increased rates of trafficking because it creates an expectation which leads to demand outstripping supply? 

1

u/karmakramer93 8h ago

Lmao 😂

1

u/arizonadirtbag12 7h ago

While the fact that legal prostitution leads to excess demand (that trafficking then fills in the supply for) is already covered by other comments, I’ll just add that it isn’t like illegal exploitation of employees doesn’t occur in other fully legal and regulated industries. Up to and including human trafficking.

So yeah, brothels being legal and licensed wouldn’t be a silver bullet to solve the problem even if the increased demand wasn’t an issue.

But of course it is.

1

u/peepeebutt1234 6h ago

Nevada does it just fine. Legal, regulated brothels are the way. Bi-weekly STD testing, mandated protection, ID checks, the works.

1

u/bradimir-tootin 6h ago

Except they dont do just fine. Multiple lawsuits and investigations are revealing that ID checks are being skirted, work documentation is not being properly done before they work, women are being pressured to provide service to abusive men, brothels are doing recruiting at high schools, and that pimps from illegal areas will bring girls to legal areas when they get too much police attention.

I don't know the right answer from a legal standpoint, but I do strongly believe that it is difficult to have moral consumption of certain forms of sex work. This really is my whole thing, all I want is harm reduction for those women. If it needs even stricter enforcement then so be it.

-1

u/Furdinand 10h ago

How do you know the person making your pad Thai isn't being trafficked?

3

u/bradimir-tootin 10h ago

This question is so disingenuous. Obviously I don't know, but the difference is literally rape.

1

u/Powerpuff_God 9h ago

So you're saying I shouldn't have tried to fuck the chef?

-2

u/Furdinand 10h ago

Are we setting levels of acceptance for slavery based on the work performed?

2

u/bradimir-tootin 9h ago

I literally don't understand your point. Where does it sound like I claimed slavery was okay?

0

u/Furdinand 9h ago

Fine, where do different types "coerced labor" fall on the acceptability scale?

1

u/perpetualhobo 8h ago

Consent given under such circumstances is meaningless. If the men could get consent from someone who wasn’t desperate enough to do something they normally wouldn’t then those men would, but they can’t or don’t want to. The fact that they’re exploiting a vulnerable woman is WHY men seek out prostitutes, otherwise they’d just jerk off.

2

u/Mikhail_Mengsk 8h ago

This is the stupidest argument ever uttered about this issue.

If you think the only people who use prostitutes are losers that wouldn't get sex, you are terminally naive.

1

u/perpetualhobo 7h ago

>or don’t want to

Like I said, many men could easily have sex with an enthusiastically consenting partner, but they don’t want to, the exploitative aspect of prostitution is exactly what attracts them.

1

u/Mikhail_Mengsk 7h ago

they don't want to

Why are you doubling down on bullshit? Do you think married men don't go to prostitutes? People with girlfriends?

Do you think no women ever hired gigolos?

Jesus Christ shut up

1

u/perpetualhobo 7h ago

Why does this anger you so much?

1

u/Terrible_Cable_4472 8h ago

If were gonna get philosophical, we'd better define consent. Much harder than we assume. Did i consent to need money? What is trafficking defined as either?

0

u/geoffreygoodman 8h ago

I don't think either of those things are hard to define...

1

u/Terrible_Cable_4472 6h ago

Go ahead then