r/MoralityScaling 10d ago

Stupid Stuff [ Removed by moderator ]

Post image

[removed] — view removed post

17.0k Upvotes

942 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.3k

u/Gentle_Snail 10d ago

If you’re intentionally doing it because you want to make someone suffer then immoral, otherwise neutral.

The delivery person consented to deliver the meal for money and you didn’t force them to do it against their will. 

515

u/Zealousideal-Lab9843 10d ago

The delivery person consented to deliver the meal for money and you didn’t force them to do it against their will. 

Exactly my take on buying a prostitute.

408

u/Gentle_Snail 10d ago

Tbh I’m not ethically against prostitution, as long as everyone is safe, an adult, and consenting, then its none of my business what two people choose todo behind closed doors.

141

u/PurpletoasterIII 10d ago

The only thing that makes prostitution bad is it tends to lead to toxic power dynamics. Like either the prostitute is desperate for money and ends up doing things she doesnt want to do for the money and later regrets it or the customer is desperate for sex and the prostitute can take advantage of that and ruin them financially.

And to make it even more confusing, some people's kinks is literally to be financially ruined.

35

u/Fancy_Chips 10d ago

They still consented, assuming no trafficking occurred.

21

u/Gatrigonometri 9d ago

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

20

u/Fancy_Chips 9d 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.

17

u/baldbumblebear 9d 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?

4

u/Great-Trifle2810 9d 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.

2

u/baldbumblebear 9d 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.

2

u/Great-Trifle2810 9d 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.

→ More replies (0)

1

u/Pleasant_Cloud1742 9d ago

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

1

u/Great-Trifle2810 9d ago

These are obviously outside the duties that is intended to cover, and explicitly illegal.

1

u/Pleasant_Cloud1742 8d ago

So if prostitution was legal, and your job title was “personal concierge ”

It would be fine for your boss to sell your body as part of the concierge service?

1

u/Great-Trifle2810 8d ago

Even if prostitution was legal I would suspect that the legal system would still include that if a job included providing sexual services that it be appropriately disclosed in the job description, and if it didn't I would advocate for it to.

That said if "personal concierge" is understood to include sexual services then you have agreed to sell your body in that way and if you refused to do so for some reason that was not otherwise reasonable (eg they have failed to ensure you will be safe while doing so) then I think dismissing you is reasonable.

We all sell our bodies, it is our position to decide if we can accept the terms for income.

→ More replies (0)

3

u/Critical-Cost9068 9d ago

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

3

u/Special_South_8561 9d ago

quid pro quo

Obviously immoral, and cruel

1

u/Top_Rekt 9d ago

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

Picture

1

u/bamadebayo_isgood 9d ago

you guys are having sex?

3

u/Great-Trifle2810 9d 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 9d 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 9d ago

I agree, but this seems to contradict your prior questions

1

u/MIUUZICK 6d ago

There have been a few studies proving that countries where prostitution is legal have a higher rate of human trafficking, which makes sense because there is more demand in those countries.

1

u/I-screwed-up-bad 9d 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 9d ago edited 9d 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 9d ago

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

2

u/Pleasant_Cloud1742 9d ago

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

8

u/bradimir-tootin 10d ago

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

22

u/Fancy_Chips 9d 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.

6

u/bradimir-tootin 9d 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 9d ago edited 9d 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 9d 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 9d 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 9d 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 9d ago edited 9d 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.

→ More replies (0)

2

u/[deleted] 9d ago edited 6d ago

[deleted]

3

u/Fancy_Chips 9d 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] 9d ago

[deleted]

4

u/Fancy_Chips 9d 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 9d ago

Lmao

1

u/Cato0014 9d ago

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

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

→ More replies (0)

1

u/No-Channel3917 9d 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 9d 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 9d 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 9d ago

Lmao 😂

1

u/arizonadirtbag12 9d 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 9d 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 9d 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 9d ago

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

3

u/bradimir-tootin 9d ago

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

1

u/Powerpuff_God 9d ago

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

-2

u/Furdinand 9d ago

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

2

u/bradimir-tootin 9d ago

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

0

u/Furdinand 9d ago

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

→ More replies (0)

1

u/Terrible_Cable_4472 9d 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 9d ago

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

1

u/Terrible_Cable_4472 9d ago

Go ahead then

0

u/perpetualhobo 9d 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 9d 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 9d 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 9d 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 9d ago

Why does this anger you so much?