Banning sex work is about as successful as banning drugs. All it usually does is lead to more misery for the sex workers. Which is entirely the intention, of course.

Way back in my senior year of high school (around 2002), we had a debate project where everyone partnered up, picked a controversial topic, picked a side of the topic, and then researched and advocated for their side to the rest of the class, including a Q&A at the end, where the class could challenge their position.

To our surprise, the two hottest girls in our class picked prostitution as their topic, and advocated for it to be legalized. The teacher was also surprised, and curious enough to let them present their topic to the class.

We all thought they were joking with their topic, to get a rise out of all the horny boys. After all, as 17/18 year olds, our experience with prostitution came from movies or TV documentaries, where it was generally shown as a disgusting and degrading act; the last resort for a woman down on her luck.

But the girls' presentation was incredibly well researched, with figures regarding the number of deaths, violent crime, drugs, and human trafficking involved in illegal prostitution, compared to Nevada's legalized prostitution since the 1970s, which had practically no numbers to report.

They even did a deep dive into a brothel in Nevada, where the women were paid very well and treated kindly and fair and not like they're just a piece of meat. Plus, they had regular checkups and practically free health care because of their profession. They even walked through the various services they provided, since some people (they serviced anyone, not just men) wanted other forms of intimacy instead of just sex. It was a safe and judgment-free environment, on both sides of the table, and the women employed there actually wanted to do the job, with the option to quit anytime. Unlike illegal prostitution, which removed the woman's autonomy over her own body and placed her in dangerous situations, exposed to violence and drugs to barely make a living.

In the end, the girls did a fantastic job on their presentation and convinced a whole class of seniors that prostitution could be an honest and respectable position, and should be legalized. I've never looked at it the same way since.

We need to seize the means of reproduction

Sex work needs legislation and unions, and work as defined by capitalism is degrading

I think they should do the fuck they want

Capitalism makes work degrading

I'm pro sex work, however:

I have mixed feelings about the current ubiquity of online sex work like onlyfans. In theory I've definitely got nothing against it but I'm worried that a lot of young women are faced with shitty economic prospects vs potentially lots of money on onlyfans. The alternatives are so poor sometimes that it feels like coercion.

I just wish young people had better options all together.

From what Ive heard about customer service jobs in the US, sex work sounds way less degrading than that.

On the flipside, you can make most jobs, including most types of sex work, not degrading

Long as it isnt forced on them, let them work

Not all work. Just work you have to do to not starve. We have enough resources to provide a basic living for everyone. We can then use work as an incentive for more luxuries and encourage people to explore the types of work they want to do. Like creative endeavors. Pay more incentive for the work people dislike doing but is still necessary. We'll figure out what work is actually necessary and what is just spinning wheels.

Old joke, but on topic.

A professor asks a class if anyone there would be a sex worker if they were paid $1 billion for a year. Everyone raises their hand.

He then asks if anyone in the class would do sex work for one night if the pay was $5.00?

Class is all irate. "What kind of people do you think we are?"

"I know what kind of people you are. Now we're discussing the prices."

I don't partake, but it's definitely degrading because you have to sell your body for a living just like construction or factory jobs.

Read this as "sex at work" and the second point was very confusing

It's no more degrading than other work. I wouldn't tell a cashier they're degrading themself by having to work to live, and I wouldn't say that to a sex worker either.

First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague. External labor, labor in which man alienates himself, is a labor of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Lastly, the external character of labor for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone else’s, that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another. Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, of the human brain and the human heart, operates on the individual independently of him – that is, operates as an alien, divine or diabolical activity – so is the worker’s activity not his spontaneous activity. It belongs to another; it is the loss of his self.

-- Karl Marx, Economic Manuscripts

Nah. Sitting around waiting for a check in the mail and wacking off all day is degrading.

I have nothing against sex work or sex workers, but I do think it's inherently more degrading than most other jobs. We're talking about the industry that normalized selling used panties and bath water to lonely strangers online.

I'm pro sex work because I am all for the idea that if you do what you love, you won't have to work a day in your life and, boy, do I love having sex. 😎

Pee on me and call me a Kohl's cashier, daddy!

Hmm, not sure it passes the kink test.

We should accept that there's both people for whom sex work is just like any other job, and people for whom it implies renouncing to an element of privacy they'd rather to share only with their partner/s. Should it be legalized? By criminalizing it you're screwing over a lot of people who do want to perform that work and don't provoke any issues in the world, but legalizing it might have ramifications that are horrendous.

For instance, say your country has an unemployment system where you'd lose your unemployment benefits if you receive a job offer and reject it, and immediately after getting fired you receive an offer to work at a brothel. That's great if, for you, there's no emotional element attached to sex, but for a lot of people that would be a nightmare, especially if they need either a job or the unemployment benefits.

So, my take: decriminalize sex work but don't regulate it yet. Once we have either socialism or UBI or both, and no one gets under risk of suffering personal misery for not having a job for a while, legalize it like all other jobs.

I am for sex work, I am against sex abuse.

Most works can be made into a way that they're not degrading, and the ones that can't, shouldn't be jobs.

Reminder to keep it chill in the comments. Discussion is fine as long as you aren't personally attacking others or saying misogynistic shit. Double check the rules pinned at the top if you need a refresher