Off-Topic Let's talk about second-wave radical feminism - Dynastia's Daycare for the emotionally troubled.

[AnOminous]

Okay, which is it? India is a cesspool of "surrogacy farms", or they've banned international surrogacy?

Something being illegal in a Third World shithole just means paying off the cops is part of the overhead.

India was a cesspit of surrogacy until they banned international surrogacy a couple years ago. I believe it's moved to Cambodia now.

And there's always somewhere to move.

In most of those sex tourism havens, child prostitution is illegal.

 

[TerribleIdeas™]

India was a cesspit of surrogacy until they banned international surrogacy a couple years ago. I believe it's moved to Cambodia now.

Birth control and abortion are ways women use to control their own bodies. Surrogacy, prostitution and porn sell that control to others, and women are not afforded the protection afforded to anyone else in a workplace environment. Take porn. It's not like they get paid for partial work, they get paid only when the producer decides he has sufficient footage, after which the woman must do an on-camera interview saying everything was fine to get paid for any work. There are no residuals in porn, and your image remains up literally forever, and disproportionately affects women in finding different work. I'll reference Tyler Knight again as his book "Burn my Shadow" is in publication. He decided to walk away and work in commodities again for a while. He TOLD his coworkers he was in porn. He even had a blowup doll that was on Stephen Colbert. There was only laughter. He went back to porn eventually, where he still is. He's around 50 now.

Women can't do that. Not even if they're Ashley Blue, who was also famous in the oughts, who also wrote a book. Which ends with her meeting a nice man in the industry. Same goes back to Nina Hartley.

The analogy with the military and other occupations does not hold. There are more men in certain fields requiring physical strength, and no second-waver will say there's not a difference in strength and size between men and women on average. Women, too, enlist for financial reasons, go into combat, get taken POWs, get hurt. Some die. But most of both sexes don't see combat in most years, most get honorable discharges, and most are accorded benefits and elevated status for life. This is exactly opposite of prostitution and porn.

This really boils down to a case of "are women competent adults, capable of exercising agency in all aspects of their lives, or not?", and you're claiming that they're only allowed to exercise it where you think it's appropriate. I'm also pretty sure that Nina Hartley is still doing porn, as well. There's also numerous feminist and/or female-led porn studios, and I'm pretty certain that Nina Hartley is one of the women running such a studio.

I'd like to know if you see any difference between your position and that of Traditionalists/Christian Scolds, the sort that insist that sex is only acceptable within the confines of a specific set of circumstances they feel are correct, moral, appropriate, etc.

And yes, the military analogy works quite well, since the majority of people that enlist are men, and they're signing over their autonomy in exchange for education, room, board, salary, and benefits. They're exchanging control over their body, to the extent that they can be ordered to put themselves at immediate physical risk. I'm really struggling to find any solid numbers on the total number of female PoWs, but it's looking like even with women being included in combat roles, their numbers are a lot lower, and international agreements on captured personnel (going back to WW2, from what I could find on google) are really clear on women being treated with the same dignity as men, including the standards outlined in things like the Geneva Convention. (Note that doesn't preclude assholes like ISIS or the like treating PoWs horribly, especially women.)

And regardless of the total numbers of men vs women doing porn, I have suspicions that none of them are entirely free from abuse, trafficking, pressure to engage in substance abuse, etc.; Party Monsters may not have technically been a documentary, but we all know it's based on actual events, and I'd expect that gay porn is no less sleazy than regular porn, behind the scenes. It's almost as though something that has been largely prohibited for a long time, and kept to dark corners might attract undesirable people that are prone to being manipulative, violent, and disgusting.

Edit -

Seriously, just this, except you can replace "Ban Guns" with "Ban Porn", and the argument doesn't really change.

 

[2nd_time_user]

This really boils down to a case of "are women competent adults, capable of exercising agency in all aspects of their lives, or not?", and you're claiming that they're only allowed to exercise it where you think it's appropriate. I'm also pretty sure that Nina Hartley is still doing porn, as well. There's also numerous feminist and/or female-led porn studios, and I'm pretty certain that Nina Hartley is one of the women running such a studio.

Nina Hartley's husband is Ernest Greene. Not known as well in porn, but heavily involved in Free Speech Coalition, which is a lobby of porn producers arguing their interest in Sacramento. Even as successful and smart as Hartley is, the chances were astronomical of her getting to where she currently is, and nil if she hadn't met up with Ernest or another powerful man. Because no woman has achieved this alone.

I'd like to know if you see any difference between your position and that of Traditionalists/Christian Scolds, the sort that insist that sex is only acceptable within the confines of a specific set of circumstances they feel are correct, moral, appropriate, etc.

It's not about Christian beliefs, it's about the said experiences of women and how they differ from that of men. A man won't typically be shunned for doing porn, especially hetero porn. No one really cares for example what a man's parents think about that. With the women, that question goes into the "behind the scenes" interviews regularly, so that viewers can see the woman being upset. I'm not saying men aren't exploited, I'm saying it goes much further than that.

And yes, the military analogy works quite well, since the majority of people that enlist are men, and they're signing over their autonomy in exchange for education, room, board, salary, and benefits. They're exchanging control over their body, to the extent that they can be ordered to put themselves at immediate physical risk. I'm really struggling to find any solid numbers on the total number of female PoWs, but it's looking like even with women being included in combat roles, their numbers are a lot lower, and international agreements on captured personnel (going back to WW2, from what I could find on google) are really clear on women being treated with the same dignity as men, including the standards outlined in things like the Geneva Convention. (Note that doesn't preclude assholes like ISIS or the like treating PoWs horribly, especially women.)

And a lifetime of respect plus as you said education, room, board, salary and benefits, and most veterans don't actually have to do combat. Porners get none of that. They are paid a flat rate that is sometimes negotiated at the scene itself. If the check bounces, then the MMA male lead goes down there, yells and demands cash. The females have to get their agent or suitcase pimp to get their money back because no one will listen if it's just them. Neither sex is free from abuse as both Tyler Knight and Ashley Blue have memorialized in their books. But Knight's still in porn at 50 and if he wants to go back to commodities trading, he has before and could do so now. No one remembers him being the top in a interracial gangbang. Blue? It's been 15 years and everyone remembers what she did.

In this case as well as prostitution and surrogacy, it's vastly men paying to use a woman's body. Surrogacy is sought by disproportionately gay male couples. Men make up the vast majority seeking camgirls or prostitutes or jerkoff massages for pay, but it's the women who face the greater legal, emotional and health consequence with no workplace protection.

 

[Punitive Castration]

I'm going to talk through this partially for my own sake. What we have now in the military is an economic draft. And the normalization of surrogacy is an economic reproductive draft.

I don't think we should have involuntary service in the military. That really goes without saying, doesn't it? Of course you won't get the quality of soldier you're looking for, but it's also probably more immoral to force someone to kill who doesn't want to than it is to buy out someone's morals. Both are bad. One's less bad.

We obviously cannot have involuntary reproductive service. That's just rape. Duh. But the nonexistence of involuntary surrogacy doesn't leave us as a society exposed to existential threats. Well, having your lineage end is kind of an existential threat, but you don't die from not having a baby.

In my opinion, the fact that there's no alternative to sustaining your lineage if you don't have any other means of impregnating someone does not justify buying out the poor's morals. You can pay a man enough money and he'll kill for it. And you can pay a woman enough money and she'll bear your child. You could probably pay a man enough money to make him kill himself, provided he had some intention for the money he was going to leave behind. While I think that consensual trade between individuals for services should be as free as possible, an imbalance of money takes away people's individual agency after a point.

Like, if I had just sickening wealth, I could offer to Null a trillion dollars in exchange for shutting down Kiwifarms and never hosting any websites ever again. And his big talk aside about the openness of the internet and everything he's ever said would likely go right in the shithole. It's not really right to say that anyone is ever acting freely when they're being bought this way.

 

[TerribleIdeas™]

Nina Hartley's husband is Ernest Greene. Not known as well in porn, but heavily involved in Free Speech Coalition, which is a lobby of porn producers arguing their interest in Sacramento. Even as successful and smart as Hartley is, the chances were astronomical of her getting to where she currently is, and nil if she hadn't met up with Ernest or another powerful man. Because no woman has achieved this alone.

You're right, since Dworkin teamed up with the Moral Majority to try and ban porn, and both were in front of the Meese Commission, arguing for the prohibition of pornography. I'm 100% certain that Dworkin didn't need the validation of the Religious Right, anymore than Nina Hartley needs the validation of her husband. Frankly, it comes across as sort of misogynistic that you think she needs a man in order to succeed. I've seen her in a couple interviews, and she doesn't strike me as an incompetent.

It's not about Christian beliefs, it's about the said experiences of women and how they differ from that of men. A man won't typically be shunned for doing porn, especially hetero porn. No one really cares for example what a man's parents think about that. With the women, that question goes into the "behind the scenes" interviews regularly, so that viewers can see the woman being upset. I'm not saying men aren't exploited, I'm saying it goes much further than that.

It's about wrapping around the ideological corkscrew far enough that your political bedfellows are exactly the kind of people that Margaret Atwood had in mind when she wrote The Handmaid's Tale. I'll be blunt, maybe people should be asking the men how they feel, instead of assuming their lives are all perfect and amazing. It's also about trying to claim you know better than a lot of women that didn't have those experiences. It's also very much about that Stonetoss comic, except instead of driving guns into the back alleys and dark corners, you'd be quite happy driving pornography back into the back alleys and dark corners, instead of demanding that it be something that has to abide by an ethical standard.

And a lifetime of respect plus as you said education, room, board, salary and benefits, and most veterans don't actually have to do combat. Porners get none of that. They are paid a flat rate that is sometimes negotiated at the scene itself. If the check bounces, then the MMA male lead goes down there, yells and demands cash. The females have to get their agent or suitcase pimp to get their money back because no one will listen if it's just them. Neither sex is free from abuse as both Tyler Knight and Ashley Blue have memorialized in their books. But Knight's still in porn at 50 and if he wants to go back to commodities trading, he has before and could do so now. No one remembers him being the top in a interracial gangbang. Blue? It's been 15 years and everyone remembers what she did.

In this case as well as prostitution and surrogacy, it's vastly men paying to use a woman's body. Surrogacy is sought by disproportionately gay male couples. Men make up the vast majority seeking camgirls or prostitutes or jerkoff massages for pay, but it's the women who face the greater legal, emotional and health consequence with no workplace protection.

Gonna need citations that it's predominantly gay male couples, since adoption is socially acceptable for same-sex couples. I can give you a citation to at least one case where a lesbian couple paid a gay man for sperm, in order to have an IVF prior to the UK changing the discriminatory laws that prevented it, and then the guy got screwed for child support. Even though the lesbian couple had signed a contract waiving all of his parental involvement, the courts ordered a man that acted to circumvent an unjust, discriminatory law, to pay child support anyways.

I can honestly say, as someone old enough to remember porn from the 90's, I have zero idea who Ashley Blue is, and I wouldn't be able to pick out her, let alone most of the women (or men) I've seen in porn, barring Ron Jeremy, Jenna Jamieson, Mercedes Carrera, and Nina Hartley. It's almost as though drawing additional attention to oneself might be the problem there, more than people specifically remembering her.

And again, instead of demanding that pornography and prostitution be held to standards, you're taking a position that would reenact prohibition, and force them both into dark corners and alleys, where ever fewer protections exist, for anyone.

 

[2nd_time_user]

You're right, since Dworkin teamed up with the Moral Majority to try and ban porn, and both were in front of the Meese Commission, arguing for the prohibition of pornography. I'm 100% certain that Dworkin didn't need the validation of the Religious Right, anymore than Nina Hartley needs the validation of her husband. Frankly, it comes across as sort of misogynistic that you think she needs a man in order to succeed. I've seen her in a couple interviews, and she doesn't strike me as an incompetent.



It's about wrapping around the ideological corkscrew far enough that your political bedfellows are exactly the kind of people that Margaret Atwood had in mind when she wrote The Handmaid's Tale. I'll be blunt, maybe people should be asking the men how they feel, instead of assuming their lives are all perfect and amazing. It's also about trying to claim you know better than a lot of women that didn't have those experiences. It's also very much about that Stonetoss comic, except instead of driving guns into the back alleys and dark corners, you'd be quite happy driving pornography back into the back alleys and dark corners, instead of demanding that it be something that has to abide by an ethical standard.



Gonna need citations that it's predominantly gay male couples, since adoption is socially acceptable for same-sex couples. I can give you a citation to at least one case where a lesbian couple paid a gay man for sperm, in order to have an IVF prior to the UK changing the discriminatory laws that prevented it, and then the guy got screwed for child support. Even though the lesbian couple had signed a contract waiving all of his parental involvement, the courts ordered a man that acted to circumvent an unjust, discriminatory law, to pay child support anyways.

I can honestly say, as someone old enough to remember porn from the 90's, I have zero idea who Ashley Blue is, and I wouldn't be able to pick out her, let alone most of the women (or men) I've seen in porn, barring Ron Jeremy, Jenna Jamieson, Mercedes Carrera, and Nina Hartley. It's almost as though drawing additional attention to oneself might be the problem there, more than people specifically remembering her.

And again, instead of demanding that pornography and prostitution be held to standards, you're taking a position that would reenact prohibition, and force them both into dark corners and alleys, where ever fewer protections exist, for anyone.

Dude, from reading adt talk, gfy, mikesouth, xxxtalk, avn, etc. for decades, there's a pervasive pattern of women being exhorted to "do" more sometimes when they arrive on set. Not getting paid unless absolutely everything the producer wants then is in the can. The pre-shot interviews where they ask women what their mom would think. The post-shot ones where the women have to say everything was fine to get paid. It happens a lot in porn. You don't have those conditions anywhere else.

I maintain that Hartley would be less influential, much more so, had she not been partnered with Greene and the relatively influential Sacramento lobby no matter how smart she was herself or what she did herself, because no woman has achieved that longstanding prominence in that industry by themselves ever, and she's the only 58-year-old woman among porn executives as it is.

Porn and prostitution aren't just like any other shitty job, where you're paid for time on the job site, your hours are credited toward your retirement, where you have OSHA protections everyone else gets, where it can go on your resume.

 

[TerribleIdeas™]

Dude, from reading adt talk, gfy, mikesouth, xxxtalk, avn, etc. for decades, there's a pervasive pattern of women being exhorted to "do" more sometimes when they arrive on set. Not getting paid unless absolutely everything the producer wants then is in the can. The pre-shot interviews where they ask women what their mom would think. The post-shot ones where the women have to say everything was fine to get paid. It happens a lot in porn. You don't have those conditions anywhere else.

That sounds like a lot of anecdata, as opposed to the historical record for every other kind legalization, whether it's for guns, drugs, alcohol, prostitution, or abortion - every single one of those has a demonstrable case where legalization has occurred, and the safety surrounding the item (for want of a better term) in question has increased, as has the visibility of abuse around it.

Here's some interesting coincidences - rape rates in the US have dropped over the last 40-odd years, which coincides with the widespread availability of pornography, and rape rates have remained low in Sweden despite legalized prostitution. Well, in the latter case, they stayed low until the arrival of 3rd world theofascists that treat non-adherents as animals that can be abused at will, anyways.

I maintain that Hartley would be less influential, much more so, had she not been partnered with Greene and the relatively influential Sacramento lobby no matter how smart she was herself or what she did herself, because no woman has achieved that longstanding prominence in that industry by themselves ever, and she's the only 58-year-old woman among porn executives as it is.

I've heard the woman talk, and I have no doubts she'd have been successful regardless, but I'm quite convinced that women are quite competent individuals, without the help of men. Fact of the matter is that the reason she's "the only 58 year old female porn producer" might have a lot to do with her being the only 58 year old woman that wanted to take on the role, since there's certainly a lot of other former porn stars that have faded off into obscurity, and the movie part of the porn industry is a fairly new phenomenon. It's not like we can directly compare her influence to other fields, where women have been involved for longer, like cinema.

Porn and prostitution aren't just like any other shitty job, where you're paid for time on the job site, your hours are credited toward your retirement, where you have OSHA protections everyone else gets, where it can go on your resume.

I take it you've never worked a non-union site, or one with scab workers during an attempt at union breaking, because lots of shitty jobs don't have OSHA protections or pensionable hours, like they're supposed to. It's almost as though right-to-work is a thing, and a frequently abused thing.

 

[2nd_time_user]

That sounds like a lot of anecdata, as opposed to the historical record for every other kind legalization, whether it's for guns, drugs, alcohol, prostitution, or abortion - every single one of those has a demonstrable case where legalization has occurred, and the safety surrounding the item (for want of a better term) in question has increased, as has the visibility of abuse around it.

Here's some interesting coincidences - rape rates in the US have dropped over the last 40-odd years, which coincides with the widespread availability of pornography, and rape rates have remained low in Sweden despite legalized prostitution. Well, in the latter case, they stayed low until the arrival of 3rd world theofascists that treat non-adherents as animals that can be abused at will, anyways.



I've heard the woman talk, and I have no doubts she'd have been successful regardless, but I'm quite convinced that women are quite competent individuals, without the help of men. Fact of the matter is that the reason she's "the only 58 year old female porn producer" might have a lot to do with her being the only 58 year old woman that wanted to take on the role, since there's certainly a lot of other former porn stars that have faded off into obscurity, and the movie part of the porn industry is a fairly new phenomenon. It's not like we can directly compare her influence to other fields, where women have been involved for longer, like cinema.



I take it you've never worked a non-union site, or one with scab workers during an attempt at union breaking, because lots of shitty jobs don't have OSHA protections or pensionable hours, like they're supposed to. It's almost as though right-to-work is a thing, and a frequently abused thing.

I've worked non-union for most of my life. I've worked contract. Actually, OSHA protections do cover contract/temp workers in my state, and there was an attempt by Cal-OSHA to look harder at protections. LA County itself voted in 2012 that porn performers should have the same bloodborne protections, meaning condoms. Both largely failed. I've only heard of two women that won. Both got HIV.

 

[TerribleIdeas™]

I've worked non-union for most of my life. I've worked contract. Actually, OSHA protections do cover contract/temp workers in my state, and there was an attempt by Cal-OSHA to look harder at protections. LA County itself voted in 2012 that porn performers should have the same bloodborne protections, meaning condoms. Both largely failed. I've only heard of two women that won. Both got HIV.

And again, anecdata isn't much, when I'm sure I can pull up a bunch of stories of Walmart engaged in union-busting, or of illegals being treated like shit from California farms to Texas construction companies, and beyond. Besides that, I distinctly recall seeing Mercedes Carrerra (pre meth arrest) and others mentioning on twitter that there was a specific group of performers that refused to perform without drug testing and condoms, in the immediate aftermath of August Ames' suicide, which was a result of Ames' refusal to perform with people known to engage in bareback scenes with untested performers, as well as their private lives.

Fact is, every other example of legalization I mentioned demonstrates that the legalization process puts more attention on phenomenon in question, and has lead to greater safety concerning that phenomenon. If you want to make a case on safety grounds that banning sex work is going to make the world safer for anyone, you'll have to prove how it's vastly different that Portugal's legalization of drugs, the US legalization of firearms, the Swedish legalization of sex work, and the legalization of abortion in a variety of countries.

All of them stand as proof that decriminalization makes everything about each of those phenomenon safer, unless you have data that contradicts that?

 

[2nd_time_user]

And again, anecdata isn't much, when I'm sure I can pull up a bunch of stories of Walmart engaged in union-busting, or of illegals being treated like shit from California farms to Texas construction companies, and beyond. Besides that, I distinctly recall seeing Mercedes Carrerra (pre meth arrest) and others mentioning on twitter that there was a specific group of performers that refused to perform without drug testing and condoms, in the immediate aftermath of August Ames' suicide, which was a result of Ames' refusal to perform with people known to engage in bareback scenes with untested performers, as well as their private lives.

Fact is, every other example of legalization I mentioned demonstrates that the legalization process puts more attention on phenomenon in question, and has lead to greater safety concerning that phenomenon. If you want to make a case on safety grounds that banning sex work is going to make the world safer for anyone, you'll have to prove how it's vastly different that Portugal's legalization of drugs, the US legalization of firearms, the Swedish legalization of sex work, and the legalization of abortion in a variety of countries.

All of them stand as proof that decriminalization makes everything about each of those phenomenon safer, unless you have data that contradicts that?

The stats are mixed on legalizing sex work. Germany, for example, was one of the countries going all-in on legal prostitution, and what they ended up with were multi-story brothels offering all-you-can-fuck fests for 95 euros and a lot of impoverished immigrants going for that work. Germany didn't like that, so they're rolling back some of it.

The safety is a part of it, but it's not the whole story. The whole story is that men almost always come out ahead in sex-work situations, and even those that don't involve explicit pay-to-play. For example, among youngish male Silicon Valley hipsters, there's a thing where they have orgies and fly women up from as far as LA. Not prostitutes per se, but real estate agents, personal trainers and the like. They come up under the impression that that'll help them secure SV VC/angel funding from the dudes--they're thinking they'll do this free-love thing and maybe get into a relationship--while said white-collar mostly white and Asian dudes think exactly the same as black ghetto dudes who pulled a train: These women become lower. Not dateable ever. And that's for the ones who aren't technically getting paid. For the ones who are, pretty much most of society thinks that. That gets internalized not just with those women but in society at large. The same doesn't happen to men.

I mean, I used to have more of a third-wave "sex-positive outlook." I read sfredbook until it went down, and what you'd see there were stories about some junkie without teeth that gave better BJs as a result. Or one that played violin on the corner who was fine for BJs but when you flipped her over to fuck her, OMG the smell. The one who accepted a date to a communal hot-tub place, turned out to be about 80 pounds, the John started crying and then so did she. Two of those women are dead now. I mean, this doesn't scream agency and liberation to me. Maybe they fucked themselves over with their life choices, but men definitely helped to fuck them over.

 

[HG 400]

@Dynastia how did you wind up in the radfem camp? Seems like you're not just regurgitating the talking points of YouTube cranks, at least.

The milfs at the communist bookstore won't let you do anal until you can show an understanding of post-marxist gender theory.

Also, which famous radfem would make the best lolcow? Currently active ones don't count.

Bernardine Dohrn.

 

[TerribleIdeas™]

The stats are mixed on legalizing sex work. Germany, for example, was one of the countries going all-in on legal prostitution, and what they ended up with were multi-story brothels offering all-you-can-fuck fests for 95 euros and a lot of impoverished immigrants going for that work. Germany didn't like that, so they're rolling back some of it.

The safety is a part of it, but it's not the whole story. The whole story is that men almost always come out ahead in sex-work situations, and even those that don't involve explicit pay-to-play. For example, among youngish male Silicon Valley hipsters, there's a thing where they have orgies and fly women up from as far as LA. Not prostitutes per se, but real estate agents, personal trainers and the like. They come up under the impression that that'll help them secure SV VC/angel funding from the dudes--they're thinking they'll do this free-love thing and maybe get into a relationship--while said white-collar mostly white and Asian dudes think exactly the same as black ghetto dudes who pulled a train: These women become lower. Not dateable ever. And that's for the ones who aren't technically getting paid. For the ones who are, pretty much most of society thinks that. That gets internalized not just with those women but in society at large. The same doesn't happen to men.

I mean, I used to have more of a third-wave "sex-positive outlook." I read sfredbook until it went down, and what you'd see there were stories about some junkie without teeth that gave better BJs as a result. Or one that played violin on the corner who was fine for BJs but when you flipped her over to fuck her, OMG the smell. The one who accepted a date to a communal hot-tub place, turned out to be about 80 pounds, the John started crying and then so did she. Two of those women are dead now. I mean, this doesn't scream agency and liberation to me. Maybe they fucked themselves over with their life choices, but men definitely helped to fuck them over.

More anecdata. Cool.

 

[2nd_time_user]

More anecdata. Cool.

Fair point. I'm taking this from memory and it appears so are you. Neither of us has cited research, lazy of both of us, I suppose. If you want to look up and cite stats, I will too.

 

[Otterly]

How is normalization of surrogacy fucking women over?

For the same reasons we don’t have paid organ donation. If someone is totally ‘free’ to act then they can give altruistically. However in reality it’s rarely a free choice where money is involved. Pregnancy is physically the most dangerous thing women will do. If you have a contract to deliver a healthy baby and you develop a complication that will injure or kill you, then what? What if the baby is not perfect? There was a case in n Australia where the commissioning couple dumped one twin with downs back on the carrying mother. She now has to support that child for life.
What if surrogacy is so common that a women seeking jobseekers benefits is forced into it? It’s already happened in Germany that a woman was denied benefits for refusing a job in a brothel. http://archive.is/8T7tL

Surrogacy is bad for the baby as well - the baby is born not really ready due to our massive heads. If you’ve ever had a newborn you’ll know how incredibly vulnerable they are and the concept of the fourth trimester. Babies need to be with their mothers - they know your voice and smell from birth. To remove a baby from the mother is abhorrent. It’s not best for the baby. Humans are not commodities to sell. Surrogacy is producing humans for sale. Women are not wombs for rent. It’s not the same power dynamic as selling labour, it’s selling the body and it has significant health repercussions for the mother.

Sex work ... the tiny minority are happy hookers. Most are women, girls and boys too who have been coerced. It’s a ‘job’ with a huge risk of violence. These are figures I’ve seen reproduced elsewhere: http://archive.is/L0KCQ
“Fifty-seven percent reported that they had been sexually assaulted as children and 49% reported that they had been physically assaulted as children. As adults in prostitution, 82% had been physically assaulted; 83% had been threatened with a weapon; 68% had been raped while working as prostitutes; and 84% reported current or past homelessness.” High 80%s want to leave.

Can you specify some of the battles you think still need to be won?

Yup. Women prisoners shouldn’t have to be locked up with Male sex offenders.
Women prisoners in mother and baby units shouldn’t have to be locked up with convicted Male child abusers
Women should have the right to reproductive autonomy.
Women should have the single sex spaces needed for our privacy dignity and safety.
In the UK, even the legal defiant of woman is under threat and if the GRA changes go through the equality act as it pertains to women and girls will be useless. That means all our rights and protections down the drain. Big issue.
Surrogacy is being reviewed in the UK with a clear push to make it legal. Amazing how everyone knows what a woman is when you need to rent a womb.

2nd Wave isn't all just "We need to secure rights for women!", some of it was very clearly finding excuses to blame men for absolutely everything

What can I say, every movement has extremists. My personal view is that demonising men is pointless and counterproductive. There are issues that affect only men and they need addressing too. The men’s rights movement, or bits of it, could be accused of being just as insane and woman hating as the man haters - that doesn’t help boys in poverty though, and it probably doesn’t reflect the beliefs of the people who are actually making a difference on the ground rather than on Twitter.

I will also say that I think that the demonisation of men is another facet of SJW ism and the progressive stack. And that one of the things that stack does is push every other issue to the fore except the one that really needs looking at which is class and poverty. Much better to have boomers versus millennials or men vs women or black vs white than to have the common man say ‘hang on a minute, why is this giant corporation not paying tax...?’

 

[TerribleIdeas™]

Fair point. I'm taking this from memory and it appears so are you. Neither of us has cited research, lazy of both of us, I suppose. If you want to look up and cite stats, I will too.

I really don't have to look up stats, when my point stands - every single phenomenon I've mentioned has become safer, upon legalization. The fact that a black market flesh trade exists in Germany is almost guaranteed to be tied to organized crime trying to avoid paying taxes, and I say that based on discussions I had with Germans about those brothels well over a decade ago; they blatantly told me those brothels were primarily in Eastern Germany, and commonly openly associated with Eastern Bloc organized crime groups, usually Russians. I continue to be unsurprised that Eastern Bloc criminals would continue to ignore laws they found inconvenient, in the interest of earning a few more Euros per john.

Portugal legalized drugs, and substance abuse went down, as did the crimes associated with such abuse. Pretty sure it's the same story in every state that legalized pot.
Alcohol prohibition in the USA was the primary reason that Italian and Irish organized crime groups made the money they did, and accumulated the power they had.
Illegal gun sales are hugely profitable in places like Chicago and LA, which have incredibly strict gun control, but the rates of gun violence in surrounding states are considerably lower.
Women dying from illegal abortions is largely a thing of the past, because the majority of western countries have had legislation that ensures that such medical procedures aren't done in rat infested back rooms.
Sweden continues to have low sex crimes rates associated with sex workers, and almost entirely associated with immigrants that think women are actually objects.

Edit - @Otterly, I'll read that later, and respond. Baking to be done.

 

[2nd_time_user]

I really don't have to look up stats, when my point stands - every single phenomenon I've mentioned has become safer, upon legalization. The fact that a black market flesh trade exists in Germany is almost guaranteed to be tied to organized crime trying to avoid paying taxes, and I say that based on discussions I had with Germans about those brothels well over a decade ago; they blatantly told me those brothels were primarily in Eastern Germany, and commonly openly associated with Eastern Bloc organized crime groups, usually Russians. I continue to be unsurprised that Eastern Bloc criminals would continue to ignore laws they found inconvenient, in the interest of earning a few more Euros per john.

Portugal legalized drugs, and substance abuse went down, as did the crimes associated with such abuse. Pretty sure it's the same story in every state that legalized pot.
Alcohol prohibition in the USA was the primary reason that Italian and Irish organized crime groups made the money they did, and accumulated the power they had.
Illegal gun sales are hugely profitable in places like Chicago and LA, which have incredibly strict gun control, but the rates of gun violence in surrounding states are considerably lower.
Women dying from illegal abortions is largely a thing of the past, because the majority of western countries have had legislation that ensures that such medical procedures aren't done in rat infested back rooms.
Sweden continues to have low sex crimes rates associated with sex workers, and almost entirely associated with immigrants that think women are actually objects.

Whoa dude, you barked about anecdotes are not data twice, and now you're going back to generalities and how it's obvious--even though we're not talking drugs, alcohol, guns or abortion. We're talking sex work. You've made one assertion here that has to do with that, and that's more general than the examples I provided. You brought up data. If you want to provide data, I will argue with data. If you don't, that's also fine to end it.

 

[Otterly]

In Germany, there simply aren’t enough women willing to meet demand for sex. It’s not a job women want to do. So trafficking occurs. Trafficking has increased to meet demand.

Human Trafficking Persists Despite Legality of Prostitution in Germany - DER SPIEGEL - International

When Germany legalized prostitution just over a decade ago, politicians hoped that it would create better conditions and more autonomy for sex workers. It hasn't worked out that way, though. Exploitation and human trafficking remain significant problems. By SPIEGEL Staff

m.spiegel.de

Archive: http://archive.li/oxG6j

Most brothels are off limits for police, unless they’re using them. Most don’t pay enough tax. Legalising prostitution has not worked.

There’s a single legalised ‘tolerance’ zone in the UK in Leeds and it’s a nightmare. The police dont answer calls for anything, 7pm-7am so the area is overrun with crime. A female teacher was dragged off the street and raped walking to work. http://archive.li/a3weH

Rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis are rising rapidly. As is HIV. Police are seeing trafficking.edited to add link: http://archive.is/FIbAT

If Sex work was so much fun, men would be doing it in equal numbers. Funny they aren’t...

 

[HG 400]

Banning sexwork is a terrible idea. It's a grubby, soul-crushing business but like I said earlier, it's the oldest profession in the world and it's not going anywhere. I know some radfems disagree with me here but the only reasonable path to take here is harm reduction, to make it a legal industry but accept that it differs from other industries and regulate it with that in mind.

I'd be more interested in @TerribleIdeas™ opinion on the Swedish system vs, say, the German or NZ system rather than hearing the same old hashed-up arguments against prohibition or back-alley abortionists.

 

[FI 665]

Sorry everyone, I had a complete boomer moment on my ancient ass phone trying to reply to several threads at once, my bad.

You mean to tell me that marketers and profiteers are glamorizing poor life decisions, and hiding the dangerous parts of a career and/or industry? I am glad the military does not do that, nor heavy industry, fast food restaurants, automotive companies, big tobacco, liquor distributors, for profit prisons, corporate agriculture, student loan guarantors, or literally any other person/entity trying to extract money from any other person/entity. Glossing over the risks that girls face by being e-thots is not sexist or targeted towards women, it's what all humans do to all other humans when one human is attempting to convince another human to act against his or her interest.

Absolutely. Marketers, big businesses, the military, always have (and always will) glamorize and hide the dangers of their products or professions. It's protecting their capital, that's what they do. This is feminism, though, and we have our own set of priorities and focuses. Nothing is stopping you from starting a union for acid miners, but acid-mining and sucking unwashed cock because you need to keep your electricity on aren't quite the same thing, even if many similarities can be drawn between them.

Glossing over the risks that girls face by being e-thots is not sexist or targeted towards women, it's what all humans do to all other humans when one human is attempting to convince another human to act against his or her interest.

They face those risks because women make up most of that industry, and since feminism's focal point is "addressing women's issues", that's why feminists are primarily concerned with it.

Did your phone have a boomer moment and post this entire paragraph of bullshit too, or are you good?

 

[AnOminous]

Banning sexwork is a terrible idea. It's a grubby, soul-crushing business but like I said earlier, it's the oldest profession in the world and it's not going anywhere. I know some radfems disagree with me here but the only reasonable path to take here is harm reduction, to make it a legal industry but accept that it differs from other industries and regulate it with that in mind.

I agree with this but despise the "third wave" bullshit of actually glorifying sex work as if it isn't utterly disgusting and degrading. There is some segment of sex work done largely by people who don't have to do it and could easily quit it and do something else at any time that may be "empowering" in some sense for that narrow population doing it, more or less for their own amusement, but the vast majority of it is just plain awful.