If your geniune goal is to protect sex workers, you would not do so by working on general labor rights, because those rights do not apply to sex workers.
If you want the government to protect sex workers you, almost by definition, need to make sex work legal. In reality, you might not need to go that far. The effectivness immigration policy of sancuary cities and safe harbor laws for reporting drug overdoses show that it is possibly to provide services (including law enforcement) to criminals; but building and maintaing the nessesary trust with the community is very difficult.
Prostitution is legal around here for a while so general labor laws apply as well as some special ones, and e.g. the ver.di labor union (largest one representing workers in all "service" occupations, with about 2 million members) since then allowed prostitutes to join their union and lobbies on behalf of all sex workers, as well as providing members a wide array of legal services and representation in work and social matters and a lot of advisory/informational services (tho few sex workers actually become members due to a plethora of reasons).
The decriminalization actually helped weed out most of the small "street pimps" and violent or non-paying Johns/Janes are now a lot more regularly reported and prosecuted, especially since prostitutes can now actually go to the police without fear of being charged for prostitution.
Legal prostitution also means brothels are now registered as legal businesses a lot more often, which in turn means they have to follow health and safety regulations and are subject to inspections. Before, the state only ever could raid a brothel (illegal by definition) and shut it down, at which point it often popped up again in some new place. This also means brothel operators can invest in their properties, thereby usually improving the physical working conditions as well.
But admittedly it hardly put a dent into the larger criminal enterprises which have an entire "supply chain" incl human trafficking and (illegal) brothels with sex slaves. Those criminal organizations just continued as usual, maybe even profiting from generally increased demand in prostitution now that it is legal, keeping their enslaved people in check with fear and outright violence, but are helped by trafficked sex workers nowadays originating from non-EU states which means those people would have to worry about deportation (aside from violent retribution by the criminal enterprises) if they went to the police.
Now that the state has freed up some resources it previously spent on prosecuting sex workers and their customers, I'd like to see those resources go towards fighting those larger criminal enterprises, but that didn't really happen yet as far as I can tell. There have been some high profile busts, but not more than it used to be.
How does it highlight how prostitution is different from other forms of "wage slavery"? The article describe this problem:
> "how to avoid the director when he’s trying to get you to blow him between takes and your jaw needs a rest"
It quite clear that the author consider the sex in the shooting and the unwanted sexual attention by the director to be two very different things. One of the two they agreed to before hand and is getting paid to do, the other is unwanted.
It seems identical to the problem that has been on the news regarding directors in the movie industry in general.
There are laws requiring workplaces to be as safe as reasonably possible. None the less, some jobs just are dangerous and can't be made entirely safe. To take an obvious example, a soldier on active military duty faces some risks, and they're inherent in the job.
I don't know exactly how employment law applies to the armed services, but I expect the upshot is something like this: the army has an obligation to do things in a way that e.g. doesn't make accidents needlessly likely, but if you are a soldier fighting a war then you might get shot and that's just part of what they pay you for.
Employment laws may or may not already be drafted in a way that makes them suitable for applying to sex workers, but in principle the situation seems to me very similar to the one I just described. If you are (say) a pornographic actor or a prostitute, then you are going to be having some sex that you wouldn't otherwise have chosen to have, and that's just part of what they pay you for; but your employers are still obliged to protect you from (for instance) being sexually harrassed by your boss.
So, sure, it's a special case and the laws might need to be written carefully to deal with it, but that's not unprecedented. (In particular, if your intended subtext was something like "... so sex work should be illegal because it's fundamentally abusive" then I think you need to explain why we don't have to outlaw the military, police, and other groups that are necessarily exposed to substantial physical danger in the course of their work.)
I think it's a little hyperbolic to draw military service into the equation - as that is almost universally seen as exceptional.
Now for fire and police work - I would argue the difference is one of necessity - even the most fundamental libertarians would probably agree that sex work is a luxury good or service - not something fundamental for survival or law and order; it is closer to working at a restaurant: providing a convenient, but ultimately redundant service (people can and do buy food and prepare it at home).
We don't expect restaurant workers to risk their life; while we accept that firefighters sometimes do (although, they try very hard not to).
As for the more fundamental aspect; should we allow prostitution - or; is there a difference between other uncomfortable jobs and the sex industry - I suppose I land on the side that the idea that prostitution is OK derives from the fact that we live in a society that's not equal.
It may be puritan of me to say that I'd never (unless circumstances changed significantly for worse, I suppose) consider making a living sucking cocks - and I don't think it's a reasonable expectation. But if we do say that prostitution is just work - I don't see why we'd pay social security to people who refuse sex work?
I just think there's a fundamental difference between say, cleaning floors and having sex for money.
As an example, there Discovery channel has a documentary show called deadliest Catch, during with they follow fishermen during crab fishing seasons in alaska. Those crabs are a luxury product, and yet according to discovery the death rate during the main crab seasons averages out to nearly one fisherman per week, while the injury rate for crews on most crab boats is nearly 100%. Compared to fire and police work, I would guess it is much safer to spend a day in their line of work compared to go on one of those boats.
If we look at the top 10 most dangerous jobs we also see a fairly common pattern where safety is a balance between costs and efficiency. Most of those jobs could be made relative safe, but then the cost would go up. While we don't expect restaurant workers to risk their life, we do expect that the roofer to not spend more money on safety that is strictly necessary, making roofers one of the most dangerous jobs.
That certainly is a difference across countries; not taking proper safety measures as a fisherman or roofer is a qymuick way too lose relevant licenses, get fined or even jail time in Norway.
That said, fishing can never be entirely safe - a storm is a storm, and the ocean is cold and deep (off the Norwegian coast, for example).
Still,while I wildly disagree on the premise that fishing and prostitution could be compared (that is, mostly on an emotional level) - I think I'll have to concede that in some ways it might make for a an interesting comparison point.
I'd guess coal mining could fit too.
But in the context of a sound and well regulated job market, I don't think fishing in general is a luxury goods provider. Neither is mining (in general).
My general view is that you can not make prostitution illegal without a explicit moral stand regarding people who have sex for money (or pay for sex).
Any regulation that tries to go the route and forbid jobs based on health risk would need to make a larger portion of the worked force in order to also cover legal prostitution.
We could also take a stand against wage slavery. The article articulate quite well how much of her life was punctuated on the need to raise money for rent and food. Countries like Norway and Sweden have social safety nets in place to prevent that, but even here people will accept risky jobs that they do not want to do in order to escape bare minimum living standard.
> I think it's clear that in general the sex she's paid for is in general also unwanted?
No. Unwanted implies against her will. She agreed to have sex in exchange for money, and knew before that the job she was applying to was to perform sex for money.
She might not really enjoy the sex she is paid to perform, but that's not different to somebody who cleans toilets in exchange for money might not enjoy cleaning toilets.
>Would you consider cleaning toilets and prostitution for supporting yourself as "no different"?
If entered voluntarily, I do not see a moral difference.
I do however recognize that there still is a societal stigmatization when it comes to sex work (there is also stigmatization when it comes to "menial" jobs such as cleaning toilets, but less so). This stigmatization to me doesn't appear to have a rational footing, but either comes from "traditional" and/or "religious" values (same as opposition to homosexuality), or from confusing voluntary sex work with involuntary sex work (as I often see in self-proclaimed "feminist" perspectives).
All in all, a lot of societies seem to be in a state of cognitive dissonance, where voluntarily selling your body for sexual gratification of others is illegal... unless you make a movie out of it, or do not actually perform outright sexual intercourse (strippers, dominatrixes).
If I was in a situation where I could either prostitute myself (legally, in a safe-enough environment like a legal club with a bouncer) or clean toilets (legally, in a safe-enough enviroment), I'd probably end up with prostitution.
Then again, I live in a country where the welfare system is good enough that I always have a third option...
PS: Let me explain this a little further.
I know only one prostitute loosely (old friend; I did not ever use her services; or the services of any prostitute for that matter) and while I am sure she did not tell me all the shit she encounters in her current job, she actually worked as a "cleaning lady" in a hospital before becoming a prostitute full time. She says she will never go back to being a cleaner. She'd like to get a better accepted job with better job security that she can still work when she gets older, so when we last spoke she was looking into taking classes to become an accountant, but for now she says she is happy with the life prostitution affords her relatively easily. "It's better than begging the state for money, and I can still afford nice things and go on vacations"
I actually know a lot more such "cleaning ladies" from the same hospital (who probably still work there). Every cleaner ranted about how the job ruins their backs, their joints, etc, and that old age will not be fun for them and that they saw a ton of co-workers retire early because their bodies gave out and they ended up on welfare because their early-retirement money was not sufficient.
Legalising it can also have unintended side effects. When prostitution is legalised, the demand often outstrips the supply, leading to an increase in human trafficking.
> When prostitution is legalised, the demand often outstrips the supply, leading to an increase in human trafficking.
This line of reasoning makes very little sense to me. Let's just consider another profession. It's pretty undeniable the demand for skilled software engineers currently outstrips the supply. Especially for certain in-demand specialists.
Yet we don't see machine learning PhDs being kidnapped and enslaved to work in a dank basement tuning Netflix's recommendation algorithm for hours on end with Reed Hastings and his goons threatening to kill their families. The simpler solution is for Netflix to just pay enough money to attract qualified people for the job.
Every single other market in the world has a simple mechanism to deal with the scenario where demand outstrips supply. And that is simply to let prices rises to the point where the two reach equilibrium.
There's absolutely zero reason why the market for prostitution should be any different. To the extent that it isn't it's only because law enforcement either is incapable of or refuses to investigate the complaints of crimes committed against sex workers.
There are some really shady things going on with H1B's; maybe kidnapping isn't the right term, but the choice is between working pretty terrible conditions and getting deported.
The simple supply/demand argument you see in economics class works in very few cases that feature in internet debates. It works well on eBay when you're selling a used iPhone, but not on labor, healthcare, or housing as those markets are all heavily regulated in comparison.
Aha, I've seen that study on Hacker News before and I wrote a variant of the following observation:
A charitable read of that paper, particularly p. 25, would suggest that trafficking dropped from 19,740 cases to 12,350 cases when prostitution was liberalised.
I've done enough statistics to say that I don't think the paper conclusively shows evidence of a problem; particularly given how hard it must be to gather data on illegal things. Need more rigour to be used for this sort of discussion although it does show that there is a risk to be considered.
I'm generally in the liberal camp on this, and that legalization/decriminalization is the way to go, and that you have to listen to actual sex workers and ask them what they want.
But this argument is the strongest I've seen for the opposing view. It basically says that legalization/decriminalization does make things better for existing sex workers, but since it increases trafficking, the whole thing is net negative, since a lot of people are now made to suffer to supply this new market.
The best defense I have against that is that then you haven't enforced the legal landscape properly. It should be possible for local police to protect legal sex workers and treat them with dignity and respect, and crack down hard on trafficking. But I also realize how naive that makes me sound.
Can we really just outright claim that all sex workers think the same way? Does this work for any other group I want? Or could it be severely infantilizing?
The article does a pretty good job of showing examples of the "rescue industry", and how people who claim to be working in the interest of all sex workers simply aren't. Many are in it for their own ego or morals or posturing or money.
The article also provided examples of people helping people get out of sex work, and actually being good at it.
And the article also talks about the very thing you're protesting, there are two big narratives in the debate: "The happy hooker is a myth!" and "Sex workers who speak out are empowered feminist icons!"
Both those narratives are extremes, and the article points out that reality is a lot more bland and boring and grey than that. The author talks about instances where a porn shoot was a great experience, but that mostly it was a boring shit job.
Of course there are sex workers who hate their job and want to get out, but can't for numerous reasons, and need help getting out.
Of course there are sex workers who hate their job, but would rather keep it, than take another shit job.
Of course there are sex workers who occasionally hate their job, and occasionally love their job.
Of course there are sex workers who like their job and would never want any other job.
Of course there are sex workers who do it to finance a drug addiction.
Of course there are sex workers who do it to finance their university education.
Of course there are sex workers who have been abused and traumatized and hurt and beaten and killed in their work.
Of course there are sex workers who have never experienced abuse in their work.
And when I say "listen to actual sex workers", this is what I mean you have to listen to. All the good, and all the bad. All the different experiences that different people have. You can't just listen to all the bad, and immediately want to crack down and forbid it and try to stamp it out "for their own good", and assume it will magically disappear. You can't just listen to all the good, and immediately want to decriminalize it and assume it will all work out magically in the end either.
> you have to listen to actual sex workers and ask them what they want.
This is what was I was responding to. The article I linked talks more on this sentiment, which generally ends up doing the same as Amazon warehouse workers chiming in on Twitter about how much they love their jobs: defending exploitation by appealing to the convenient ideologies of individuals.
>Can we really just outright claim that all sex workers think the same way?
And this is what I responded to.
Also a) implying that prostitution is exploitation per se and b) implying every sex worker who said something positive about their work is a somehow rewarded astroturf shill is at the very least problematic.
There are happy sex workers, there are unhappy sex workers (who still do it with the same level of voluntary participation as a "data entry specialist" in some cubicle or a worker gutting fish in a factory do their jobs; to make ends meet) and there are exploited/coerced/forced sex workers.
The latter is a problem and a big one, and there were and are many proposed solutions to tackle it, and nobody found a really well working one yet, but putting those victims in a spot where they themselves are criminals is something that I would think cannot be helpful.
If you want the government to protect sex workers you, almost by definition, need to make sex work legal. In reality, you might not need to go that far. The effectivness immigration policy of sancuary cities and safe harbor laws for reporting drug overdoses show that it is possibly to provide services (including law enforcement) to criminals; but building and maintaing the nessesary trust with the community is very difficult.