Some people want to fuck for money. It’s what they choose to do, and the basis of that may be that they find the interactions interesting or the job easy or something they enjoy, or it may be because they were sexually traumatized and have an unhealthy relationship with sex and men. But women and men alike do fuck for money. Making it legal and regulating the service industry could make it safer and more healthful for individuals who do it and also help to protect public health. Making things like this and drugs illegal on moral grounds makes them more dangerous because crimes against sex workers or addicts are not reported for fear of being prosecuted, crimes are reported but victims are ignored/shamed/mocked etc. because of the illegal statuses of what they do, etc.
Some sex workers are literally enslaved, many are abused and live with past traumas, some may be mentally ill (as are people in every sector).
There’s no way to generalize the entire business as damaging or abusive or positive.
However, I really feel like there are fine lines that are always ignored and it drives me batty.
Prostitutes always are spoken of as objects of discussion, never as human beings who make their own choices. They choose to have sex for money in private.
Porn stars often are spoken *to* as human beings and are regarded as professionals and less likely in condescending, objectifying ways, even though they are prostituting in front of cameras. Why is that?
Nude models are regarded as something different. But they are exploiting their bodies for monetary gain.
People who do simulated sex in movies, nude but with a covering over their genitalia that audiences don’t see are respectable performance artists. Why are they more respectable if prostitutes are not? They’re getting naked and simulating sex for money. From a psychological standpoint, they are still exploiting and objectifying themselves ostensibly to get people off as a financial transaction.
And then there is the point of physical laborers who do not exchange sex for money, but who likewise exploit their physical bodies for money and have high-risk workplace hazards. If the concern for prostitutes really is their well being and not a puritanical view of sex, then why aren’t people like Judd also calling mining or construction work “slavery for money”? People who work with steel and concrete and glass or in mines are likely to be injured, they work longer hours than people with office jobs, they may have limited access to healthcare, etc. They’re trading their physical wellness for a paycheck. No one champions or defends them.
I don’t have a problem with people bringing attention to abuses of sex workers, etc., but I do think there’s a total blind spot to the hypocrisy of people who claim that their concerns are not about morality from a puritanical standpoint, and yet who couldn’t possibly accept that selling one’s body is an aspect of many different kinds of work that results in physical harm, and who couldn’t possibly accept that a woman who sells her body on Hollywood and Vine really is not that different from a woman who desperately sells her body on Instagram, addicted to and financially dependent on likes, or a woman who strips down and writhes around in a bed while 20 men stand around with boners and a couple track her naked breasts and ass with cameras in extreme close-up—and she wins an Oscar for being “vulnerable,” and meanwhile a half million men are blowing their loads to her DVD and *that* is what is generating profits for MGM and, yes, for her and her pimp/agent.