Meanwhile in Belgium: Belgium’s sex workers get maternity leave and pensions under world-first law
Under a new law in Belgium - the first of its kind in the world - […] Sex workers will be entitled to official employment contracts, health insurance, pensions, maternity leave and sick days. Essentially, it will be treated like any other job.
Sex work was decriminalised in Belgium in 2022 and is legal in several countries including Germany, Greece, the Netherlands and Turkey.
I hate the fact that there’s sexually frustrated people who are trying to create laws regarding sexuality.
What you hate is organized religion. Hate the source, not the symptom of that infection.
Very correct, In most cases at least.
I just want to make sure nobody gives them a pass because of their religion, which has no place in politics anyways.
“I’m not happy until you’re not happy.”
If I regret working in a very dangerous workplace (such as being a miner), then can I lobby on banning that? Or “selling your body” only applies if genitals are involved?
No, as you’ve already pointed out: It’s only “selling your body” when genitals are involved.
For working as a miner, brick layer, cleaner or berry picker, the usual labour protection and anti-trafficking laws must suffice.I have never worked in either field but I don’t think these are comparable in terms psychologic harm they usually do. (Which is an argument for more mental and legal assistance for sex workers rather than for bans.)
And again a bunch of puritan assholes have the need to ensure that, like they themselves, nobody will enjoy sex freely in the way that they want to. It’s always a tiny group that just had to ruin it for everyone, and then they’ll spin it as “but won’t anyone think of the children!” or similar bullshit like that.
Fuck these right wing assholes
Gonna have an unpopular take here, but pornography and sex work under our current system shouldn’t be celebrated as a “bastion of freedom”, given how it’s selling access to one’s body and sexuality as a product. Even if they agree to it consensually, the choice happens in a world where money decides what people can or can’t do, if one is going to survive or not. This makes the concept of “real consent” complicated, because the need of money, much like the need of food or essential goods can force people into doings they wouldn’t freely choose if survival wasn’t on the line.
Given this, one could definitely consider it commodified rape - it’s not necessarily violent like forced rape, but it’s still shaped by money, power, and pressure in a system where people’s bodies get turned into things to be bought.
The law does suck ass and shouldn’t be supported though, the issue stems with a system where our survival depends on money (with selling your body being a way to get by) and not individual morals. I fully agree with Yidit when he says that it’ll just cause sex work to become more dangerous by moving it underground.
I wholeheartedly agree. Especially with the problems of objectification of people, in particular women, having gotten worse again, we should be very careful to assume everything involving a person of legal age to undress for someone else without direct physical threat to be automatically good or liberating.
On the contrary being able to maintain privacy over your body can be an expression of much more freedom as you liberated yourself from objectification.
Irrespective of that these aren’t issues that can be tackled through laws like this. Better legal avenues would be banning of sexualized ads, banning of advertisment for cosmetics, cosmetic surgery and the like to minors and the like.