this post was submitted on 14 May 2025
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[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 week ago (30 children)

What are the purported benefits of this law?

Are they just assuming that paid online sex work is bad and should be stopped?

Who fucking cares what consenting adults do in private in separate locations via the magic of the interweb.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

Hey, you thought TERFs were a weird wedge between European and US feminists when they first got a foothold in the UK?

I have terrible news about how that process has been running again regarding sex work and surrogate pregnancy.

Surrogate pregnancy is less controversial because there the traditional US stance is in the minority and bans have been expanding relatively unopposed. Sex work, though? There are outright porn bans being advocated in left-leaning circles all over Europe. The fact that they've been calling themselves "sex work abolitionists" should be sobering.

Expect the global right to try to deploy the same strategy on this issue going forward. There are already similar proposals in the US and they are very aware that they can recruit some segment of nominally left-wing feminist activists and voters with these issues, just like they did with transphobic policies.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I agree, but it's hard to rule out trafficking for an example.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 week ago (5 children)

I'm an engineer so I don't know much about morals, but I have a very simple rule to distinguish good from bad: I ask who is harmed because of the process. If someone objectively does -- the process is bad. All is good otherwise.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Bit simplistic, that.

Hey, my approach to engineering is "if machine moves, machine works", and I'm sure there isn't any more nuance than that, so... call it a tie?

The problem with "harm" is it's hard to measure or qualify. What is "objectively less harm" in situations where you're trying to regulate the use of narcotics or, indeed, sex work. Is it more harmful for it to be illegal because there's some harm associated with it or is it more harmful to criminalize it? And if you don't criminalize it but harm does come to pass how do you mitigate that?

What do you do when two people identify harm in opposite actions? How do you measure which harm is more harmful if you can't have a zero harm outcome? What is the unit of harm?

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

You're getting to the right idea, computer boy!

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