Re:The New Prostitution Economy
by imgabe on Friday July 08, 2016 @10:37AM
(#12055827)
We may consider coerced sex to be more traumatic than coerced labor, but it's a difference in degree, not in kind. The author is arguing "If sex is just labor then it's ok to coerce people to do it" which is absurd. It's not ok to coerce people to do labor or have sex.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:The New Prostitution Economy
by bench_soup on Friday July 08, 2016 @10:55AM
(#12055959)
It's not about saying if it's ok or not, of course it's not.
It's about stating a difference because sex work being seen a mainstream practice is arguably not a good thing. (be it legal or not, that's not related here)
That's not really the point. That statement is being used to illustrate the fact that sex is not "just labor." If it were "just labor" it wouldn't be any more traumatic than being forced to make coffee or being forced to answer phones. Which would also be traumatic, but not as traumatic as rape.
But whatever, clearly there's a group of people here on HN who are taking the hard line "sex work is just labor" position and there's not going to be a rational discussion here.
Like I said, the difference is in degree, not kind. There's no reason two things have to be exactly the same amount of traumatic in order to be considered the same kind of trauma.
Losing 10% of your net worth and losing 90% of your net worth are both traumatic. One is more so because it's to a larger degree, but it's not an entirely different thing, it's just a different amount. That's why we have different punishments for petty theft and grand larceny. Not because they're completely different crimes, but because they're different degrees of the same crime.