Well, it's also that human trafficking works under cover of these services hiding as legitimate sex work.

But yeah, it's made a LOT worse by the lack of empathy, compassion, and understanding (not to mention puritanical notions) people have towards sex work.

Not to mention most of the abolitionists are flat out lying...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/03/27/...

It's not that most anti-prostitution crusaders are lying, it's that those that aren't lying are relying on information from those who are.

Are you flat out lying when you say "most"?

Let's consider the incident in Seattle a few years back wherein a "sex trafficking" ring run by tech people was busted by the cops. Except there were no actual sex trafficking charges brought against anyone and the whole sting operation seems to have been funded from out of state.

https://www.thestranger.com/news/2018/03/24/25953235/king-co...

Backpage was pretty sleazy. I don't think anyone's going to miss them, but are you not at all alarmed that there's a sudden onslaught of legislation that is claimed to target "sex trafficking", but which also apparently requires the deletion of the personals section from Craigslist, censoring of pornographic Google drive content, and even dirty words from Word documents?

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/28/microsoft_services_...

Where is this heading? And do you trust the motives of the people behind it?

Yep, the sex trafficking angle has already been debunked.*

I've lost almost all respect for most modern feminists simply because they refuse to acknowledge actual logic and statistics - wage gap BS, sex trafficking hysteria, apex fallacy (e.g. the top 0.001% are over represented by cis white males, but we'll ignore the bottom 20% of laborers, homeless, disposables who are all male), etc.

My litmus test for any feminist is whether they support the legalization of prostitution. Logically, it's her body, her decision. Right?

Nevermind the issue with a male's ability to legally obtain sex / intimacy, even if paid - you'd think this would be considered a human right, deserving of more talk time than, say, the tax-free status of tampons, but I digress...

Feminists who use the sex trafficking BS as a defense against legalization of prostitution deserve 0 respect. They are simply opportunists, trying to establish a monopoly on access to sex, economically no different than Standard Oil, Microsoft, etc.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/03/27/...

This crosses into ideological flamewar of the kind we're trying to avoid here. Would you please not do that? Thoughtful discussion is the idea, not denunciatory rhetoric.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You will find self-described feminists on both sides of this issue.

Well you have conservative and liberal feminists. Anita Sarkeesian is a great example of a conservative, sex-negative feminist who likes to cherry pick facts and video footage to support an anti-sexualized world view of women.

On the other side you have liberal feminists who are sex-positive, for regulated sex work and support Slut Walks.

It's not exactly conservative vs liberal; there are divisions on sex and the nature of being a woman even within the body of radical feminists.

I'm simplifying extraordinarily here, but one position might be "sex between men and women happens within the constraints of a patriarchal society and had inherent power imbalances, which is problematic; sex work is overwhelmingly poor and powerless women being exploited for sex by men" (at its extreme suggesting political lesbianism) and the other might be "there's nothing intrinsically anti-feminist about sex, and we can imagine forms of sex and sex work which are liberatory rather than oppressive. Sex work is often exploitative but is also work, and sex workers are women who deserve a voice and better treatment" (at its extreme leading to explicitly feminist pornography).

I prefer one to the other, but neither position is hypocritical.

These are called SWERF(sex worker exclusionary radical feminists) and is already an existing term in feminism that is currently under serious discussion in general communities if I understand it correctly. If you dislike SWERFs you’re in good (feminist) company.

The idea that men have a right to sex is absurd.

The idea of sex as a human right isn't absurd, just controversial. An example is a severely disabled person unable to find a partner. Criminalizing prostitution between two willing parties, could be seen as restriction of the right to a fundamental human experience.

That's the basis of the argument anyway.

That's the option to pay for it.

Fundamentally you should have the right to do what you want with your body.

> The idea that men have a right to sex is absurd.

All people have a right to sex, so long as it is consensual.

Not right to sex, right to "legally obtain sex even if paid."

Such an effort is not necessary, because countless studies have shown a clear link between prostitution and the modern slave trade. There is a reason that most modern abolitionist groups target sex trafficking - it’s all too common. It’s inevitable that where you find sex workers in any number, you will find sex slaves.

[1] https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-... [2] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=link+between+prostituti... [3] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/chelsealyn-rudder/sex-for-sal... [4] https://ec.europa.eu/anti-trafficking/publications/links-bet...

You will find lots of wage theft in restaurants, but it's not helpful to discussing the problem to start using wage theft and the restaurant industry as interchangeable terms.

And ironically, if you wanted to actually tackle human trafficking, restaurants would be a good place to start -- back-house employees often work long hours and rarely have contact with the public, making it easy to conceal trafficked workers.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/03/29/521971468/in...

Exactly! You can keep the restaurant industry without the wage theft. Just do what Australia and New Zealand do: pay restaurant workers a living wage and not have a tipping culture.

Both those nations also have legalized sex work too.

New Zealand doesn't really pay restaurant workers a living wage. Most waitstaff will be on minimum wage, or near minimum (~$16-17 per hour). The living wage in NZ is $20 per hour.

Australia has it better. Most waitstaff I know are on at least $20 per hour, with penalty rates for working after 10pm or working on Sunday.

That assumes one has a right to dictate how someone else will manage their private property.

Ideas like a mandatory "living wage", that while possibly well-intended, amount to coercive impositions that are rationalized by dogmatic self-righteousness, and end up having pretty severe negative unintended consequences.

They're in the same class of laws as those prohibiting prostitution and drug-use.

UK and most of Europe has to. America the Great is stuck in the social Stone Age.

UK legal position is more nuanced than that. Money-for-sex is generally legal, but on-street soliciting, two prostitutes sharing a flat, some forms of advertising, and many other aspects of the sex trade are crimes. So you may be legal, depending on what kind of sex work you're doing. Or you may be not. It isn't Amsterdam.

Not saying being restaurant worker is peaches, but lets compare the two...

1) A worker in a restaurant has legal recourse if treated unlawfully in any way.

2) A worker in a restaurant can start their own restaurant to compete with their employer any time they like.

3) A worker in a restaurant is free to leave for a better paying job anytime they want.

4) A worker in a restaurant can disclose poor treatment to the press if they want.

Alternatively...

1) A sex worker often has no legal recourse without risking their life.

2) A sex worker often cant compete with their employer without risking their life.

3) A sex worker often cant leave their pimp without risking their life.

4) A sex worker can't disclose poor treatment to the press without risking their life.

See the difference?

These do not sound like compelling reasons to continue making sex work a crime. In fact, they sound like arguments for the opposite policy.

Please read the thread, I was addressing the other point that was made. Which is that a restaurant worker is a slave just like a sex worker.

Your “link” isn’t “the” cause. The causes are manyfold, including criminals operating under sex work prohibition. Human trafficking victims also are forced to be maids, concubines, surrogate mothers, salon workers, factory workers, etc.

You can’t “solve” human trafficking by attacking sex workers.

I believe you that there are 'countless studies' - whether they do show a link is debateable; the number of studies doesn't signify all that much on its own, other than the issue being belaboured by its proponents in gender studies, feminism, women's studies etc., as your links demonstrate.

As is so often the case, the opinions missing from these debates are those of prostitutes themselves.