In the sense that algorithms do nudge our behaviour in insidious ways, addicted consumers of porn can be seen as victims of a sort. But, to suggest that the social stigma associated with porn usage is equal, much less anywhere near approaching, or in the same order of magnitude of the social stigma that sex workers face, is just so incredibly wrong.
So, perhaps in an aggregate sense, there is more suffering of all the men men who are slightly stigmatized because they watch too much porn. But, none of them feel this as acutely as the single single sex worker who can 1) probably never get a more "legitimate" job again 2) may not be there of her own free will (yes, even if she is getting paid) 3) may not have any support network because her family has cut her off because of what she does (this is common).
The decision finds that the company used manipulation and intimidation to force young women into signing contracts they weren't supposed to understand which were contrary to spoken agreements.
This company was big (maybe still is) and isn't an outlier in the space.
Are men victims of their own biology? How come they're the ones that predominately, are they inherently evil and exploitive, is that what we should believe.
Whoa inventing moral codes is hard, i wonder how long it will take us to figure it out again.
Being monetarily compensated doesn't prevent being a victim, which is the basis of all labor protection legislation beyond “workers must get paid at least a token amount”.
The difference is that when widespread systemic labor abuses are revealed in a manufacturing industry, people who aren't members of the capitalist class or spokespeople for the firms in the industry have no problem recognizing that the factory workers are victims.
She just didn't want to work night shift at 7/11 for $10-$15 an hour. In Fort Worth, I've seen night shift "supervisors" for the convenience store where I usually stop for gas being offered $18-$22, starting salary. With 1 year experience. Yes, that's a shitty job, on a shitty shift, and the pay is nothing to write home about at $36,000 - $44,000 a year, but for someone with nothing more than a high school degree, and clearly a tremendous lack of applicable skills, it isn't terrible.
If these women want to do porn instead of slaving away at Walmart, hey, more power to them. I don't begrudge you your choice, but don't act like there's no alternative. Entirely too many people make the claim that "there are no jobs for me!" when what they mean is, "There aren't any jobs that I want to do, I'm not supposed to be a janitor, I'm supposed to be a TikTok star!!"
That's the big fucking lie our society has told people for the past 40+ years. Most of us, even most of us in high positions in respected companies, are easily replaceable cogs.
A lot of people were very concerned about Apple's future when Steve Jobs died. Looking at the M1 chip, it seems like Tim Cook and Apple will be just fine.
How would they find out?
Of course the men choose to contribute but the incentive structure is for the women to foster a sense of intimacy or connection so they can exploit it for cash. It's a voluntary association, but it doesn't seem like a morally neutral or harmless association to me.
This is not to say that the harm men face from exploitation is greater than the harm that women face - or that women don't also face this phenomenon, but just that it is also a harmful byproduct of the service.
and yet this gets expressed all the time under the feminist banner. Either real feminists have no control over the brand, or it's been hijacked.
its especially a nonsense argument when you note that porn is one of the few industries with a huge pay gap - and in favor of women. its so significant that top tier actresses pay scale has a floor that is higher than the ceiling of the equivalent male talent.
Have you seen Hot Girls Wanted? What was the average salary of female porn talent, annually, again? Less than $40,000 if I recall correctly? If even that much? It might have been $35,000.
That's $17.50 an hour. That's a line worker at an injection molding plant making car parts. And that's a job that gets you health, dental, vision, life, short-term disability, long-term disability insurance, and a few other perks. That's in Arlington, TX. I know that because I have a family member who works there. She also gets every holiday that the corresponding GM assembly plant gets, because after all, why do they need to be at work if GM isn't making cars? And this is a job that is so "demanding", you don't even have to submit a resume. You literally just show up, take a drug test, get 2 hours of training in a classroom, get 4 hours of training on the factory floor, and you start the next day. She did.
If porn actors and actresses had the wherewithal to actually set up all the necessary shit to run their own studios... they wouldn't need to do porn.
You have to understand cameras, optics, lighting, video and sound editing, advertising, search engine optimization, website creation, front-end development, back-end development, etc. and so forth.
The "whole package" stack for a single person, or even a small group of people, wanting to get into porn, is significant. Anyone who has even a few of the skills I listed above, doesn't have to get fucked on camera for money.
Why is it such an extremely hard to believe fact that maybe there are people out there that aren't doing it because they are desperate sluts that are failures of society and are actually doing it because its work that they enjoy.
Why is working at an injection molding plant making car parts such a better job? Seems extremely boring in comparison. The only real argument to make for it is that there are people out there who feel the need to shame people doing that kind of work and don't feel the need to do that for the person making auto parts.
The real comparison is also not the factory job, but the jobs that are like musicians and artists. Most of them know after a certain age they aren't going to get rich doing it but its work they enjoy. Some people get a little older and eventually decide to go for a different line of work but theres people that will shame the sex worker directing or doing scenes on the side (possibly even fire them from their job) but will praise the guy being in a Bob Dylan cover band with a couple of his friends.
Theres exploitation in the system that needs to be fixed but it seems like sites like OnlyFans giving the content creators choice are making steps towards that, as opposed to the others entrenched in the industry that are happy to take advantage of young people, something common in a lot of industries. Politicians, tech companies, other aspects of the entertainment idustry, have been happy to exploit unpaid and underpaid interns straight out of college. Nobody deserves to be exploited because they are young.
Probably because we're biologically programmed to understand that's not the case?
It boils down to a simple, but true, undeniable - and apparently for a lot of people, unpleasant - maxim from biology - Sperm are cheap, eggs are expensive.
There's a reason that male birds evolved colorful plumage and in many cases, elaborate dance displays. There's a reason the males of hundreds of thousands of other species have evolved to impress females of their species.
You may not like it. You may not agree with it. You may not condone it. But you're not going to change it. You don't have the power. The only thing that'll change this is time. Lots and lots of time. People think you can separate genetically reinforced biologically-ingrained biases from culture. You can't. You won't. No one can. It has to progress slowly, over time.
The world that many progressive people want may come to pass one day, but it won't be today, it won't be tomorrow, it won't be 10 years from now, it won't be 100 years from now.
Bookmark this comment and come back whenever you want. See how long it takes for the majority of society to shift. You'll have a very long wait.
I have noticed huge changes in my life.
The bigotry and prejudice about sexual desire and sexual "acting out" may or may not be due to some fantasy about the relative price of sperm and eggs.
In other cultures, other places, other times that bigotry, prejudice, and shaming was/is not a thing.
A equally valid possibility is the shaming of sex work is due to misogyny. It is the powerful men brought down by the "sluts and whores". Hence the shaming.
I have a argument for that: In my country until recently it was a crime to offer sex for money but not pay money for sex. If the underlying cause was "relative cost" not misogyny then that difference would not exist
And don't think we can't move backwards from here... quickly, violently, and for many years, decades, even centuries. Its happened before with humanity. Who knows how many times before we had recorded records to reference?
The entirety of the field of evolutionary psychology.
I had a huge post typed up, but I realize that because you immediately went on the attack:
> You clearly have very limited experience with woman.
You're not interested in actually learning anything. You think you already know. You think you've read all the literature. You actually think you're well-informed.
What you want is for people to shut the fuck up and agree with, because you don't want your worldview challenged.
> Claiming that all woman are or are not X (for any X) shows that your view of woman is simple enough to almost be a caricature.
You talk about being a caricature, then immediately go for a statement like this, which is a combination of the worst kind of pedantry and high-functional mental disability...
Here's one for you. Fact: Men are stronger than women. When a biologist says this, they don't mean every man is stronger than every woman. They mean almost all men are stronger than almost all women.
This is one, of many papers in the field: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0265407513487638
having said that: gender is a spectrum. it's very fluid. it's true for all animals. including humans. but evolution takes millions of years. not the average human lifespan.
unless. we modify it but it wont be natural selection that we can witness in our lifetimes.
It enjoy being subjected to different views. I hope we can uphold a certain standard for expressing them around here.
Other then reputation nightmare of doing that kind of business, most of SV would jump in without hesitation. There’s shit tone of money in it, worth of grabbing for them... :)
So it may not be that they don't care about women. Simply that they don't understand and recognize the harm to women.
She was a tough old bird. Married at 16. First kid at 18. Last child at 44. Grandma didn't get a washing machine until 1970, if I recall. Had she not been there to take care of the kids and the farm, Grandpa couldn't have worked at an industrial bakery from 4 a.m. to noon. Then from noon to around 3, he'd come home and sleep, then take over work in the fields until dusk.
Grandpa sold his body in manual labor, but Grandma was right beside him.
It kind of disgusts me that a lot of modern women look down on someone like my Grandma, who built a happy home, a beautiful family, and fostered literally nothing but warm and special memories for all her kids and grandkids.
> Stop being such a incel loser jesus.
I'm not even sure how you got here, from what I posted... other than having to assume you have some significant psychological issues. Talk to someone, please. Your mental attitudes aren't healthy.
I have had plenty of women in my life judge my Grandma, forgetting she was a teenager during The Great Depression, and forgetting that women of rural Mississippi had very little avenues of fulfillment beyond child rearing and household administration available to them. Or even worse, they think they could have done anything different... failing to recognize their fathers would have essentially married them off, and their husbands would have beaten them until they fell in line.
Historically, virtually all women passed on their genes, but 60 % of men did not. (Numbers approximate)
At the same time the whole reason women had gold jewlery was because they weren't allowed to have money, so take it as you will
We went from “women can’t do what men do” or “women should never have careers because it’s bad for the family” to “any woman who stays home is letting herself down,” or is stupid, etc.
How about this: women who want careers can have them, women who don’t can stay home, and both are okay because people have the right to choose their course in life.
However, feminism is a (very) broad church and the majority of feminist that I’ve come across would argue for legislative and other societal barriers be removed so that a woman is free to choose between motherhood and career – or whatever balance works best for her own inclinations and circumstances.
Empowering for men too. Patriarchy is harmful to everybody
and yet, feminists will talk about feminism in overall positive terms without qualification. If it's a broad church, it can't be all positive.
We are useful by default.
They have to prove themselves
Talking about feminists then "We are useful", I might assume you are a feminist, but switching between 1st and 3rd person.
Or, you say "We are useful by default" as if from the other perspective (i.e. mine). If so, hard to tell if you are responding to me specifically, or some "HN crowd" generally; in either case, yes, feminists have to prove themselves, or specifically their ideology. And no, I haven't said anything about "useful by default", that's your strawman.
I think you're being sarcastic, in which case your whole post is just a bad-faith, low-effort dismissal. It'd be useful if you'd respond less cryptically.
None of what you say follows from my post at all. Unless you think "responding cryptically" is a form of feminism.
Your contra argument implicitly assumes that tech makes are special kind of males that don't use porn.
Porn doesn't compare favorably to their other opportunities. Full Stop.
If it did compare favorably, they would be putting money and resources in porn.
If you go on reddit you can find many threads discussing cam girls who are suspected to either be underage or be literal sex slaves.
There are actual ethical porn producers of various flavours (also featured on HN quite a few times). Onlyfans is not one of them.
It's such a primitive and toxic line of thinking. The real explanation is that SV doesn't care about the plight of porn actresses not because they're women, but because people in general mostly care about themselves and their closest ones only. Just see that the SV also doesn't care about the plight of rare earth miners (which SV needs for their electronics), even though they're mostly men. I.e. the gender is not a factor here, and yet article authors try very hard to make it look like it is.