I also think this applies to full time sex worker positions if there was an “and you’ve got to fuck your boss” contract clause.
An employment contract is significantly different in that employer gets to decide who the work is done for by the employee.
Once sex work becomes legal, then it has to abide by the same rules as everyone else.
They are going to get a lot of customers that many of them would probably not want to touch if they were not getting paid to do so.
... and in many cases that will be exactly why they are getting paid to do so.
Isn't it strange how most programmers think that specialist barista work is not demeaning, but would quit on the spot if they were instructed to serve morning coffee to the management?
Oh wait, it's not strange at all! Most people who work as programmmers do not want to serve coffee, and will naturally coordinate to avoid normalizing it, lest it become a recurring part of every job description. This happens even though work as a barista does not fit into the 'dangerous and therefore segregated' category. Indeed, there would be nothing unusual about a receptionist who also handles catering at events and serves coffee to management.
Or is serving coffee also "effectively partitioned" by "our culture"?
There are things that can be optimized in serving coffee too!
And when you had enough, you can just start serving terrible coffee :D
It's just that, as it was written above, the people who would be requested to do it "feel revulsion at the idea and none would support it". They'd coordinate against ones that tried to normalize such a policy.
Many programmers don't want to live in a world where they have to agree to serve coffee every morning if they want to make their living as programmers. And they have sufficient leverage to make sure that things won't turn out that way. Doesn't mean that they have anything against people who choose to make their living serving coffee. That's the whole point.
People have even stronger feelings about the importance of sexual service not being part of receptionist job descriptions. They felt so strongly about it that they outlawed the practice, and they make sure that it stays illegal even in countries where prostitution is otherwise allowed.
It's trivial to get that exercise on its' head. If management is ok putting clauses into highly trained workers' contracts about coffee serving, as a highly trained worker, I'd demand they introduce a clause for highly-trained and highly-paid management to clean others' shoes. What's fair is fair, right?
If they can't take the same high, non-elitist ground, well, that's a clear-cut abuse, ain't it?
But to be honest, "elite" jobs classification is present across the population (ask anyone in "low-skilled" job what they think of University professors; now ask us who know how Universities run internally :)).
There is a huge difference if those "non-job" things are "communal" or written-down or coming from authority. I think most people would not have a problem taking the broom and cleaning up after someone else has left a mess at the office ("look at this mess, let me clean it up" — "hey, let me help too"). But having your "boss" order you do it is an altogether different matter.
I think you risk "why are we paying $$$$$, isn't that the guy who serves the coffee" even if it's subconscious.
But my attitude is more along the lines of "I'll do what it takes to get the job done" and that attitude comes from my veteran experience - there was no shortage of times where the NCOs (mid level enlisted) would get "dirty" when a job has to get done...
You can see it as "why is that person relegated to nothing duties"... I see it as "that guy is part of the team and will get the job done, no matter what".
I do get your point and can see how "office politics" can spin things that way.
If a company advertised for a part time programmer, part time barista, how would people react? They might think it was funny, and they probably wouldn't apply, but they wouldn't think that the very existence of such a position was unacceptable.
Gotta say that often questions like this are often as just taken as ways to win rhetorical points and not thought about seriously by those who ask them. But there's actually a good answer. Yes, sex work is extremely exploitative in the sense that you selling a "big piece" of yourself. Which doesn't mean it should be illegal but it should segregated. Why?
Other kinds of work exists that extremely exploitative - dangerous, physical exhausting, possibly-humiliating and damaging. Those should be segregated also and usually are. But let's an experiment:
Receptionist + some danger deep diving
Receptionist + some heavy underground construction
Receptionist + some lion tamer work
Dangerous heavy construction for part off your rent
I think a better retort would be that people want professional jobs where their contribution is based on seemingly objective merit. If 50% of your performance is judged by one person in an entirely subjective way, i.e. their satisfaction with sex, it’s not a very well protected job for one thing. Further, the benefit of exploitive sex industries is not having to commit - to be able to switch it up. Tightly coupling your exploitive sex with job positions whose value increases directly with the amount of institutional knowledge retained would not be wise - your turnover or dissatisfaction would be too high. Finally, despite all the efforts of exploitive industries, sex is still a biological function and very personal to many (most?). There are subtle relationships involved in such intimacy despite efforts to avoid it. From a management perspective, there’s a risk to being “friends” with people that work for you, much less having sex with them. I think it would introduce too many opportunities for personal feelings interrupting optimal productivity. Put directly, the integrity of your decision-making ability on behalf of the company would likely be compromised.
Could just as easily argue that providing sexual services increases her job security.
Sounds awesome.
None of those examples seem to have a problem...
The only way I can see prostitution as ethical is if someone can choose to have no job and be fairly comfortable.
Attitudes change and in my view it's time to stop being so emotionally negative toward sexuality and the diverse choices made among consenting adults.
But that wasn't the condition that the OP said made him comfortable. He said he'd be okay with legal sex work only as long as the person could otherwise live a life of comfort without the need to work. He didn't say he'd be okay with legal sex work as long as the person could have chosen to carry a bag instead.
Why is 'forcing beliefs' even at question, you surely don't think whether you're forcing your beliefs on someone when the issue is carrying luggage?
Or, maybe they're different classes of activity and you already realise this ...
You feel differently about someone charging for sex than someone charging to use their brain or their brawn, but that does not mean that everyone feels the same way. Why should your feeling rule the day and be enforced on adults who feel differently about it? Sounds like the church of old.
My initial post in this thread was about the legality of consenting adults engaging in whatever activities they both agree to. I tried to highlight the distinction being made and think it has a lot to do with slightly prudish notions of sexuality and frankly a notion that men and especially women aren't capable enough to make the correct choice for themselves.
We don't outlaw boxing or MMA. But we put regulations on it. We shut down illegal basement fights. And we hope people going into it aren't coerced and have recourse if something goes wrong. We accept that if an adult wants to get punched in the face for money that's something society can accommodate with reasonable expectations.
But there's no world where we would see a boss getting in the ring with his employees to fight for money as something acceptable.
I agree we shouldn't normalize employer/employee boxing matches (although I'd be willing to participate in some instances...) but it seems a lot less consequential a choice as legalizing the hybrid prostitute role.
Similarly, male students were going crazy about female teaching assistants who were admittedly very average looking, and didn't have much going for them otherwise either.
Thus, I've always interpreted that to be that "position of power" makes for an unreasonable judgement (of both brain and heart :), but you are free to make of that what you will.
Receptionism is “clean work”, consequently a receptionist cannot be forced to lower himself to dirty work. — this would apply to working with human waste or various medical work as much as prostitution, I would gander.
A receptionist can be required by contract to serve drinks, play the piano, and various other things that a receptionist does not ordinarily do, but weeding through garbage, performing sex acts, or changing diapers, — that is off limits.
Does it? You asked this on an online forum, not a national survey. I don't think our culture has a majority view on the nuance of prostitution. The most engagement I'd expect on this topic is from people who feel strongly that it shouldn't exist at all.
I'm in favour of fully legalised prostitution, but I don't want to be personally exposed to it in any capacity. I want the workplace to be about work. I don't want my money wasted arresting people for having sex.
I oppose receptionist that also has sex with the boss. Exploitation has nothing to do with that.
At least in my world view, having sex at workplace is unprofessional.
First of all, spending corporate or investor's money on paying sex workers is wrong.
Even if the boss is the sole owner of the company i.e. spending their own money, boss fucking a receptionist causes unhealthy atmosphere in the company. The company gonna have hard time attracting female candidates on other positions. Employees who have families gonna have interesting conversations with their SOs.
What's "unhealthy" about boss having sex with receptionist.
Got news for you: it already happens a lot :)
As far as employees who have families, can't they just go poly if they don't want to risk being fired?
Because it harms the company. This perk gonna reduce hiring pool by a factor of 2-4. I think many married people, women, and probably many lgbtq+ people wouldn’t want to work there.
> What's "unhealthy" about boss having sex with receptionist.
Sex between consensual adults is fine. The unhealthy atmosphere is caused by other people in and around the company knowing, and discussing, what’s going on.
> can't they just go poly if they don't want to risk being fired?
Gonna be hard to sell that idea to wives/husbands of these employees.
I think the only way to solve them, pay all employees way above market. If you do that, it doesn't matter the money to pay the receptionist comes from entertainment accounts.
Another hard to solve issue is envy. A manager in the company might want to have their own receptionist.
> would you support it then?
In a hypothetical world where all parties are totally OK with a boss sleeping with a receptionist - sure, why not?
Other people have families, for them it’s even harder to solve in a good way. You can’t just pay them more money, they might find themselves in a position to choose between job and marriage, that’s not a good position to be.
Sex at work might be a great perk for single male employees, but I think issues caused for the rest of the people are worse, gonna affect bottom line in a negative way. Hiring is the worst of them, IMO.
This doesn't make sense. Not everyone wants to weld either.
I think the answer to it might be in assigning some unscientific statistics to the world.
Starting here: perhaps 5% of people are psychologically capable of sex work. The reason behind legalizing (or decriminalizing) sex work is to maximize the liberty of, and reduce the harm to, this 5%.
Concurrently we must account for the 95%.
If we were to normalize sex work in the context other professions, then the volume of jobs requiring sex would quickly outpace the number of people who would choose that profession in lieu of economic necessity, and so you will have people be sexually exploited. Perhaps the free market will solve this in the long term but in the mean time you’ll have many a hurt persons.
So basically the whole thing is a compromise based on what we believe about the economic incentives and workforce, aiming to please multiple outlooks.
Although the “contractor” point another poster made is maybe more compelling.
I once had a debate in an online forum about legalizing prostitution, and most participants were supportive of it. Then I asked the same group, what about legalizing partial prostitution, like a receptionist that also has sex with the boss as part of the job description. The participants all immediately switched to revulsion at the idea and none would support it.
So why is 100% sex work less exploitative than 50% sex work? I don't think it is. But for some reason our culture finds specialist sex workers more tolerable. The same pressure seems to be bifurcating entertainment.