Because certain people (homeless, mentally ill, dealing with substance abuse) will agree to degrading treatment that no regular person would accept. Taking advantage of someone in these sorts of situations is predatory.
But in aggregate, this system creates a huge financial incentive to exploit anyone you can.
I'm all for regulation, if done in a non-puritanical, individual freedom-promoting way. People should be able to choose to be involved in producing porn. No one should feel forced into producing porn.
If we, as a society, aren't willing to ban porn (and I don't think we should), then we have a moral obligation to prevent workplace exploitation in its production via regulation, investigation, and social support resources.
IMHO doing obviously unethical work for money is also degrading and is much more common than porn. It's one thing if someone wants the money and doesn't care, but there are millions of people around the world in e.g. scam call centers that do this kind of work to stay out of the worst of the slums.
"fuck you money" is undefined. I am pretty sure that there are people that do not care about the amount, they care how they are compared to their peers. Just for these people, arguably most people, your solution already fails.
The other simplification is the assertion that degradation is a universal concept and that the threshold is the same. This is extremely difficult to define and i am pretty sure a catholic priest's definition of degradation starts at anything else than marital sex. We can define something more liberal but then we need to take the great step of saying what is acceptable regarding one's sexuality. Seems to me most liberal societies decide to bail that discussion, just deciding that if you did it without coercion it is fine. I also find that position objectionable by the way, as there are work contracts which are by definition illegal(eg, a contract for work of more than 40 hours per week), and i do not see why we could not go further.
All and all, maybe giving these people social security, requirements for mental and physical tests, a subsidy for change of employment, could help lower the chance of unfair and dysfunctional societies. At the same time if someone wants to do, distribute or consume this stuff, then we get the benefit that the chain is legitimate. I think that is really worth it. Sex workers do really important social work.
But agreed that the greater good would be looking at the structural facts that force people into unethical work and addressing those.
Brutal take, but I would argue it's just as valid as the opposite take:
"People who helplessly fell through the cracks become victims of those preying on the weak"
In reality its a mix of both and would come down to arguing over which is more prevelant.
Yes that's generally how jobs work. You need to take them to make money to survive. Porn is not special in this case.
You may argue that the difference is entirely cultural and if our culture were different, sex work would stop being special, but with things being as they are, there's no place on Earth where sex work isn't different from other forms of work.
Heck, just looking at it without considering the actual sex acts and sexual nature of the work, porn is mixing a lot of extremes from other fields of work (emotional labor, selling your physical likeness, intense physical labor, etc) while often involving extremely toxic work environments and abusive business practices. It's "easy money" in terms of money received as a function of time spent, but it's not at all an easy line of work even if you ignore all the social and cultural aspects of it (e.g. risk of losing your home, losing custody, being disowned by your family, difficulty finding romantic partners, risk of being physically, emotionally and sexually abused by people outside work, etc).
>can’t turn down due to other issues
Like what? The difference between soft and hardcore stuff is probably ~10x the payout at the extreme end. So instead of one $3-5K scene and lets go shopping you now have to work every 2-4 days.
so the term i’m dancing around is intersectionality. the opportunities afforded to these folks present them with artificially constrained options, and that constraint is the true issue here, not the porn. do not misrepresent my argument because you assumed i was being an ass, i’m just trying to call it as it is and for us to acknowledge it not change it lol
The contracts porn stars sign are often abusive of themselves.
American prudishness is a nasty force in the world. Sex work needs better regulation, less stigma, and maybe post office style banking isn't such a bad idea, since they couldn't discriminate against people in this arena.
It's one thing to look at a story like this and say "oh, well, porn actresses knowingly make bad choices, I guess they just want the cash" and another to question what drives people to knowingly self-harm for money.