Well, one day kid will want to know where you work and what you do and you can't lie forever. Especially if somehow they learn early or other kids will.

But yeah there is plenty of worse things that can happen.

Why is it that people have a purely punitive approach to this? Because they get to feel puritan with a semi-reasonable argument: sex work damages others!

Except ... what determines if this is better or worse is the alternative. If you're really after the welfare of the child, what determines your position is the alternative ... What damages the child more? Taking the child away, in India, leads to this:

https://borgenproject.org/orphans-in-india/

So no, a parent who's a sex worker is a LOT better. And that should be the basis for your moral position. It's all well and good to define an ideal and then blame people for not attaining perfection ... but of course we'd all be in jail if that's how we actually work.

You want to change sex work? Offer these people some better options. And if you can't do that, for whatever reason, throwing the child into child services IS NOT a good second option.

And I would argue this applies to pretty much every country in the world, including the US. The situation of orphans may not be quite as bad as in India, it's certainly not better than living with (very) suboptimal parents.

And, frankly, that should be the only concern.

I didn't say it damages anything; I said it will be pretty hard talk to have and hard to manage situation, especially if it somehow leaks to the other kids, kids are cruel. And things that are hard can go bad easily.

"But the other job earning less money would be worse for kid!" is extremely one-dimensional view on that

And I'm not sure how your weird rant about child services is even related to that

> And I'm not sure how your weird rant about child services is even related to that

That's the only alternative you/society offers for these children. So that's what you should compare to. I get that you don't want to do that, because it totally demolishes your argument, but it still is the only alternative.

What’s wrong with the truth?

"Timmy what you mommy does?"

"My mommy sucks dicks for money"

That's what

You can abstract it. My mommy is a dancer, or my mommy is an actor and she does shows for one grownup at a time.

It's really not difficult to find a true statement that is also not the whole truth. It's not like my kid understands what I do for a living beyond the company name I work for. Abstraction is fine and normal.

Well, he asked for truth, not lying. What you're doing is lying. Which can be fine but let's not invent new names for lying, it already has enough of them.

It's not lying.

Am I lying to my kid when I say I "work with computers"? No, it's an abstraction. My 8 year old doesn't need to understand what a datacenter is, but just because I elide details doesn't mean I'm lying to them.

Someday I had to tell my kid that people have two mommies and some people have two daddies, and you know what? It was fine. You can abstract it for a kid until they are old enough to understand.

It seems like a judgemental attitude induced by religion. Those most against prostitution seem to be in religious groups.

I would go further and say that some people who are against sex work are against the propensity for other crime to occur (including trafficking, drug use etc) or for violence to be perpetrated against sex workers.

Ironically, if we didn't have puritan attitudes, the majority of those issues would be mitigated quite drastically.

In a strange twist, I wonder if the puritan attitudes increase the retail 'price' of sex work? Said attitude/laws increase risk, which lowers the number of workers in the market, which increases potential earnings of those willing to participate in the market.

The earnings for a streetwalker, who is at the bottom of the heap pretty much, is low. Some years ago I was offered sex for £15. I still feel sorry for that lonely lady who was just trying to get by best she could. I hope she's well.

As I moved across my country (US) I stopped at a hotel for the night. As I got out of my car in the hotel parking lot, an emaciated, twitchy, and frankly quite unattractive woman approached me and explicitly offered me her mouth to "release that road trip stress". I said no, thanks for the offer but I have to get some rest, sorry, maybe next time. Certainly not my first encounter with the hallowed and empowered sex worker caste, and my response was met with apparent grace. She moved along to the next family pulling up.

Between the time it took for me to check in to my $25+tax/night room and get back to my car to park closer to my assigned room, 3 of my 4 windows were smashed and 4 of my 6 Rubbermaid bins and suitcases full of personal belongings were gone. It was full daylight and there were many other people going in and out of the area. There were cameras. It was the middle of a built up suburban area that appeared nominally safe.

All I got from the hotel was a 20% discount for the night. All I got from the experience was an increase in multiple forms of prejudicial behavior that I still struggle with daily.

I also have a lot of... experience with the sex industry, from multiple angles.

I say this just as a anecdote, but my overall take is that people in this industry are not necessarily "just trying to get by". There are at least some participants whose primary goal is to harm others in some way for their own enjoyment -- on all sides.

Who made it their primary goal to harm someone for enjoyment in your story?

> It seems like a judgemental attitude induced by religion. Those most against prostitution seem to be in religious groups.

That's a common misconception, but it's simply not true. If you talk to actual sex workers, they'll consistently tell you that they face judgemental attitudes and discrimination across the board, not just from religious people.

Fair enough, that was just my impression. But it is my impression also that most *organised groups against prostitution often seem to have religion behind them. I may well be wrong though.

A frightening large amount of people have terrible and judgemental attitudes towards sex work of any kind even though there they are objectively irrational. Rather than introspect, they try to debate and argue they are somehow correct. This is one of my favorite most unapologetic videos on the entire internet: https://files.catbox.moe/fzmvu0.mp4

Well, sex work corrupts the workers psychologically and aids the addiction of customers. Sex work is a lot closer to selling mild drugs than to mowing lawns. It's hardly the worst thing in our society, for there are far worse white collar jobs that are officially respected, but it's not a reason to whitewash it. Another way to think about it is to imagine it's a virtual reality that customers pay for to get a dopamine rush. The VR allows to create any experience for the customers, but is it a good thing to do?

The idea that the person who gave birth to you is being used to pleasure random men for money is psychologically traumatizing because every child treasures and looks up to their parents (or wants to). Their life and identitiy is intertwined with yours and their decision or vicitimization is also by extension affecting you.

You want your parents to be valued and respected. You would think sex for money is valuing but it is or at least feels like devaluing. It is one thing for your parent to have sex because they want to and for the sake of it, it is another thing to do it because they have to which means they are unable or unwilling to provide anything else of value to pursue partners they are interested in, instead of the general public.

The idea that anyone, even neighbors and hobos could be paying to penetrate the person you treasure the most and is supposed to be role model and teach you how to live right is at the very least disturbing. Even porn stars work with other porn stars but prostitutes at best filter by appearances aside from money.

Children are protective of their parents and vice versa. Whether a child or parent, seeing them become a prostitute feels like something sacred to you is being desecrated.

If that doesn't make sense to you, I suggest taking off the ideological glasses.

>If that doesn't make sense to you, I suggest taking off the ideological glasses.

You might want to check and see who is wearing the ideological glasses. You are the one who has the hangup here.

Sex is. People enjoy sex. People can enjoy sex with close intimate partners or flings. People can enjoy sex or perform it for money. Not all sex work is penetrative either.

You've got a narrow and restrictive view of the world.

Human psychology is not a world view. This is not a matter if opinion. You are just stuck on an extremist view where sex is cool in a ll context when it isn't.

You're right, it's not a matter of opinion, and in this case you are the one with the wrong opinion.

99.9% of humanity is on my side on this. You're free to have your opinion just keep in mind it isn't valid just because you say it is. I told you how things are and you did not refute what I said, you just made ideological statements and mental gymnastics to help you hold on to your opinion. The world is not as black and white as you want it to be.

> 99.9% of humanity is on my side on this.

Citation very much needed.

> I told you how things are

You very much did not. You shared your opinion, just like you did with the 99.9% "statistic". Get over yourself.

It was obviously a guesstimate not a statistic. It was my opinion but it is also correct, go outside and ask random people how they feel about this and find out for yourself.

> It was my opinion but it is also correct

You are clearly unable to have a discussion in any sort of good faith. You cannot just assert things are true and then say, "Well, they were just my opinion, but also they are axiomatically true."

I'm done. You'll probably tell me that I'm being ideological or something, but I don't have the time to argue with someone who isn't able to engage in a productive dialog. (Either the "we have different opinions, and that's ok, let's talk through them and listen" or the "here's some factual discussion, with some sources that aren't anecdata.")

If 99.9% of humanity agrees that sex work is bad, then surely sex workers and their customers combined must make up at most 0.1% of the population, right? And yet there are an estimated 1 to 2 million prostitutes in the US, so about 0.2% of the population, and presumably the clients outnumber the sex workers... so your magic number seems very very unlikely. I doubt even 99.9% of your friends and family would share your opinion, though they may not feel comfortable admitting this to you (you seem rather judgemental and close-minded).

> how it would present any more negativity than any other physical labor

The mistake is characterizing sex work as "physical labor."

There is a well documented link between sex work and trauma/psychological disorders.

How would you characterize sex work if not physical labor, together with a bunch of other characteristics too.

There is documented links between content moderation (and a bunch of other professions too) and trauma/psychological disorders. Hence these professions should be able to talk to psychiatrists freely, like any work that has a metal toll.

together with a bunch of other characteristics too

you genuinely dont see how your parent being a prostitute may not be the best thing for a kid? have you existed in society at all or just in your ideological bubble? regardless of the mental gymnastics you want to do, the kid is going to have a hard life just based on how they are treated by the other kids who know about this.

You made a throwaway to post this comment?

not an argument. and no i made this throwaway to post a different comment.

you genuinely dont see how your parent being trans may not be the best thing for a kid? have you existed in society at all or just in your ideological bubble? regardless of the mental gymnastics you want to do, the kid is going to have a hard life just based on how they are treated by the other kids who know about this.

not really sure what you were going for here. being trans is like being a prostitute?

Sex work is correlated with poverty and mental problems. Of course people are going to think such an individual is likely to be an unfit parent.