Sex Work | Philosophy Tube

Getting caught up on my essential YouTube creators. This one was thoughtful and super informative. Thanks a lot for making this video.

What makes you think those of us that are concerned over this are all privileged people? You don't know the backgrounds of either Kit or myself, you shouldn't be making assumptions about what situations either of us live in or what kind of privileged we might have compared to a sex worker (who might actually have more privileged than us because of their sex, gender, race, class, whatever). Picking at people with that without having seen them and knowing who or what they are is not helpful and it certainly doesn't change my opinion or make me feel any less concerned over the potential risks and dangers that legalizing or decriminalizing certain kinds of sex work could bring. You can also criminalize Johns for seeking prostitutes while decriminalizing women who engage in it. This isn't a zero sum game. The safety of all women should be the priority, not one category against the other.

This was the video that brought me to your channel in the first place. As an exSexWorker, I am very glad that you were able to approach this subject with such detail and respect. Glad to be both a subscriber and a Patron now, amazing work and well done!

The tricky thing about this line of enquiry is that it holds the most vulnerable people responsible for systemic patriarchal violence. Let's say, for the sake of the argument, that decriminalising sex would lead to an increase in aggressive propositioning for a majority of women. Keeping it criminalised to avoid that would be saying that we're going to throw the most vulnerable people (sex workers, trans women of color, etc) under the bus to ensure women with much more privilege don't have their comfort or safety compromised at all. I gotta say, I don't want to demand any group of people compromise their safety to help others. So I don't much like the point I'm drawing above. But I think the original point - of the existence of legal, normalised sex work being speculated to increase toxic objectification of women - kinda begs these questions. Whose safety are we prioritising? And whose danger are we accepting? And is it ever ok to hold women responsible for stopping patriarchal violence by limiting their behaviour to ways that don't provoke violence against them? My personal view is that we could (and should) fix objectification, catcalling, and rape culture without requiring women to give up any freedom and bodily autonomy. Men must be held responsible and face consequences for toxic violent behaviour. Sex workers should not be made to pay any price for that.

Really great presentation, Olly! I've worked with and around sex workers, and in other grey markets,for years and this is the most comprehensive treatment of decriminalization that I've seen yet. Congrats!

Foxx Cant

We definitely need to be talking more about decriminalizing sex work—I’m so glad you took this topic on, and the ~*~magic~*~ was a gud touch. ^_^ 💛

There already are people who expect poor people to put out for money. The scummy men you speak of already feel like they can bring money into the equation to get what they want. The situation you fear developing already exists. I've known women who were not prostitutes who were unable to get assistance from the police due to the current attitudes regarding prostitution and the belief many police seem to have that a "reasonable suspicion" on their part was sufficient grounds to decide someone was a prostitute and thinking that a well-dressed attractive woman walking around downtown late at night near a major law firm's building was probably a prostitute. (She was actually an IT specialist, but dressed less provocatively than some of her lawyer friends.) The current situation serves to keep the people who are willing to sell sex to improve their situation in their bad situation. If there weren't the social and legal issues with the career path, these women would leave the field as quickly as possible, causing a slightly higher correlation between physical attractiveness and education level. (Mostly because more physically attractive people could probably get through this new system to more traditional employment faster.) In areas where the age of consent is greater than 14, that 14 year old girl would still be protected by the age of consent laws. Olly's presentation has not changed my position; I've thought our anti-prostitution laws have been poorly designed for a long time. I also am not certain that full decriminalization is the right answer. I am certain that the laws that define pimping are a huge part of the overall problem, for the many reasons described in this video, and probably more. Supporting someone in engaging in lawful activities should not be unlawful, and it's a mockery of justice to do so. But even beyond that, even in places when prostitution is illegal, making it illegal to treat prostitutes like regular human beings is ridiculous. Defining a taxi cab driver as a pimp because he picked up a fare he knew was a prostitute - is the world crazy? Apparently, the answer is yes.

Some Ed

Thank you for this comment, I completely agree.

This truly was your best work. Congrats!

I feel both informed AND represented, which as a very intersectionally marginalised person is one of the biggest compliments I can give. New patron! <3

So this video and topic is one that I honestly go back and forth on, and I think some of it has to do with there being a difference between what my lived-experience tells me could happen and the cut-and-dry legalistic and philosophical arguments. So this could get messy, but here I go. I'm trying to imagine what being a woman in a world where prostitution is legal and normalized would be like, where sex is fully commercialized. One of the arguments is that many people in sex work do it because it is their only route out of poverty, and there is no arguing that. However, if prostitution were normal and legalized, in a non-nordic country with rampant poverty, would it create the expectation that people in poverty *should* participate in sex work? Or the expectation that their bodies are for sale because they need the money? The legal boundary and the stigma currently keep that expectation from existing. There are several natural power imbalances at the heart of gender inequality that really scramble trying to envision a world where sex work is done ethically. When we talk about heterosexual men paying for sex from women, the "premium product" is going to be the youngest women. The biggest problem with this is that this is a demographic with the least access to experience, information, and physical parity that one needs to negotiate for oneself on an equal footing. The physical disadvantage is a big part of why sex work is such a conundrum - part of being able to say you are on equal footing is to have someone to enforce your part of the deal if the client breaks theirs, and until women can get bionic enhancements, that means being dependent on someone else. Someone who is also in a position to take advantage of you for the same reason. I think one of the ideas with legalizing sex work is to allow sex workers to use the same protection/enforcement mechanism women currently use if all other walks of life - the police and legal infrastructure. Maybe that would work if we ever got to a point where we trusted police, but Olly - I thought that wasn't your bag? Alright, so I had a thought about stigma about prostitution, and how I would expect scummy men to act in response and how I would act in response. By scummy men I am referring to guys who are already aggressive in soliciting attention and propositioning women, who cat-call, who ignore the boundaries that are already in place. I am trying to imagine how the belief that they are free to bring money into the situation would work out, and that these unsolicited confrontations are actually legitimate business proposals. I fear "I am not a prostitute" would suddenly be something I would have to argue with strangers regularly, who would feel emboldened to argue with me about that ("there is nothing wrong with it!"), and who might even sublimate their rejection into feeling some kind of justified anger (danger! danger!) that I have kept them from something they have the correct amount of money to rightfully have. Very quickly, women would probably develop a defensive (probably visual) code to attempt to immediately in unequivocally tell scummy men "I am not for sale - leave me alone!". ...And this immediately sets the stage for stigma towards those *not* sending that message. Imagine being a prettier-than-average 14 year old girl who lives in this world. Imagine being a prettier-than-average 14 year old girl who lives in poverty, where men who leer are now often men who think they have a legitimate transaction to work out with you - the only question is price and if they have what it take to negotiate you down. And sure, sex work with minors probably wouldn't ever be legal, but if it is normalized for 18+, people will "pretend not to know". I am not someone who tends to find "free market" arguments to be viable, and I didn't think that you were either. I am not for the full criminalization that it has now, and I am perplexed at how it could be regulated/legalized in a good-faith manner. But I am definitely very skeptical about arguments for complete decriminalization.

What Backpage was doing was criminal under other laws. The criminalization of prostitution prevents the victims from seeking legal relief to their exploitation. I think Olly's guest did cover this concept pretty well (25:33), she just didn't apply it to this particular situation. Your second point is a good one; it's the one topic that he said he would cover (12:44), but failed to follow through, at least explicitly. Implicit coverage: most sex workers are doing it because it's their alternative to poverty. decriminalizing sex work would allow them to better leverage their sex work proceeds to improve their education and then get jobs outside of the sex work industry. But actual study results on what actually happened would be useful. The results exist, they should have been included, and not including them could suggest to some that those results didn't support his point, especially since he said at the beginning that he would come back to that topic. While it's probably too late for this video, it would be good if he came out with another video that follows through on that claim. I'd understand if it's not his next one, as I understand he's probably going to get a lot of flak for this video, and he probably will need to not come back to the topic for a while to let that settle down. This is a big issue, and there's not going to be any one video that does enough to address all of the concerns. It can't be done. This video is overall pretty helpful, but I agree that I would like to see more on this topic that addresses more concerns that were missed in this video. While he did come back to the topic of whether sex work is fundamentally problematic (27:23), I feel like the coverage of that topic was somewhat light considering the complexity of the topic. Watching the video for a third time, I do see that there's quite a few aspects that are discussed, but it feels like there's more complexity to the topic. I do feel like the other areas follow the same theme: there's real problems, but they're not addressed by blaming prostitution and other sex work. Instead, having this stuff criminalized makes it much harder to address these issues. As much as it seems the criminalization of prostitution and exotic dancing (not mentioned here, but I've heard of it happening) claim to try to protect the women who suffer most from these problems, it seems like they only really make them more vulnerable.

Some Ed

Brilliantly insightful and eloquently composed as always. Thank you Olly!

Great video, thought provoking and entertaining. And I now have an additional appreciation for living in New Zealand.

Michael Edmonds

thanks for all the incredible work you do Olly. Visually interesting and thought-provoking as always. Thank you <3

This video is really interesting and well put together. I learned a lot.

I am a strong believer in decriminalizing prostitution. I was really excited for this video but I feel like you weren't really concerned about tackling the issues of teenagers being trafficked through online platforms. Backpage was being used for years to sell sex from underaged girls and the controversial FOSTA-SESTA legislation was meant to directly address that issue since Backpage was purposely trying to hide those illegal advertisements. FOSTA-SESTA has problems, without a doubt, but I think it's pretty biased not to address the real issue of at risk kids being trafficked through online platforms and the historical examples of those incidents happening in online places where sex workers and/or pimps were often advertising to clients. I also wish you would have addressed the Harvard study about the relationship between legalized prostitution and increases in sex trafficking because there has been research done about these issues and this video really didn't touch upon them. It's great that you are trying to humanize people who work in the sex industry and touch on the issues of police violence but I don't think this video does enough to address sex trafficking concerns. It would be very naive to believe that these issues aren't valid or people shouldn't be concerned about it.