@justamarxist - Well, I think there is a difference between removing the stigma from sex-providers, and going to the other extreme, where we pretend there is nothing degrading about paid-sex. So, acknowledging that it is a degrading activity is appropriate. And it's necessary if we're going to avoid normalising the s-industry. For one thing, normalisation would make the public much less likely to fund exit-strategies for sex-providers... which is the subject of an upcoming video in this series.
I'd rather live in a world where ppl aren't seen as sexual objects - a world where I can be in public and not deal with men who feel entitled to grope me. I wonder - how does NZ deal with underage/trafficked prostitutes? Nevada gets THAT very wrong. are prostitutes arrested for not being in zones?
@cannibalcountry - Yep, I certainly won't be moving to NZ, or Australia, any time soon. But Sweden, that's a different matter. Last time I was over there (several years ago now) it was amazing how people just took gender equality for granted. It was like being able to breath fresh air for the first time :-)
@WatcherAzazel - What you're basically saying here is that I shouldn't impose my opinions on people, but that is to miss the point. People in any society have opinions, and the aggregate of those opinions is called a social norm. Norms can be reasonable or over-bearing, of course, but they are not invalid. They're also not something that can be justified rationally. This was summed up by the opening sentence of the Declaration of Independence - "We hold these truths to be self-evident...."
@mickGPN It's one thing to hold certain rights to be self-evident, as rights require government inaction, and inaction should be the default for any government in any situation. You, however, are calling for government ACTION, which you have to justify, and you must do so rationally. Otherwise there is no valid reason for any truly secular government to do what you propose.
@WatcherAzazel - Where did you get this idea that rights require government inaction? Once you lot decided you had a right to live without a monarchy, you did something very active... like, fighting a war for independence. // But, anyway, apart from that, what do you think of my idea that the very experience of buying sex tends to generate a lot of resentment in men, leading to stigmatisation of prositutes, given that it forces sex-providers to be manipulative and phoney.
@mickGPN *facepalm* First off, show me a study indicating that. Secondly, you claim to not be pro-vanilla sex, but you seem to assume sadism is inherently bad. Thirdly, we fought against monarchy because it was infringing our rights,and thus we needed to protect our rights. The need to protect our rights is a rational justification for action. Thus, we had a rational justification.
@WatcherAzazel (1) You people are obsessed with statistics As if they are the one true way to prove something Just tell me if you think it sounds plausible and true to life? // One reason I'm not vanilla is cos I accept that pain can be part of sex - which cd be anything from someone digging their nails into your back, to... who knows what. What I don't accept, in any situation, is degradation and objectification - which is why "sadist" is pretty much my secular definition of evil and fucked-up
@mickGPN (2) Protecting yr rights? Which rights? How do u rationally decide which rights are reasonable, and which not? Ultimately it comes down to "We hold these truths, etc". // And what about the vast number of Americans who wanted to stay with Britain? They were idiots, in my opinion, but presumably you wd have been okay with forcing them to go along with the majority decision to fight a war against monarchy? So, presumably, you do allow majority opinion to impose itself in some situations
@mickGPN 1) That IS the only way to prove things. 2) My ideal is "your rights end where my rights begin." In short, you have the right to do absolutely anything that doesn't involve harming another human being ("harm" being, for the most part, being defined by the person being harmed, within certain reasonable boundaries. For instance,my ex-girlfriend can't retract consent to sex she gave me four years ago, and charge me with rape).
@WatcherAzazel (1) There wouldn't be any statistical surveys for make up your mind for you, if it wasn't for the people who answered those surveys. And to answer, they must have had opinions. So, where did their opinions come from? Other surveys? At some point, there has to be an authentic person who can feel, empathize and have a spontaneous opinion. Fortunately there are still such people in the world, despite the agenda of libertarian capitalism which is trying to turn us all into commodities
@mickGPN ...um, no. Statistics don't simply come from surveys of random people on how they feel about an issue. You might survey sex workers, but that would be to see how they felt about their situations, and how they felt they could be improved (ever seen a video called "Nothing about us without us?"). However, the most important statistics would be crime statistics (on, ya know, actual crimes).
@WatcherAzazel (a) Ah now, you're using surveys AFTER the event, to help decide if an opinion, or a social norm, is in tune with reality. That's perfectly reasonable. My point is (as I say below) - When I say I've got an opinion about what people do, you can't assume an automatic right to always reply, "Well, mind your own business". (Because people having opinions about other people is how social norms get formed.) ...cont
@mickGPN (b) Also, statistics by themselves can't enable you to form an opinion. If you take some surveys (i.e. data) and add logic, plus what you feel about how society should work - that's how you form an opinion about society. But that's what you call "not minding your own business"
@mickGPN "how society should work?" So, you and you alone have the right to determine how our society should, ideally, function? Or you and people who agree with you? When is society ever allowed to just function on its own, independent of your or anyone else's expectations?
@mickGPN *facepalm* Did you seriously just suggest (via that "AFTER the event comment") that prostitution is a one-time event? If it was, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
And I can assume that until you show me an overwhelming amount of evidence and, furthermore, sex workers as a group agree with you. In fact, to fully justify your opinion, every sex worker on Earth would have to agree with you.
@mickGPN Now, your example of the American Revolution actually isn't a very good one, because there were just as many selfish motivations behind it (ie, the colonists wanted to take even more land from the Native Americans than Great Britain would allow, and they believed some weird conspiracy theories about Great Britain letting the Catholics come in and take over. Furthermore, the taxation policies were pretty mild, given what Britain spent on them), as their were good motivations.
@mickGPN But, the simple fact remains that you're comparing the standard we hold our governments to, to the standard we individuals to, even though the standards are opposite. Whenever the government wishes to do ANYTHING it must be justified. However, whenever we wish to STOP an individual person from doing anything, then it is stopping them that must be justified. The declaration of Independence was about the rights of the citizens, not of a government.
@WatcherAzazel - So why didn't the 12 (?) guys who signed it not just put it out as a pamphlet, headed "This is our opinion", then wander off and let people do whatever they felt like. Instead, for some reason, they set up an army, a tax system, and an embryonic social welfare system, etc.
@mickGPN ...I honestly have no idea how you believe this to be a logical reponse to what came before it. I repeat: Taking against a government to protect individual rights, is NOT the same thing as taking action against an individual whose doing something you don't approve of. You are comparing apples and oranges.
@WatcherAzazel - Well, you do accept the idea of taking action against an individual who harms society (eg a murderer.) But, fair enough, you would need double-cast-iron proof that harm was being done to society. I put more emphasis on the threat to society from power-centres, such as capitalism, which manipulate individuals, unless society prevents this. But that's a profound disagreement about reality which we will probably never resolve... despite historic data, rational debate, etc
@mickGPN "Harm society?" I'm more concerned about the harm of individuals. What's good or bad for society as a group is subjective. For the most part, I feel that our government should refrain from such matters until asked for help (ie, don't arrest someone for assault unless the victim says they were assaulted). Murder is something of an exception, as we can typically assume that it wasn't assisted suicide (if it was, they should have gotten a statement from the deceased saying so).
@mickGPN If you really want a government that can do things based on what they consider to be "self-evident," you want a totalitarian State. Like China, which recently banned all depictions of Time Travel in movies, because they felt showing modern characters with historical figures was "disrespectful." This sounds silly to me. However, do they have to justify it? Or can they just declare that such a thing being "disrespectful" is "self-evident?"
@WatcherAzazel "Self Evident" is how you COME UP WITH an opinion, and those opinions are then debated, before being aggregated into a social norm. So, you might come up with a stupid opinion. Or people's opinions might get aggregated in a distorted way by a dictator. My point is that when I say I've got an opinion about what people do, you can't assume an automatic right to always reply, "Well, mind your own business".
@mickGPN I can assume that until you show me some damned good evidence that those people are harming others and, more importantly, that those others are self-defining themselves as harmed (remember my example about how BDSM is currently classed as "assault" in the US?).
@WatcherAzazel - Sweden IS technically inaccurate when it says ALL sex-providers are victims. However, I reckon 95% are, and that's good enough for a pragmatic government policy. As for the other 5% - I'm working on a video which will explain how society should relate to them. But it's a complex subject, so it'll be a while yet. (In that context, I would say there is a grey area about where BDSM becomes assault. Choosing to have someone crucify u, for example, wd probably cross that line for me.
@WatcherAzazel Doh... no. They should listen to my opinion, as part of the on-going conversation we call "society". Of course, at some point society (using the mechanisms of democratic government) might decide to pass a law... and then they have to abide by the law, until they can persuade enough people that it's a good idea to change it.
@mickGPN So, if something is considered bad by enough people, its ok to ban it, and fuck the rights of the minority? Is that what you're saying? That's lynch-mob logic.
@WatcherAzazel - Of course not. I wd have the usual safeguards for minority opinions All I AM saying is that when someone expresses an opinion about what other people are doing, it's not appropriate to just say, "Shut up and mind your own business / Stop moralizing / Etc" Having opinions about other people's choices is part of what it means to be part of a society. And obviously there are all sorts of ways that can go wrong. But it's not automatically invalid, as many Libertarians seem to think.
@mickGPN There's a difference between having an opinion about something, and thinking it should be illegal. I think SmilingSkeptic is an asshole because he's refused to approve my video responses to him, and kept changing the subject when I asked why. However, I hardly think he should be arrested for that.
The minding your own business part comes in when you declare that you're going to protect people from themselves, when you declare them incapable of making their own choices.
@WatcherAzazel - Yeah, but my point is that "having an opinion about someone else" can develop - via interactions with other people's opinions - into a social norm. Which can often be a good thing, and goes beyond our existence as atomised individuals. And then, yes, sometimes it's appropriate for those norms to take the form of a law. So, sometimes it IS appropriate for a collection of opinions to coagulate into a law. (And I don't think S'Skeptic should be arrested either, btw)
@mickGPN If you want to create a social norm, you're more than welcome to stand on your soap box and tell everyone why they shouldn't pay to have sex, but if you want a law, you need cold, hard facts on your side. And even then, arresting people based on supposedly "victimizing" an adult who says he/she WASN'T victimized is shaky grounds, in any society that dares to call itself free.
@WatcherAzazel - I might need to facts to confirm that the law is doing what I said it would But there aren't any facts which can "prove" that sexual-objectification for money is wrong. You can argue for it, but you can't prove it. Then it becomes a social norm (and, on that basis, laws are passed) or it doesn't // 95% of sex-providers ARE victims, so being pragmatic, I'm not going to let the other 5% hold us back (Plus I have got an answer for that 5% too, but I'm still working on the details.)
@mickGPN Yes you can. If an action would infringe on the rights of the minority, you don't take it. The majority of men in the US are happy with their mutilated penises. Does that mean that MY rights weren't infringed when my parents allowed a doctor to mutilate my penis? OF COURSE NOT! Even if only 5% of men were unhappy, it would still be wrong.
This won't be a popular sentiment, but I think stigma has its place.
justamarxist 8 months ago
@justamarxist - Well, I think there is a difference between removing the stigma from sex-providers, and going to the other extreme, where we pretend there is nothing degrading about paid-sex. So, acknowledging that it is a degrading activity is appropriate. And it's necessary if we're going to avoid normalising the s-industry. For one thing, normalisation would make the public much less likely to fund exit-strategies for sex-providers... which is the subject of an upcoming video in this series.
mickGPN 8 months ago
I'd rather live in a world where ppl aren't seen as sexual objects - a world where I can be in public and not deal with men who feel entitled to grope me. I wonder - how does NZ deal with underage/trafficked prostitutes? Nevada gets THAT very wrong. are prostitutes arrested for not being in zones?
cannibalcountry 8 months ago
@cannibalcountry - Yep, I certainly won't be moving to NZ, or Australia, any time soon. But Sweden, that's a different matter. Last time I was over there (several years ago now) it was amazing how people just took gender equality for granted. It was like being able to breath fresh air for the first time :-)
mickGPN 8 months ago
...so, we have to take active steps to prevent people from having different values than you? Because brainwashing is the job of our government...
...how often do fast food restaurants go into schools to recruit?
And you really don't see the difference between normalizing sex work, and normalizing the beating of prostitutes?
WatcherAzazel 8 months ago
@WatcherAzazel - What you're basically saying here is that I shouldn't impose my opinions on people, but that is to miss the point. People in any society have opinions, and the aggregate of those opinions is called a social norm. Norms can be reasonable or over-bearing, of course, but they are not invalid. They're also not something that can be justified rationally. This was summed up by the opening sentence of the Declaration of Independence - "We hold these truths to be self-evident...."
mickGPN 8 months ago
@mickGPN It's one thing to hold certain rights to be self-evident, as rights require government inaction, and inaction should be the default for any government in any situation. You, however, are calling for government ACTION, which you have to justify, and you must do so rationally. Otherwise there is no valid reason for any truly secular government to do what you propose.
WatcherAzazel 8 months ago
@WatcherAzazel - Where did you get this idea that rights require government inaction? Once you lot decided you had a right to live without a monarchy, you did something very active... like, fighting a war for independence. // But, anyway, apart from that, what do you think of my idea that the very experience of buying sex tends to generate a lot of resentment in men, leading to stigmatisation of prositutes, given that it forces sex-providers to be manipulative and phoney.
mickGPN 8 months ago
@mickGPN *facepalm* First off, show me a study indicating that. Secondly, you claim to not be pro-vanilla sex, but you seem to assume sadism is inherently bad. Thirdly, we fought against monarchy because it was infringing our rights,and thus we needed to protect our rights. The need to protect our rights is a rational justification for action. Thus, we had a rational justification.
WatcherAzazel 8 months ago
@WatcherAzazel (1) You people are obsessed with statistics As if they are the one true way to prove something Just tell me if you think it sounds plausible and true to life? // One reason I'm not vanilla is cos I accept that pain can be part of sex - which cd be anything from someone digging their nails into your back, to... who knows what. What I don't accept, in any situation, is degradation and objectification - which is why "sadist" is pretty much my secular definition of evil and fucked-up
mickGPN 8 months ago
@mickGPN (2) Protecting yr rights? Which rights? How do u rationally decide which rights are reasonable, and which not? Ultimately it comes down to "We hold these truths, etc". // And what about the vast number of Americans who wanted to stay with Britain? They were idiots, in my opinion, but presumably you wd have been okay with forcing them to go along with the majority decision to fight a war against monarchy? So, presumably, you do allow majority opinion to impose itself in some situations
mickGPN 8 months ago
@mickGPN 1) That IS the only way to prove things. 2) My ideal is "your rights end where my rights begin." In short, you have the right to do absolutely anything that doesn't involve harming another human being ("harm" being, for the most part, being defined by the person being harmed, within certain reasonable boundaries. For instance,my ex-girlfriend can't retract consent to sex she gave me four years ago, and charge me with rape).
WatcherAzazel 8 months ago
@WatcherAzazel (1) There wouldn't be any statistical surveys for make up your mind for you, if it wasn't for the people who answered those surveys. And to answer, they must have had opinions. So, where did their opinions come from? Other surveys? At some point, there has to be an authentic person who can feel, empathize and have a spontaneous opinion. Fortunately there are still such people in the world, despite the agenda of libertarian capitalism which is trying to turn us all into commodities
mickGPN 8 months ago
@mickGPN ...um, no. Statistics don't simply come from surveys of random people on how they feel about an issue. You might survey sex workers, but that would be to see how they felt about their situations, and how they felt they could be improved (ever seen a video called "Nothing about us without us?"). However, the most important statistics would be crime statistics (on, ya know, actual crimes).
WatcherAzazel 8 months ago
@WatcherAzazel (a) Ah now, you're using surveys AFTER the event, to help decide if an opinion, or a social norm, is in tune with reality. That's perfectly reasonable. My point is (as I say below) - When I say I've got an opinion about what people do, you can't assume an automatic right to always reply, "Well, mind your own business". (Because people having opinions about other people is how social norms get formed.) ...cont
mickGPN 8 months ago
@mickGPN (b) Also, statistics by themselves can't enable you to form an opinion. If you take some surveys (i.e. data) and add logic, plus what you feel about how society should work - that's how you form an opinion about society. But that's what you call "not minding your own business"
mickGPN 8 months ago
@mickGPN "how society should work?" So, you and you alone have the right to determine how our society should, ideally, function? Or you and people who agree with you? When is society ever allowed to just function on its own, independent of your or anyone else's expectations?
WatcherAzazel 8 months ago
@mickGPN *facepalm* Did you seriously just suggest (via that "AFTER the event comment") that prostitution is a one-time event? If it was, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
And I can assume that until you show me an overwhelming amount of evidence and, furthermore, sex workers as a group agree with you. In fact, to fully justify your opinion, every sex worker on Earth would have to agree with you.
WatcherAzazel 8 months ago
@mickGPN Now, your example of the American Revolution actually isn't a very good one, because there were just as many selfish motivations behind it (ie, the colonists wanted to take even more land from the Native Americans than Great Britain would allow, and they believed some weird conspiracy theories about Great Britain letting the Catholics come in and take over. Furthermore, the taxation policies were pretty mild, given what Britain spent on them), as their were good motivations.
WatcherAzazel 8 months ago
@mickGPN But, the simple fact remains that you're comparing the standard we hold our governments to, to the standard we individuals to, even though the standards are opposite. Whenever the government wishes to do ANYTHING it must be justified. However, whenever we wish to STOP an individual person from doing anything, then it is stopping them that must be justified. The declaration of Independence was about the rights of the citizens, not of a government.
WatcherAzazel 8 months ago
@WatcherAzazel - So why didn't the 12 (?) guys who signed it not just put it out as a pamphlet, headed "This is our opinion", then wander off and let people do whatever they felt like. Instead, for some reason, they set up an army, a tax system, and an embryonic social welfare system, etc.
mickGPN 8 months ago
@mickGPN ...I honestly have no idea how you believe this to be a logical reponse to what came before it. I repeat: Taking against a government to protect individual rights, is NOT the same thing as taking action against an individual whose doing something you don't approve of. You are comparing apples and oranges.
WatcherAzazel 8 months ago
@WatcherAzazel - Well, you do accept the idea of taking action against an individual who harms society (eg a murderer.) But, fair enough, you would need double-cast-iron proof that harm was being done to society. I put more emphasis on the threat to society from power-centres, such as capitalism, which manipulate individuals, unless society prevents this. But that's a profound disagreement about reality which we will probably never resolve... despite historic data, rational debate, etc
mickGPN 8 months ago
@mickGPN "Harm society?" I'm more concerned about the harm of individuals. What's good or bad for society as a group is subjective. For the most part, I feel that our government should refrain from such matters until asked for help (ie, don't arrest someone for assault unless the victim says they were assaulted). Murder is something of an exception, as we can typically assume that it wasn't assisted suicide (if it was, they should have gotten a statement from the deceased saying so).
WatcherAzazel 8 months ago
@mickGPN If you really want a government that can do things based on what they consider to be "self-evident," you want a totalitarian State. Like China, which recently banned all depictions of Time Travel in movies, because they felt showing modern characters with historical figures was "disrespectful." This sounds silly to me. However, do they have to justify it? Or can they just declare that such a thing being "disrespectful" is "self-evident?"
WatcherAzazel 8 months ago
@WatcherAzazel "Self Evident" is how you COME UP WITH an opinion, and those opinions are then debated, before being aggregated into a social norm. So, you might come up with a stupid opinion. Or people's opinions might get aggregated in a distorted way by a dictator. My point is that when I say I've got an opinion about what people do, you can't assume an automatic right to always reply, "Well, mind your own business".
mickGPN 8 months ago
@mickGPN I can assume that until you show me some damned good evidence that those people are harming others and, more importantly, that those others are self-defining themselves as harmed (remember my example about how BDSM is currently classed as "assault" in the US?).
WatcherAzazel 8 months ago
@WatcherAzazel - Sweden IS technically inaccurate when it says ALL sex-providers are victims. However, I reckon 95% are, and that's good enough for a pragmatic government policy. As for the other 5% - I'm working on a video which will explain how society should relate to them. But it's a complex subject, so it'll be a while yet. (In that context, I would say there is a grey area about where BDSM becomes assault. Choosing to have someone crucify u, for example, wd probably cross that line for me.
mickGPN 8 months ago
@mickGPN ...so, other people should base their lines on where you draw yours?
WatcherAzazel 8 months ago
@WatcherAzazel Doh... no. They should listen to my opinion, as part of the on-going conversation we call "society". Of course, at some point society (using the mechanisms of democratic government) might decide to pass a law... and then they have to abide by the law, until they can persuade enough people that it's a good idea to change it.
mickGPN 8 months ago
@mickGPN So, if something is considered bad by enough people, its ok to ban it, and fuck the rights of the minority? Is that what you're saying? That's lynch-mob logic.
WatcherAzazel 8 months ago
@WatcherAzazel - Of course not. I wd have the usual safeguards for minority opinions All I AM saying is that when someone expresses an opinion about what other people are doing, it's not appropriate to just say, "Shut up and mind your own business / Stop moralizing / Etc" Having opinions about other people's choices is part of what it means to be part of a society. And obviously there are all sorts of ways that can go wrong. But it's not automatically invalid, as many Libertarians seem to think.
mickGPN 8 months ago
@mickGPN There's a difference between having an opinion about something, and thinking it should be illegal. I think SmilingSkeptic is an asshole because he's refused to approve my video responses to him, and kept changing the subject when I asked why. However, I hardly think he should be arrested for that.
The minding your own business part comes in when you declare that you're going to protect people from themselves, when you declare them incapable of making their own choices.
WatcherAzazel 8 months ago
@WatcherAzazel - Yeah, but my point is that "having an opinion about someone else" can develop - via interactions with other people's opinions - into a social norm. Which can often be a good thing, and goes beyond our existence as atomised individuals. And then, yes, sometimes it's appropriate for those norms to take the form of a law. So, sometimes it IS appropriate for a collection of opinions to coagulate into a law. (And I don't think S'Skeptic should be arrested either, btw)
mickGPN 8 months ago
@mickGPN If you want to create a social norm, you're more than welcome to stand on your soap box and tell everyone why they shouldn't pay to have sex, but if you want a law, you need cold, hard facts on your side. And even then, arresting people based on supposedly "victimizing" an adult who says he/she WASN'T victimized is shaky grounds, in any society that dares to call itself free.
WatcherAzazel 8 months ago
@WatcherAzazel - I might need to facts to confirm that the law is doing what I said it would But there aren't any facts which can "prove" that sexual-objectification for money is wrong. You can argue for it, but you can't prove it. Then it becomes a social norm (and, on that basis, laws are passed) or it doesn't // 95% of sex-providers ARE victims, so being pragmatic, I'm not going to let the other 5% hold us back (Plus I have got an answer for that 5% too, but I'm still working on the details.)
mickGPN 8 months ago
@mickGPN Yes you can. If an action would infringe on the rights of the minority, you don't take it. The majority of men in the US are happy with their mutilated penises. Does that mean that MY rights weren't infringed when my parents allowed a doctor to mutilate my penis? OF COURSE NOT! Even if only 5% of men were unhappy, it would still be wrong.
WatcherAzazel 8 months ago