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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
The cynical explanation for that is a platform that pushes for protections for sex workers could lose Democrats a lot of votes (reminder that Republicans don't have a monopoly on religious voters), and given their frankly already kinda shaky support base, that could end up handing Republicans elections on a silver platter.
The questions are: how do we get more people to accept sex work as a legitimate business, and is such a thing even possible to a meaningful extent (as sex work = prostitution and prostitution = bad is something a lot of people have simply made up their mind about)?
Edited by PhysicalStamina on Dec 26th 2020 at 12:15:21 PM
i'm tired, my friendThere are many issues with pornography in a broad sense. It can promote unrealistic depictions of sex and sexuality, it can lead to toxic beliefs and corresponding behavior, and it is extremely vulnerable to exploitation. None of that is solved by banning it and trying to pretend that it doesn't exist.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"OK, here is the text of the bill - "Stop Internet Sexual Exploitation Act" - "SISEA" - in question
.
It's not a law about sex workers, it's a law about bureaucratic requirements for hosting/uploading pornographic images.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanAnd this IMO is what we need to convince the layperson of if we want Democrats to take a more bold pro-sex work stance. "Look, people support this. Why don't you?"
Edited by PhysicalStamina on Dec 26th 2020 at 12:20:10 PM
i'm tired, my friendIIRC, the bureaucratic overkill is so extreme that, as ever, basically only the largest players in the market will be able to do anything legally. And, y'know, randomly force everything else into more shady quasi-legal sites.
So long as any bill is solely about adding further restrictions to pornographic sexual content, it's going to be completely unhelpful. Doesn't matter what it says it's about, that's always the same tripe about protecting people.
This one, for instance, would require some central database of people who have asked for videos to be removed for featuring them without permission. Let's stop and think about that: everyone who wants a video removed because their signature has been faked or something, must be listed with all videos they feature in. "Here's a database of porn featuring people who don't want to be in it!" is a pretty stupid idea.
Edited by RainehDaze on Dec 26th 2020 at 5:32:45 PM
I guess that there’s no real small-buisness regulation for porn the way there is for other industries, that enables both exploitation and easy buisness entry. If you pass the regulatory gatekeeping onto industry businesses you give them a level of monopoly, but if you don’t do gatekeeping exploitation will run rampent.
If my interpretation is correct (and if it’s not I’d like to be corrected) the solution is government-supervised regulation, not buisness-supervised regulation.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranHere’s a decent list of sex workers’ grievances with SISEA.
Source is an 18+ tumblr blog, so be aware of that, but it gives a good perspective on the specific issues with SISEA.
There’s no recourse for sex workers to report their stolen/nonconsensual content, as you either consented to every piece of content featuring you, or you’re a victim, meaning that a sex worker reporting say revenge porn of themselves would get ALL of their work pulled.
The ID requirements also apply to art, meaning old art depicting nudity or that is otherwise deemed as pornographic (which would disproportionately target queer art) would be wiped off the net unless you can provide the models ID, even if said piece was created decades ago and the model is long dead (which again, would disproportionately old queer media)
Would in general get rid of all user-generated adult content, giving more power to big porn sites and putting sex workers in an even more vulnerable position
Would be based on the states’ age of consent laws, meaning said porn sites could hire 16 year old performers in most states (yikes) and lawyers that went through the bill agreed that in some cases it could be superseded by underage marriage laws, as in, a married minor (because those laws still exist in some states) could “”“consent”“” to appear in adult content if this bill, that claims to protect minors and victims of sex trafficking, passes.
Quoting the above.
Regarding the last point: Huh? I was pretty certain that uploading child pornography would already be sanctionable under conventional child porn laws, unless exceptions like Vermont's would apply.
Anyhow, I take the problem with SISEA is not so much its intent as much as the unintended consequences it would have. I know anecdotally that this is often an issue with sex law in the USA.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanI um... I guess I'm glad my state decided fifteen and under couldn't get married a year and a half ago. We used to have no minimum, so if parents wanted their raped, pregnant twelve-year-old to be pure in the eyes of God all they had to do was come to Missouri and convince a judge to legally sell her to her rapist.
Edit: as an aside, I think it's still illegal in Missouri for anyone under 18 to file for divorce without their parents' consent.
Edited by Bur on Dec 26th 2020 at 1:01:11 PM
"Upheld"? There is no constitutional reason for courts to strike them down.
Yeah, a fair amount of sodomy laws were still around in 2003 when SCOTUS threw them out. And if memory serves, some homophobically written and enforced
paedophilia laws are still enforceable.
But that is digressing a bit. From what I can tell SISEA has only one cosponsor and is at the "referred to committee" stage; how much support does it actually have?
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanLooks like a person of interest was identified regarding the Nashville Bombing
In a bit of a laugh, I just spied a video on Youtube from The Hill - "Legislative survey REVEALS deep SKISM in GOP on 202 election, explains Trump's last stand", where most of the comments (including my own) is just calling them out for utterly failing to proofread.
Just keep in mind that "person of interest" =/= culprit - it's entirely too easy to leap to the logical (and oftentimes correct) conclusion that they are identical.
Edited by ironballs16 on Dec 26th 2020 at 4:05:25 AM
"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"Yeah I'm surprised the POI's name came out so quickly. When I first saw the headline I noticed they were trying not to release any specifics since it's a POI, not a suspect. If the person had nothing to do with it their life is probably ruined now. I don't really like American media's focus on the identity of terrorists anyway - gives them too much of a platform

Agreed. And the worst part is that this is one of those issues that are so heavily stigmatized that it's difficult to build support for even among the Democrats. The two parties don't agree on much, but there is bipartisan support for demonization and suppression of sex work.
Sex trafficking is a very real evil in this country. But nobody's actually trying to combat it. Instead, it's used as a cudgel to enact stricter and stricter laws for crushing down legitimate sex workers - often with the effect of making it harder to combat sex traffickers by making them less visible.
The right is obviously going to suppress and control because that's what they do, but sex workers are still struggling to make that leap to being a cause that Democrats consider worthy of taking upon their shoulders. We have more leftist support for marijuana than we do for sex workers. And as a result, instead of empowering independent entrepreneurs, we're empowering people like Jeffrey Epstein.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Dec 26th 2020 at 9:06:26 AM
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