Refuse to Click – Your Preserving Humanity Public Service Announcement of the Day

“Against human trafficking? Against slavery? Necessarily, you must also be against pornography.”

You must also be against using smartphones, drinking coffee, eating food, and wearing clothes: items from every other industry where people are typically exploited and treated terribly around the world.

This is, of course, not to say we live in a corrupt f*cked up world so just go with the flow. What it means is that there are polar opposites to every issue and the optimal solution exists somewhere in between.

So free-market globalization and free-market sex work are at one pole (right-wing). The other would some form authoritarian state intervention (left-wing). The in-between version is some form of regulatory framework that eliminates exploitation.

The alternative to Friedman’s plutocratic neoclassical ideology is the centrist Keynesian mixed-market system and democratic oversight over the economy and central bank. Fair trade instead of free trade (make demands that workers in undeveloped countries get their fare share of the economic pie in terms of wages and benefits in exchange for market access.)

The number of regulations required to tame the sex industry (which is appalling; “Hot Girls Wanted” is a good Netflix documentary on the subject) is too many to get into in this comment. But it would seem a good start would be a minimum age requirement of 21. (If an 18-year-old is not old enough to make a responsible decision on whether or not to consume alcohol, they are obviously not old enough to weigh the pros and cons of sex work.)

In short: regulations are everything. If progressive-minded people want to contribute something of value to the world, they need to come together to design and promote regulatory bodies for all areas of human activity, globally.

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I don’t think you would be able to get a majority of people to agree that porn exploits women as an absolute. And democracy is certainly preferable to the alternatives.

Ultimately when it comes to a woman’s sexuality, it’s all a matter of her choice. There are certainly many ways a woman can get conned or forced (indirectly) into doing something that is not in her best interest. But it’s really about creating a system where a woman’s choice is guaranteed not to be corrupted or undermined. (Enforcing moral standards is also an attempt to take away a woman’s choice.)

If people work together under a single movement to build up regulatory standards that are accepted internationally over time (for this and other areas,) that will gradually eliminate all cases of exploitation. An incremental approach is also easier to build democratic support for, especially as society’s values develop along with it.

Taking a black or white position, however, will either work or fail. There is no middle ground. And even if it does work, the other side will be plotting a counter-revolution. So it’s not a stable approach. That’s why I feel that the development/evolution of rules is the most effective path forward to make all human interactions safe and desirable for everyone.

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