Sex Work: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Very funny. But he made a lot of very good points.

John Oliver is great.

Whether or not you agree with his viewpoint, he makes you think …

… he’s so much more sensible than anyone you’ll ever see on Fox News, CNN or MSNBC …

… and last, but not least …

he makes you laugh.

John Oliver might be the single biggest douche bag in America, with Trevor Noah a close and closing fast, second.

Good episode of John Oliver. Especially what he says about conflating sex work with sex trafficking.

Agree with all above. This episode aired this past Sunday on HBO so that YouTube link might get taken down by the copyright po po.

There is a lot of wisdom in that clip. The use of humor and insight helps to make a somewhat uncomfortable topic more palatable. I agree that sex work should be legal throughout the USA.

Sadly, the folks against legal sex work have taken their old morality argument, and reframed it to make all sex work align with human trafficking. That’s basically a last ditch effort to bring everyone on board with keeping sex work illegal. That is wrong, and as Oliver mentioned, it likely harms sex workers more than it helps them.

You know that’s a good debate. Corporations sell products that slowly (or rapidly in some cases) kill people over time, so if that’s okay, how come someone can’t willingly lease out their punany or wiener for 30 minutes at a time.

Shailynn - maybe that’s the answer? Change the transaction so it’s considered a short term lease - with the owner of the punanny retaining ownership and the residual risks. It would no longer be a sex transaction, but rather a short (or very short) term lease.

The laws are so old and bizarre - it’s likely they didn’t think to exclude leases on punanny!

It's a good episode.

It's complex . From a hypothetical legal perspective the unconstitutionality of hoeing and hoeing related acts stems from it being illicit labor. It has nothing to do with sex. That comes under lewdness ordinances and shit.

With human trafficking the real focus is money laundering. But human trafficking resonates better with the public.

Plus human trafficking laws help hoes get out of jail quicker and gives them access to services that would come with decriminalization like social workers to help them out with addictions reaching out to family health care etc.

But they're abused. A hoe can say she has a pimp and they'll make it an automatic trafficking case in some jurisdictions and she gets out. With the pimp waiting outside to pick her up.

There's a lot to it.

I guess I could film myself with strippers and sell it as porn. That would make it a free speech issue. But would anybody buy porn with me in it?

The real reason is porn is taxed and licensed.

The concept of "my body, my choice" is inconsistently applied by both the left and the right in this country. The left is more likely to apply it to legalization of abortion and recreational drugs. The right is more likely to apply it to alternative medical treatments, such as expired patent drugs like Ivermectin or HCQ for Covid, that Big Pharma and the medical monopoly disapprove of because they make more money off of patented drugs and vaccines. Neither the left nor the right approve of commercial sex work where the woman decides, though for different reasons. To the right it is immoral and to the left it is exploitative of women. The left purposely blurs the distinction between involuntary sex trafficking and women who enter into it voluntarily.

I believe in the concept of bodily autonomy and would support it in all situations. As a strip club goer, I don't see how I can take a "freedom for me but not for thee" position that it only applies to commercial sex activities that I might engage in and not for anything else.

"I guess I could film myself with strippers and sell it as porn. That would make it a free speech issue."

Would you need to sell it?

Docsavage it's about labor laws. It's considered illicit labor. That's why it's unconstitutional. It has nothing to do with a woman's body. Men can and do hoe too .

Wallanon. If it's not sold as porn it can be considered obscene and not free speech.

"If it's not sold as porn it can be considered obscene and not free speech."

That was my question. Can be is pretty vague. Was curious if anyone had actually looked into whether or not offering the porn for sale is a condition for it to be protected as free speech or art.

Wallanon it depends on local and state laws. Porn has to be licensed distributed etc. in some places personal sex videos would be considered lewd and obscenities rather than porn. In other jurisdictions the question of consent would come up. But filming yourself with a hooker doesn't make it legal.

Ilhan can be my personal Somali pirate and board me any time she wants.