As someone pointed out upthread, by Beck’s standard Harriet Tubman and Oskar Schindler were both doing things that “they knew in their hearts were wrong”.
I dont think you have to go that far. All of us having this discussion are concealing our identity.
Yeah, but I don’t doubt that we all know in our hearts that posting here is wrong 
Please keep talking. This is the most transparently stupid argument to justify slut-shaming I have ever seen. Got any more like this?
On the remote chance that do want to consider whether the moral certainty of your views is justified, I refer you back to LHoD’s post in the other recent thread. Did you read it?
Everyone has varying moral compasses, but I believe this issue has more to do with respect than morality. I don’t think sex work per se is immoral, though some forms of it are (e.g. degradation porn).
I believe children learn best from teachers who they respect. They don’t have to like their teachers, but they should respect their authority, and hopefully view them as role models. As such, they are more receptive to learning from them.
Right or wrong, sex work is not deemed a respected activity in our society (and I’m sure most kids are aware of this). Kids may very well like their sex-working teacher, but I doubt they would view them as figures of authority, or someone to learn schoolwork from.
And, if a child does see their sex-working teacher as a role model, this too can be problematic. A young person may feel, “if it’s good enough for my teacher, it’s good for me.” Not all sex work is dangerous, but much of it is. It’s a world rife with dangerous characters, and young people may not have the life experience to know the difference between safe sex work and dangerous sex work. I don’t believe many of us would want our children to get into this world, at least until they are mature enough to understand the risks (over 21 years of age).
Should teachers be fired if they are found to be sex workers? Only if sex work is explicitly prohibited in the contracts they sign, and I believe it should be prohibited. Other activities should also be prohibited: convicted DUI alcoholics and pedophiles (even if they paid their debt to society), former hitmen, etc.
Will children learn of their teachers being sex workers? If school administrators are able to find out, kids can find out, too. Kids are craftier than administrators, and when they find something “juicy”, it spreads like wildfire.
Pay teachers better. Allow them to take most side jobs. But, prohibit them from some.
I don’t know what side gigs should be acceptable for a teacher, but I think these arguments are terrible.
So… you acknowledge that blanket disrespect for sex workers as unworthy and inferior might be wrong, but you think for the sake of the children we should not examine our values, we should simply treat that disrespect as an immutable fact and just go along with it, presumably reinforcing it for another generation?
Right or wrong, Black people are not respected in our society (and I’m sure most kids are aware of this). Kids may very well like their Black teacher, but I doubt they would view them as figures of authority, or someone to learn schoolwork from.
Right or wrong, trans people are not respected in our society (and I’m sure most kids are aware of this). Kids may very well like their trans teacher, but I doubt they would view them as figures of authority, or someone to learn schoolwork from.
etc., etc.
Sex work is analogous to driving drunk, to being a pedophile or a murderer?
I’m curious: awhile back, a cheater’s website (Ashley Madison, maybe?) got hacked, and a lot of names were released. If OF got hacked, and it turned out that a male school staff member were subscribed, should they be fired? What if it just turned out that a male teacher went to a strip club, or looked at naughty pictures on his home computer–are those all firing offenses?
Or is it only the sex workers themselves, not the consumers of sex work, who should have their careers ruined over their involvement in the industry?
Until, and unless sex work is deemed a respectable job in society, yes. The debate on whether or not our values concerning sex work is right or wrong should first take place in society at large, among adults. If, in the future, sex work is deemed respectable, then it can be extended to children (those humans with impressionable minds). Sex work has a long history of being deemed a disrespected activity, so I don’t expect the debate to be resolved soon.
And “for the sake of the children” may seem trite, but in some cases it is important.
Insofar as them all currently being deemed disrespected (or dangerous) activities in society: yes.
Perhaps one could put together some kind of argument about keeping kids safe from danger given the realities of sex work, but are you seriously doubling down on arguing that we should just teach kids to disrespect the same people that their parents disrespect?
Call me a crazy dreamer, but I think we should be teaching kids to be better human beings than we are with our ingrained prejudices, not fatalistically accepting Philip Larkin’s cynical view of the matter.
I doubt that you would advocate teaching kids in Mississippi schools to be racist with a justification that the majority of people in Mississippi are racists (…sorry non-racist Mississippians for being the target of my hypothetical). The only way I can see your preposterous argument making sense is if you believe that children should be taught that all sex workers are inferior and unworthy of respect.
There’s a book I used to read to my students–Holes–in which (spoiler alert) a White woman is fired from her teaching job for kissing a Black man. She lived in a time in which it was considered disgraceful for a White woman to kiss a Black man, and had been considered disgraceful for a long time, and would be considered disgraceful for at least a hundred years after the scene took place. Presumably, kids in her classes would have been distracted by knowing that their teacher had broken this social norm.
One of the points of the scene is that it’s entirely unjust to fire her for engaging in a personal romantic/sexual act that doesn’t hurt anyone, and that’s only considered disgraceful because of bigoted attitudes.
Third graders have no trouble at all understanding the point of that scene.
(edit: there is of course a lot more going on in that scene–I’m talking here only about the relevant aspects)
Both are a problem long term.
The women and the men are all real people. People here all know real life women and men. Young and old.
There’s certainly a market for MILLIONS of women to put out OnlyFans videos. So you are a young woman or know a young woman. She has bills of some sort. Medical, student loans. Starting a family and houses are expensive.
Do you want it to be the NORM that you or others suggest to her that she does OnlyFans sex work to help with these bills. Do you want this to be the NORM. That a young woman does side sex work. That you want this normalized.
Of course young men also have bills. Men are far less able to do paid sex work. Now they can consume the sex work or not. Consuming the sex work means even more bills, abstaining less but they don’t get the help with the bills that the young women can, the route that we are either encouraging or not discouraging now. Sex work.
So we raise the kids to adulthood. It’s the norm that women engage in sex work, put videos out that other men fap off to. Some of the men might be her neighbors, her relatives even. I guess we don’t care any more. And even if some men abstain, they are just powerless bystanders in all of it, watching their peer women pay their bills through sex work.
And if you just throw up your hands and say there’s nothing we can do, we elected Obama and have changed all sorts of norms and made all sorts of thing much less respectable and harder to do publicly. So I’m not going to believe you when you say there’s nothing we can do.
Wow. That was…definitely a whole bunch of words, one right after the other!
never mind
And, strangely, many of them are my neighbors, relatives even!
Thanks, Obama!
I agree. I’m very much in favor of supporting the civil liberties of sex workers (and everybody else), and I don’t have a problem with the principle of sex work on moral grounds.
But I think it’s a bit naive just to keyboard-warrior this issue with blanket denunciations of “slut shaming” as though that settles the matter.
Like it or not, and for better and for worse (and there is unquestionably a whole lot of “worse” in that mix), our society has a lot of deeply embedded assumptions about the importance of adults keeping their sexual activities hidden from children, especially when said adults are in a position of responsibility/authority for children. Not doing what’s generally considered due diligence to hide one’s sexual activities from children is going to make that professional role more difficult for them.
Commercially advertising one’s sexual activities online, even with some attempts at privacy safeguards, is something that even a lot of reasonable people are going to consider doesn’t meet the standard of “due diligence to hide one’s sexual activities from children”.
And that’s not even getting into the peripheral issues of more serious concern. For example, a lot of the sex-work industry is really exploitative and abusive towards sex workers. That’s not at all the fault of sex workers themselves (except for those who actually participate in exploitation and abuse, of course), but it’s reasonable to want to shield children from exposure to that.
For another thing, a lot of perpetrators of child sexual abuse introduce their abusive behavior by pretending that they’re just endorsing honest and un-prudish sex-positive attitudes. Again, that’s not at all the fault of non-abusers who honestly hold such views. But it makes it more reasonable to insist on a really strong firewall between adults’ sexual activity and their interactions with children.
Absolutely not. Strawman.
The jury is still out on whether or not sex work should be deemed a respected endeavor. And perhaps we can agree that some of it clearly is not (e.g. degradation porn). Teach your children whatever you feel best. Teach them empathy, compassion, and not to be prejudiced. Maybe their generation will accept sex work as a respectable job, or maybe it won’t. But, don’t put the cart before the horse. Don’t put sex-worker teachers in a position of teaching children, while sex work is still considered a disrespected job. Not a problem if they teach beyond high school, when kid’s minds are more mature, but not in grade, or secondary school.
The jury is in with regard to racism (and other types of prejudice). We are now enlightened enough as a society to realize they are wrong. Therefore they have no bearing on this discussion.
Enlightened??? The racists were dragged kicking and screaming to where we are now and they’re still not done with their temper tantrums over it.
It really is a mystery to me who you jump in to defend and who you claim to be failing to consider sex work as a complex issue.