While we can say it was consensual between adults, it’s clearly exploiting a power imbalance. I’m not sure society is served by young adults lured into “easy” money and driven from other more productive pursuits.
On the other hand one could say it “strengthens” relationships because it’s a release valve for relationships which otherwise may be under pressure to break up.
I'm just thinking about my parents and how in their lifetime, for women, marrying up was the biggest way towards class mobility.
Obviously these people probably don't have the legal protections of a marriage, but the next best way to move up in class is to attend college, and that's not within reach of many (dare I say most) people, especially coming from the US where 60%+ don't have college degrees.
Are power imbalances so bad that we should seal off avenues to class mobility? Power imbalances can be abused but they aren't always.
So there were no slaves under barter or pre-barter economies? Armies didn't take people and put them to work if they didn't kill them?
All of this precedes "capitalism" and also existed in non-capitalist economies. What were gulags and other such mechanisms if not enslavement with added mortality?
Slavery isn't particular to capitalism, but definitely is not in contrast to it or separate from it. Even if you relegate it to far-off countries and simply import goods from them without asking how the goods were made.
“Capitalism” as a concept (rather than a reality) does not allow for nonconsensual transactions like slavery. (Unless you sell yourself into slavery to get money for someone else).
That's too facile an answer. If you can't do it via "capitalism" you do it via corruption or repurpose other structures. Do you need more flour or milk for your family? Do you want your kids to get accepted at a university rather than trade school?
Yes, we can see power imbalances wherever we look. Food, plant vs the grazer. Never the less, I think some are more one-sided and extreme than others. Some are more productive than others. Here these customers are setting out the rules such as "exclusivity" privileges, emotional privileges and more.
They can quit, generally one's job role doesn't stay entirely static. Oftentimes, a role changes to something that an employee didn't sign up for.
Perhaps there is something unique about sex and how it interacts with power dynamics? I want to capture the intuition that we generally all share around stuff like this.
A statement like
> Just because it’s related to sex does not make it more of an imbalance.
does not seem to capture this intuition that most people hold.
> Oftentimes, a role changes to something that an employee didn't sign up for.
...which is also generally bad if the role is materially different and goes on top of what was signed up for, with little to no extra compensation.
> Perhaps there is something unique about sex and how it interacts with power dynamics?
Suppose that your boss asked you, in addition to your current duties, instead of giving sexual favors, you follow him home and do all his laundry - with the same implication that your career hinges on it. Would that change the power dynamic? I don't think so. The only thing that "sex" changes is that it arouses attention.
Whether you signed up for it is they key distinction. Suppose you had signed up for sex with your boss, but then he also also asks you to do the laundry - which wasn't part of the deal. That's bad.
Vice versa may be worse, but either is bad. We wouldn't consider it fair just because it doesn't involve sex. In either situation, the power balance is the same. Your boss doesn't get more power just because he asks for sex instead of laundry.
It is bad because the boss has generally direct control of your economic security. Coercing someone into a sexual relationship as a condition of your employment (that has nothing to do with that relationship sexual or otherwise) is wrong (and illegal in the US).
If the entire relationship is premised upon sexual favors or sugar daddy style relationship, there is definitely a different power imbalance than one where you are being blackmailed/coerced into something you didn't originally sign up for.
Would you feel equally icky about employees being asked to do other things that weren't part of the original job description?
If you are hired as a coder, and the boss asks you to start also joining sales/marketing calls with them (not in your job description) is that of equal moral ickyness as if the boss asks you to have sex with them or a third party (similarly, not in the job description)? I think not, but the explanation provided definitely doesn't capture that intuition.
Every single software engineer contract I've seen in my career had something about 'providing consulting services' in it.
But it comes down to personal comfort zone. Someone who tries to get a coder job is comfortable with coding, but may not be comfortable with doing electric installations, which clearly is not in the job description - and I would expect any of my team to tell me to go fish when I come to them with 400 meters of copper cables and a screwdriver.
Women who are on that platform obviously are comfortable with the idea of exchanging sexual favours with clients. They may have limits on certain practices, and they probably would not be comfortable doing something icky and morally corrupt as coding.
Moral is something very subjective, and I consider it pretentious for someone to push their own morals on others. If the people involved in that platform are ok with this, if they do these transactions out of their own volition, it is obviously wrong to send a sharia morality police after them because some grandma or some priest might be offended.
Just because you're getting paid to do things does not imply the power balance is the same. As in, if you're an accountant, a lawyer, a doctor, a financial advisor etc. you have power over your customer/patient's/client's well-being as much as they do yours. You are also granted rights based on these relationships, which are not present in acts of prostitution.
On the other way there is a power balance between sexes when it comes to access to sex. Lots of men would be sugar babies if it was possible. I can think of a lot worse ways to pay my rent.
> While we can say it was consensual between adults, it’s clearly exploiting a power imbalance.
By that standard, any employment arrangement would constitute a power imbalance, which would raise the question of whether such a power imbalance is at all problematic.
I find the idea of “the social and mental health aspects of these types of sites” to be an interesting angle.
Are arrangements like these damaging to society or the participants mental health?
Anyone have any data on this aspect of the ban?
I don't think the ban had anything to do with genuine care for society or the participants. It was virtue signaling to a Muslim political base by a government, selling the idea that their government and by extension their society is morally intact, regardless of the reality on the ground. It's very similar to how exercise infomercials work -- you sell people the ideal of how they already want to view themselves, not the product itself. And quite reliably, people buy it.
It's an amusing article - combining Islam with Sugarbook is pretty explosive. (Malaysia's dominant ethnic groups are locals, Indians and Chinese, but their constitution favors Muslims.)
It's accepted to have temporary wives (under a religious marriage for a few days) as escorts in Islamic countries, but quietly. Once it hits the press, authorities often feel compelled to do something about it.
But Sugarbook doesn't even fall under the fig leaf of temporary wives, and the membership numbers are shocking for a small country.
Some other commenters asked what's the harm of Sugarbook or OF:
1) women have a limited window to start a family and have children. Disrupting that has a very high price for both individuals and society.
Malaysia’s dominant ethic group is Malay, which is defined by the constitution as someone who “professes the religion of Islam, habitually speaks the Malay language, and conforms to Malay custom.” It is this group that the constitution favors. (Incidentally, it is illegal to convert out of Islam in Malaysia.)
The indigenous locals, Chinese, and Indians are all minorities.
We both know what "the constitution favors" means, and it isn't pretty.
By locals I meant Malay, since there aren't a lot of Dayak, etc. walking around the cities.
But I forgot to mention that prostitution is allowed for Chinese women in Malaysia, so the first floor in most hotels is a giant brothel. Gotta love Islamic countries. :)
Of course it is. I invite you and anyone reading this comment to take a proper and serious look at it from authentic and non-Islamophobic sources. We wouldn't have many of the socio-economic problems we see today were we to follow Islam.
Instead of actually and directly empowering the youth for their own growth in intellectual, body, and mind, a digital brothel aims to empower them so that they can cheaply sell their sexuality.
Sure, in the framework of capitalism and individual freedom, this is uncritizable.
But let's step back a little bit, and see this in its actual form, and acknowledge that it's a well-justified ban.
If there is no coercion then what is the problem? Capitalism doesn't even need to be considered for this to be uncriticizable. They are not harming anybody other than some people's sense of moral superiority. If they choose to sell their sexuality that is their choice.
There is a difference in beliefs and play between you and op. OP may believe that some restriction of personal choices for the greater good (women choosing education, careers, etc over selling their bodies) is justifiable. You may not believe that.
In reality the laws provide a mix of the two. You can say almost anything you want, but you can’t yell fire in a movie theatre. Similarly, you maybe can sell anything you want, but selling your body may be a net negative for society.
I understand there is a difference in beliefs. That is why I wrote my comment, to offer a different perspective to the conversation.
There are enough people on the planet that we do not need to restrict personal choices for the greater good beyond the golden rule. I don't want to tell somebody what they can and can't do because I don't want others telling me the same. I will do what I want to satisfy Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and I am not going to stop others from doing the same as long as there is no force involved.
Prostitution has effects beyond the two parties exchanging money for sex by making a market for something we don't explicitly buy and sell, similar to human organs reclining on airline seats. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/upshot/dont-want-me-to-re...
It's easier to understand by flipping the situation:
Let's say society's age-old tradition was that men MUST pay women for sex, and it's shameful (even illegal) not to. But a few women say no, we want to be able to have sex for free. If the men know that free sex is now a real option, why would they keep paying for it? This freedom would drive the price of sex down, and could cause the sex market to collapse.
The equivalent in our timeline is if sex went from being generally free to always having a price.
To be free in the positive sense requires that every individual is able to do as they wish even if you don't like it.
"Positive liberty is the possibility of acting — or the fact of acting — in such a way as to take control of one's life and realize one's fundamental purposes."
In the journey of life you cannot rush someone to realize their fundamental purpose. You can only cultivate an environment that allows them to do so. You might see choosing to be a prostitute as avoiding their fundamental purpose. I see it as a stepping stone in their journey. They are earning enough money to move to a higher level of the hierarchy of needs. This is necessary for self-actualization.
> They are not harming anybody other than some people's sense of moral superiority.
They hurt the young girls ability to recognize passionate mutual affection driven by the human instinct of finding the fitting mate.
They deprive the strong sense of self driven attractions between human beings, and replace it with much more rational yet unspeakably gross attractions to material possession, which itself was a modern invention out of ludicrous idea that someone are just more entitled to privileges than others, even if everyone was created equally, both physical and mentally.
They hurt everyone by setting the example of even your sexual activity, the most intimate and passionate human activity, in both physical and mental sense, is perfectly ok to commercialization.
If you look back a history , since the beginning of time, society has sought to limit sexual expression.
Shame was the tool, but now that shame has been removed from sexual expression, more ways have been used to curb that expression.
Just look at Instagram, in the beginning women could openly advertise only fans. Now that is restricted and also on twitch and YouTube is making moves in that direction.
That’s what’s happening in Malaysia right now.
I’m not saying it’s good or bad, it’s just what’s happening around the world and it will forever been a constant struggle as the pendulum swings from one end to the other.
In the end unrestricted sexual freedom leads to lower birth rates as people have more choice. Just look at worldwide birth rate stats over the past 20 years. Covid only sped them up.
There is no “they” that considers this or enforces this - it’s just the human organism fighting for ways to keep itself alive.
Check out Greg Bears theories on how germs and viruses actually control the overall operations of humans in a bid for self survival.
Fascinating.
That’s what makes the world interesting sometimes —- to gaze at this struggle going on with open and neutral eyes.
> There is no “they” that considers this or enforces this - it’s just the human organism fighting for ways to keep itself alive.
There clearly is, aside from differing fertility rates these are all actions of authorities of one sort of another. They're different authorities but most are religious whether directly (Malaysia is a conservative Muslim country) or indirectly (Twitch isn't religious per se but it's following the puritanical values of the US)
That’s why it’s fun to watch. Step back from religion for a minute and see the giant forces at work that almost has nothing to do with governments or religions or social movements. It’s so powerful that those things are just instruments rather than reasons.
I can't prove it, but I suspect, that the human species superorganism contains evolutionary psych aspects that, rather than grossly-overpopulate leading to mass deaths like most animals, more softly curtails reproduction as population explodes and resources become scarcer. (People are happier, have more sex, and couple and "nest" more when "times are good.")
Such behavioral, preference, lifestyle, openness, and attitude changes include: Alternative gender/sexual identity expressions diverging from family focus, stress/anxiety, voluntary celibacy, perfectionist family planning (contraception, abortion, workaholism, and stricter goals), shallower human interactions, disillusionment of love, casualness of increased divorces, elongated adolescence, extended non-monogamy, "failure to launch," distractions like screens and video games, and, inadvertently, fertility reduction causes like obesity and plastics. I'm certain there are more factors I missed and some that are minor.
Thanks. Yeah, It's too amorphous, ubiquitous, close-up, and squishy soft-"science" (philosophical-ish) sociological and psychological phenomena to really investigate, and conducting any sort of large-scale experiments would be extremely cruel and unethical.
I think we can only look at history, macro trends, and some imprecise civilizational differences to throw approximate qualitative hypotheses against the wall to make some guesstimates, and still be wrong most of the time due to unaccounted factors or even happenstance of maladaptive random behaviors like not dating people with green eyes, political revolutions that organize society differently, or inexperience/shyness denying the immense rewards of social/sexual/pairbonding opportunities.
Well, they have more famines too. There's no immunity from a currently prevailing population carrying capacity or lack of preparedness for wars and natural disasters. The hard limitations apply when there is lack of access to birth control but just enough resources to have more children.
Such superorganism traits arise only if they are evolutionarily advantageous, and only when evolutionarily pressure selects for those traits. However, overpopulation previously was never really an issue, high population density was the exception rather them the rule, and various nation states clamored for scarce resources through war. This means that such forces haven't been part of our species for long.
In such an environment, wouldn't evolutionary forces be less likely than, say, ubiquitous xenoesteogen exposure from new chemicals like plastics or a vastly different diet and lifestyle from our evolutionary origins?
How do we know this? Didn't most humans aggregate in tribes roughly 150 or so? And then civilizations arose roughly 5500 BP (300 generations). What's to say (cannot be proven) that nature (evolutional psych) and nurture (socialization and norms) optimized for larger communal living with higher intelligence, self-control, etiquette, less violence, etc.? Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature is a good read that doesn't exactly address nature/nurture but peers into the trends.
Silphium went extinct, which was a proverbial shame (no pun intended). Abortion, women's access to employment, and divorce, available in many but not all countries, helps to encourage causal sexual relations.
Sex negativity vs. sex positivity has been a battle forever, and Malaysia has dual systems for Muslims and non-Muslims that exacerbates this dichotomy.
The typically most taboo exchanges involves the scarcest and most desirable resources: sex, love, money, slaves, or power.
It seems like the sugarbaby/daddy phenomenon is merely an inducement for what others can get for free if they had more time, better seduction skills, self-confidence, and seized on more opportunities. I see that like the legalization of prostitution: what consenting adults can do shouldn't be regulated by the government. It is unfortunate that Malaysia banned Sugarbook and now drives such arrangements underground like prohibition, risking the enrichment of criminal enterprises.
That’s a whole lot of tangential pop-history and evo-psych-on-LSD to distract from your declaration that commodification of sex is a fundamental part of “sexual expression”. Not just commodification in general, but specifically legitimizing old men soliciting young women for sex.
It’s no cosmic mystery that the effect of sexual freedom on birth rates stem from birth control and the alleviation of economic incentives for having many children.
It is baffling to me that this is the “top comment”.
> Greg Bears theories on how germs and viruses actually control the overall operations of humans in a bid for self survival
Perhaps you have read the Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. [0]
It is important to understand science, history, and human behaviour. The tendencies are clear. But biological reductionism has limited application for explaining complex systems. All you can really say is that people seek to maintain power and support favourable power structures. Whether this is because their microbiome "wants" this or it's simply better to be in control than to be a slave, I leave for other microbiomes to debate.
Woman remains a slave even in much of the modern world for reasons that have not changed. [1]
There is a political power structure allied with an economic power structure, and, in this case, an Abrahamic religion to blind the population and enforce conformity. If anything is capable of weakening the ideological power structure, it is the wealth generated by economic activity.
Men are doing this sugar daddy thing with 14 year old girls here in Vancouver, BC via Instagram and Facebook. Source: 15 year old girls who rejected said propositions but have friends claiming to be making $700/month. That's not iron clad evidence, but I've no reason to assume they're lying. I don't know what the relationship entails - but the whole thing is disgusting to me and nobody seems to care.
My wife gets bombarded with these scummy offers, but at least she's an adult.
I think the big change hasn't been on the male side, but rather on the female side. There's always been creepy men willing to do this... the big change has been the mainstreaming of the acceptability of this among females. It used to be embarrassing to be seen as the kind of girl that spends time with old rich guys in exchange for gifts.
Now being on their yacht in Biscayne Bay is worth the instagram clout for many girls. Go for a walk on the beach in Tulum and you'll see the average age difference of couples is something like 20 years. Instead of keeping it a secret, college age girls know their friends are doing it, as well, so there's no social pressure to hide it.
Very, very clearly there has been a massive shift on the acceptability of talking about this among women, and also I think how common it is among more affluent, younger women.
But I have no idea how the demand on the male side has changed. Certainly, there have always been "creepy men" doing this, but I'm curious if the numbers are increasing or staying steady. Definitely I have never heard of any man I know doing it, but I think they would hide that they do. By contrast, I do know young women who have done this.
It was embarrassing for like 50 years of human history.
Historically women got married around the age of 14-16, to men older than that, and marriage would often come with greater access to goods and services. That really started changing with the advent of mandatory public education, so it started changing like 100-ish years ago.
If you don't believe me, check the age your grandparents got married at. It was probably in their teens.
I’m going to assume that women’s fundamental willingness to engage in this kind of behaviour hasn’t really changed but that they are no longer shamed for doing so. Couple this with social media and you get a big uptick in visibility.
just read a piece saying that for young teenager girls, saying no to an older man is just part of the toolbox, the most universal "rite of passage" towards adulthood:
a day ago a girl which i was dating was so surprised that i was kind. she indeed either got harassed, spied on, bullied or raped by all of her male partners.
(another one had a loaded gun pointed at her face because the boyfriend was jealous. oh no wait, three of my partners almost got killed.)
in fact 100% of my female partners and 99% of my female friends got raped at least once (many male ones too, but less). not even talking of such "offering", it's just "normal" for most. a statistical quirk, i doubt it.
perhaps sexual education of male fellows might be important? and when i say male i talk for myself too, as a bisexual 50% of intercourses i had with ppl of my gender had at least one non-consensual element done to me. the line is blurry sometimes but the problem is well there.
i tend to think there some kind of cultural issue there: every ad targeting men tries to explain them how many young girls they will f** if they buy the product.
reminds me my former roommate brought a box of actual sugar, guess the branding: Daddy
honestly, i think it is about moral education more than sexual education. i think schools do need to get over being afraid of sex and need to present realistic depictions of sexual encounters with consent.
there's a solid percentage of people, but particularly men, who just do not care about the impact their actions have on others.
He’ll now head to Instagram instead, scroll through accounts... and flag those he likes to an “agent” who’ll get in touch on his behalf
Wow, plainly admits to abusing social media for soliciting sex from people he knows aren't sex workers. It's not hard to imagine some minors get "flagged" too.
That part also is super surprising to me! This is presumably a cultural difference between myself as an American and Malaysian culture, but it seems fairly common for women to travel alone occasionally, and most wouldn't think twice about posting nice photos on Instagram.
Solo female travelers aren't necessarily prostitutes!
Yep different cultures have very different ways to signal these things. For instance in Vietnam my understanding is that Hairdressers are often sex workers, but in the US that is not the case.
Can anybody really tell what's wrong about it. Some people are too jealous that some young girls get to make some money? They much rather do it rather than get under influence of people who push them into religious bigotry, or into studying to get bullshit degrees that makes them earn less than if they didn't... There are many ways to waste your young years and this is by far not one of worst of them.
Some people are too jealous that some young girls get to make some money?
That has always been the root of the rage that comes with these applications. The hilarious irony is that they're always shut down to "protect" the women from the evil predatory men, which just exposes their hypocrisy: they don't believe adult women have enough agency to make their own choices.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 172 ms ] threadOn the other hand one could say it “strengthens” relationships because it’s a release valve for relationships which otherwise may be under pressure to break up.
Obviously these people probably don't have the legal protections of a marriage, but the next best way to move up in class is to attend college, and that's not within reach of many (dare I say most) people, especially coming from the US where 60%+ don't have college degrees.
Are power imbalances so bad that we should seal off avenues to class mobility? Power imbalances can be abused but they aren't always.
Boss pays you for the power to direct your energies.
Taxes.
Customers pay you to do things.
Just because it’s related to sex does not make it more of an imbalance.
And no - don’t get it twisted, I’m not advocating for this specific power imbalance.
Who's been messin' up everything...
Serfs.
Selling of children.
Communism.
Give me the power imbalance that rewards me instead of forced labor any day.
All of this precedes "capitalism" and also existed in non-capitalist economies. What were gulags and other such mechanisms if not enslavement with added mortality?
I thought there was evidence that money was invented fairly early to be able to keep track of what goods or services had been exchanged.
Clearly there is something distinguishing some power imbalances from others.
Because, unlike a sugar baby, that's not what the employee signed up for.
Perhaps there is something unique about sex and how it interacts with power dynamics? I want to capture the intuition that we generally all share around stuff like this.
A statement like
> Just because it’s related to sex does not make it more of an imbalance.
does not seem to capture this intuition that most people hold.
...which is also generally bad if the role is materially different and goes on top of what was signed up for, with little to no extra compensation.
> Perhaps there is something unique about sex and how it interacts with power dynamics?
Suppose that your boss asked you, in addition to your current duties, instead of giving sexual favors, you follow him home and do all his laundry - with the same implication that your career hinges on it. Would that change the power dynamic? I don't think so. The only thing that "sex" changes is that it arouses attention.
Both are bad, but I disagree with your moral intuition - and suspect most people would as well.
The key moral fact here is more than just "it's not what you signed up for"
Vice versa may be worse, but either is bad. We wouldn't consider it fair just because it doesn't involve sex. In either situation, the power balance is the same. Your boss doesn't get more power just because he asks for sex instead of laundry.
If the entire relationship is premised upon sexual favors or sugar daddy style relationship, there is definitely a different power imbalance than one where you are being blackmailed/coerced into something you didn't originally sign up for.
Are you saying the relevant important factor is that they are an employee and not a contractor?
> wrong (and illegal in the US).
Sure, but prostitution is also generally illegal in the US as well.
If you are hired as a coder, and the boss asks you to start also joining sales/marketing calls with them (not in your job description) is that of equal moral ickyness as if the boss asks you to have sex with them or a third party (similarly, not in the job description)? I think not, but the explanation provided definitely doesn't capture that intuition.
But it comes down to personal comfort zone. Someone who tries to get a coder job is comfortable with coding, but may not be comfortable with doing electric installations, which clearly is not in the job description - and I would expect any of my team to tell me to go fish when I come to them with 400 meters of copper cables and a screwdriver.
Women who are on that platform obviously are comfortable with the idea of exchanging sexual favours with clients. They may have limits on certain practices, and they probably would not be comfortable doing something icky and morally corrupt as coding.
Moral is something very subjective, and I consider it pretentious for someone to push their own morals on others. If the people involved in that platform are ok with this, if they do these transactions out of their own volition, it is obviously wrong to send a sharia morality police after them because some grandma or some priest might be offended.
It's harder (but not impossible) to define legally, but it would fix edge cases like Indecent Proposal and A Teacher.
By that standard, any employment arrangement would constitute a power imbalance, which would raise the question of whether such a power imbalance is at all problematic.
It's accepted to have temporary wives (under a religious marriage for a few days) as escorts in Islamic countries, but quietly. Once it hits the press, authorities often feel compelled to do something about it.
But Sugarbook doesn't even fall under the fig leaf of temporary wives, and the membership numbers are shocking for a small country.
Some other commenters asked what's the harm of Sugarbook or OF:
1) women have a limited window to start a family and have children. Disrupting that has a very high price for both individuals and society.
2) making relationships purely transactional
3) normalizing the above across the population.
The indigenous locals, Chinese, and Indians are all minorities.
By locals I meant Malay, since there aren't a lot of Dayak, etc. walking around the cities.
But I forgot to mention that prostitution is allowed for Chinese women in Malaysia, so the first floor in most hotels is a giant brothel. Gotta love Islamic countries. :)
What's that supposed to mean? Islam is strictly against this practice.
Homosexual relationships are not permitted in Islam. Also, Islam has nothing to do with the Catholic church's sick practices.
Sure, in the framework of capitalism and individual freedom, this is uncritizable.
But let's step back a little bit, and see this in its actual form, and acknowledge that it's a well-justified ban.
In reality the laws provide a mix of the two. You can say almost anything you want, but you can’t yell fire in a movie theatre. Similarly, you maybe can sell anything you want, but selling your body may be a net negative for society.
There are enough people on the planet that we do not need to restrict personal choices for the greater good beyond the golden rule. I don't want to tell somebody what they can and can't do because I don't want others telling me the same. I will do what I want to satisfy Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and I am not going to stop others from doing the same as long as there is no force involved.
It's easier to understand by flipping the situation:
Let's say society's age-old tradition was that men MUST pay women for sex, and it's shameful (even illegal) not to. But a few women say no, we want to be able to have sex for free. If the men know that free sex is now a real option, why would they keep paying for it? This freedom would drive the price of sex down, and could cause the sex market to collapse.
The equivalent in our timeline is if sex went from being generally free to always having a price.
[0]: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative...
"Positive liberty is the possibility of acting — or the fact of acting — in such a way as to take control of one's life and realize one's fundamental purposes."
In the journey of life you cannot rush someone to realize their fundamental purpose. You can only cultivate an environment that allows them to do so. You might see choosing to be a prostitute as avoiding their fundamental purpose. I see it as a stepping stone in their journey. They are earning enough money to move to a higher level of the hierarchy of needs. This is necessary for self-actualization.
They hurt the young girls ability to recognize passionate mutual affection driven by the human instinct of finding the fitting mate.
They deprive the strong sense of self driven attractions between human beings, and replace it with much more rational yet unspeakably gross attractions to material possession, which itself was a modern invention out of ludicrous idea that someone are just more entitled to privileges than others, even if everyone was created equally, both physical and mentally.
They hurt everyone by setting the example of even your sexual activity, the most intimate and passionate human activity, in both physical and mental sense, is perfectly ok to commercialization.
No, this is not only wrong, it's anti human!
Shame was the tool, but now that shame has been removed from sexual expression, more ways have been used to curb that expression.
Just look at Instagram, in the beginning women could openly advertise only fans. Now that is restricted and also on twitch and YouTube is making moves in that direction.
That’s what’s happening in Malaysia right now.
I’m not saying it’s good or bad, it’s just what’s happening around the world and it will forever been a constant struggle as the pendulum swings from one end to the other.
In the end unrestricted sexual freedom leads to lower birth rates as people have more choice. Just look at worldwide birth rate stats over the past 20 years. Covid only sped them up.
There is no “they” that considers this or enforces this - it’s just the human organism fighting for ways to keep itself alive.
Check out Greg Bears theories on how germs and viruses actually control the overall operations of humans in a bid for self survival.
Fascinating.
That’s what makes the world interesting sometimes —- to gaze at this struggle going on with open and neutral eyes.
There clearly is, aside from differing fertility rates these are all actions of authorities of one sort of another. They're different authorities but most are religious whether directly (Malaysia is a conservative Muslim country) or indirectly (Twitch isn't religious per se but it's following the puritanical values of the US)
Such behavioral, preference, lifestyle, openness, and attitude changes include: Alternative gender/sexual identity expressions diverging from family focus, stress/anxiety, voluntary celibacy, perfectionist family planning (contraception, abortion, workaholism, and stricter goals), shallower human interactions, disillusionment of love, casualness of increased divorces, elongated adolescence, extended non-monogamy, "failure to launch," distractions like screens and video games, and, inadvertently, fertility reduction causes like obesity and plastics. I'm certain there are more factors I missed and some that are minor.
It’s certainly bigger than any one human directed agent.
But yeah we can’t prove it.
I think we can only look at history, macro trends, and some imprecise civilizational differences to throw approximate qualitative hypotheses against the wall to make some guesstimates, and still be wrong most of the time due to unaccounted factors or even happenstance of maladaptive random behaviors like not dating people with green eyes, political revolutions that organize society differently, or inexperience/shyness denying the immense rewards of social/sexual/pairbonding opportunities.
People with scarcer resources have more kids.
In such an environment, wouldn't evolutionary forces be less likely than, say, ubiquitous xenoesteogen exposure from new chemicals like plastics or a vastly different diet and lifestyle from our evolutionary origins?
That doesn't seem very logical. (?)
The point is look at the numbers and how society expresses sexual expression between men and women these days.
If they are so unrelated as you posit, what is the cause of the decline in birth rates then?
1. You probably want to establish your career before having kids. That takes time, especially with all the training required and needed mobility.
2. Kids need to have a good career to have a nice life, so you need to invest more in your children, which means fewer of them.
I don't know whether it's a cause or an effect. Maybe it's a self-feeding dynamic?
Sex negativity vs. sex positivity has been a battle forever, and Malaysia has dual systems for Muslims and non-Muslims that exacerbates this dichotomy.
The typically most taboo exchanges involves the scarcest and most desirable resources: sex, love, money, slaves, or power.
It seems like the sugarbaby/daddy phenomenon is merely an inducement for what others can get for free if they had more time, better seduction skills, self-confidence, and seized on more opportunities. I see that like the legalization of prostitution: what consenting adults can do shouldn't be regulated by the government. It is unfortunate that Malaysia banned Sugarbook and now drives such arrangements underground like prohibition, risking the enrichment of criminal enterprises.
Good things laws are decided democratically, and the vast majority of humanity rejects this conception of how government ought to function.
Its nature is to meddle. And thats what changes the world.
Some of us do sit back and observe and learn.
I thought birth rates tended to decline due to increased prosperity, not freer sex.
It’s no cosmic mystery that the effect of sexual freedom on birth rates stem from birth control and the alleviation of economic incentives for having many children.
It is baffling to me that this is the “top comment”.
Perhaps you have read the Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. [0]
It is important to understand science, history, and human behaviour. The tendencies are clear. But biological reductionism has limited application for explaining complex systems. All you can really say is that people seek to maintain power and support favourable power structures. Whether this is because their microbiome "wants" this or it's simply better to be in control than to be a slave, I leave for other microbiomes to debate.
Woman remains a slave even in much of the modern world for reasons that have not changed. [1]
There is a political power structure allied with an economic power structure, and, in this case, an Abrahamic religion to blind the population and enforce conformity. If anything is capable of weakening the ideological power structure, it is the wealth generated by economic activity.
[0] _ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene
[1] _ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman_Is_the_Nigger_of_the_Wor...
My wife gets bombarded with these scummy offers, but at least she's an adult.
Now being on their yacht in Biscayne Bay is worth the instagram clout for many girls. Go for a walk on the beach in Tulum and you'll see the average age difference of couples is something like 20 years. Instead of keeping it a secret, college age girls know their friends are doing it, as well, so there's no social pressure to hide it.
Very, very clearly there has been a massive shift on the acceptability of talking about this among women, and also I think how common it is among more affluent, younger women.
But I have no idea how the demand on the male side has changed. Certainly, there have always been "creepy men" doing this, but I'm curious if the numbers are increasing or staying steady. Definitely I have never heard of any man I know doing it, but I think they would hide that they do. By contrast, I do know young women who have done this.
Historically women got married around the age of 14-16, to men older than that, and marriage would often come with greater access to goods and services. That really started changing with the advent of mandatory public education, so it started changing like 100-ish years ago.
If you don't believe me, check the age your grandparents got married at. It was probably in their teens.
Seems very similar to the inflated perception of child abduction occurrence.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/09/teenag...
a day ago a girl which i was dating was so surprised that i was kind. she indeed either got harassed, spied on, bullied or raped by all of her male partners.
(another one had a loaded gun pointed at her face because the boyfriend was jealous. oh no wait, three of my partners almost got killed.)
in fact 100% of my female partners and 99% of my female friends got raped at least once (many male ones too, but less). not even talking of such "offering", it's just "normal" for most. a statistical quirk, i doubt it.
perhaps sexual education of male fellows might be important? and when i say male i talk for myself too, as a bisexual 50% of intercourses i had with ppl of my gender had at least one non-consensual element done to me. the line is blurry sometimes but the problem is well there.
i tend to think there some kind of cultural issue there: every ad targeting men tries to explain them how many young girls they will f** if they buy the product.
reminds me my former roommate brought a box of actual sugar, guess the branding: Daddy
there's a solid percentage of people, but particularly men, who just do not care about the impact their actions have on others.
I have a hard time believing that men are harassing, raping, and armed assaulting because they missed that day in class.
It would be interesting to see if either a VC-backed Yelp for People or China's social credit system has an effect on sex-related crimes.
Wow, plainly admits to abusing social media for soliciting sex from people he knows aren't sex workers. It's not hard to imagine some minors get "flagged" too.
This is the stuff of sex trafficking.
"he’ll now head to Instagram instead, scroll through accounts ('a dead giveaway is if she has travel pictures alone')"
Solo female travelers aren't necessarily prostitutes!
That has always been the root of the rage that comes with these applications. The hilarious irony is that they're always shut down to "protect" the women from the evil predatory men, which just exposes their hypocrisy: they don't believe adult women have enough agency to make their own choices.