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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   4103 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 5, 2023

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The master of trolling is at it again. Hanania:

Let's say Jeffrey Epstein wants to have sex with a 14 year-old girl, and will pay her $10 million. The money will go into a mutual fund that will pay out when she's 21. The girl agrees, as do both of her parents. Should this be allowed? And are you male or female?

As of this writing, the results are:

  • "Yes, male" - 5.9%
  • "No, male" - 78.1%
  • "Yes, female" - 1.3%
  • "No, female" - 14.7%

Look at the engagement metrics on this tweet: 94,000 votes, 3.4 million views, 4,700 comments, 273 likes. This might be the most "popular" Hanania tweet of all time.

Now, I am one of the apparent sickos who voted "yes", but I can see some decent arguments for "no". I'm still surprised the results are this lopsided, and I'm also surprised that there appears to be no gender gap.

Would you deny your 14 year old daughter a life free from financial concern?

But of course, it's not your daughter - the premise is that the parents also consent. Would you let someone else's daughter have sex with an old man?

At the cost of turning sex into a consumer transaction? You might argue this already exists and has always existed in some for of human history, (which you would be partially correct), but I think the consequences of widespread acceptance of this practice are largely damaging to cross gender relationships, especially the perception of women, as well as damaging to formation of families. Even historical practices of marrying women to richer/more wealthy men focuses on marrying and producing heirs, not simply for carnal desires. Women who sell their bodies for money have rarely been treated more than 2nd, or 3rd class people and do it at the cost of having a successful long term relationship.

'Selling her body' is a terribly misleading metaphor. Chattel slavery involves the selling of bodies, prostitution is more like selling labour for a fixed period. Of course, people use the 'selling her body' metaphor on purpose to frame the practice in a maximally negative way.

If our hypothetical 14 year old girl was selling her body, surely that would mean that Epstein owns her body after the transaction? If he doesn't, then he hasn't 'bought' anything.

Please stop arguing semantics. I hate when discussions devolve into word games as a way of avoiding the actual validity of an argument, and if this is the line of reasoning you're going to choose I'm not going to entertain this discussion further.

If word choice is your problem, is 'renting' better than 'buying'?

Either way, the negative externalities of turning sex into a consumptive act to be exchanged as a market is something that should be discouraged, regardless of age.

I'm perfectly happy to discuss the issue itself, I just think that such discussions are much more fruitful when everyone avoids using loaded language.

For example, if I'm arguing against someone who opposes abortion being legal, I'm not going to go along with them using the term 'baby-murder' in place of abortion.

You probably don't think of 'selling her body' as being equivalent, but I think that just demonstrates how successful the activist framing has been. It implies that prostitution is a type of slavery, which it (usually) isn't.

After all, I would argue that a woman who marries a man for his money (to a first approximation, most women who have ever existed) is 'selling her body' to a much greater degree than a prostitute, who is merely renting it. And yet the wife is held in much higher esteem than the jezebel.

And yet the wife is held in much higher esteem than the jezebel.

No one held Anna Nicole Smith in any esteem when she married that geezer, and that was the central example of marrying a man for his money.

That's true, but that was confounded by their gigantic age gap. Plus, I can't imagine the average person thinking better of a prostitute version of Anna who just slept with him for pay.

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