Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 531: Human Trafficking Deep Dive Discussion

Episode Date: July 6, 2020

Resources from the Deep Dive (episode 7) Netflix: I am jane doe Netflix hot girls wanted   

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This is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad. It's skeptical, it's political, or makes us mad. It's skeptical. It's political. And there is no welcome mat. This is episode 531.

Cognitive dissonance, Cecil. Yeah, and this week we're doing something like, well, so what we had recorded, Tom and I, back a while ago, gosh, this was maybe three months ago, almost three months ago, Tom. We had decided we were going to do a long-form episode. Tom and I, back a while ago, gosh, this was maybe three months ago, almost three months ago, Tom, we had decided we were going to do a long form episode. That long form episode was going to be put in sort of a bank, sort of in the archive until we needed it in case one of us, genuinely in case one of us got COVID was the main idea behind it. We have successfully dodged COVID up till now. And we also needed some time this week. So we decided to break into the bank and use the bank episode, the long form episode that we recorded on human trafficking and

pornography. And it's really just a crazy long conversation that goes in a lot of different directions. It didn't really go in one direction. Yeah. And so, you know, we kind of decided to talk about this in part because of the news that broke today. It's kind of everywhere, but CNN has it. Ron Jeremy, porn star, charged with sexually assaulting four women. Yeah. So, star charged with sexually assaulting four women yeah um so you know it's it's it's a crazy fucking sad and shitty and depressing article uh ron jeremy who by the way like that guy has been fucking creepy ever since that guy has been like ever since you could like look at that fucking guy i know has there ever been a world where you looked at Ron Jeremy and thought like yeah I'd leave him alone around my daughter

like he looks for fuck like do you remember that show there was a show where they put a bunch of like celebrities together and like washed up

like R list celebrities together yeah okay more than B yeah down the alphabet way down down the river from B

yeah however far down you go and like ron jeremy fucking slunk into that house i remember that there was some but he gained like some some some notoriety like in the early 2000s is like this like kind of the kind of the beginning of the um mainstreamitization of pornography and like kind of the beginning of where like porn stars were started to see, be seen as kind of pop heroes, pop stars almost,

like cultural icons. And so, you know, now here we are in the post Me Too era movement and he's charged with four counts of rape, forcible assault and rape. And it's charged with four counts of rape, forcible assault and rape. And it's not just that. There's a ton of other people that have gone and accused him too. So I saw that it wasn't just four, that there's been, I don't think any of those are going to trial or anything, but there's been just a laundry list of accusations against him. So it's been one of

those things that you look at from afar and you shake your head. But one of the things that we talk about in this episode, which we're going to get to here in a second, is the porn industry and the human trafficking that goes on in it, and also sort of the social ramifications of the porn industry. So we hope you enjoy it. This conversation travels in all different directions. And so we hope it, uh, it is cogent enough for people to follow. Uh, and if you have any comments, please let us know, send us a message at dissonance.podcast at gmail.com. So we can talk, uh, we'll, we'll chat with you or we'll, we'll talk about some of the comments on an upcoming show. But, uh, but without further ado, let's play the tape that we recorded

in the midst, in the beginning of the quarantine for you. And we hope you guys have a good week. Next week, I said last week, next week is Vulgarity for Charity, not this week. So next week, look forward to Vulgarity for Charity, but we're going to play the human trafficking piece now. And we hope you enjoy it. Keep going! human trafficking piece now, and we hope you enjoy it.

So today, the deep dive topic today is going to range. So I think the main idea is human trafficking, right? So that's the main idea. But there's so many little branches and tributaries that we can dive down into on this topic that we had a real hard time pinning it down to one type of human trafficking. So it's human trafficking in the large umbrella, and we will be working our way through a lot of different types of human trafficking. And I think pushing back on some of the numbers that come with human trafficking, because there's a lot of really weird data out there that's just inconsistent. That's a hugely important part of the preface to this show. So when we decided to research the topic, you hear, depending on what news you read and what articles you read, the numbers for the extent of human trafficking range as high as about 21 million people that are being trafficked. 30 million. I saw 30 million.

Did you see 30 million? I saw 30 million. God damn. 20 to 30 million was the highest number I saw. And then you start diving into this, as Cecil mentioned, and you start looking at like, okay, well, what does that word trafficking mean? And then when you start poking at that, depending on who you read, there seems to be like a tremendous amount of politicization, politicization, however that's fucking pronounced, on both ends of the spectrum to either inflate or deflate the number. And I was thinking about this a little bit, Cecil, because I guess I understand the,

and I don't appreciate because I think lying is just a generally bad thing to do for any cause, but I understand and can have some level of appreciation for increasing who gets counted in human trafficking, right? That makes sense to me. If you want to bring more attention to a problem, the problem has to reach a certain size in order for people to say, holy shit, really? That's something worth paying attention to. I don't necessarily understand the motivations, like the psychological motivation or political motivation to people that seem to be working the numbers intentionally backward. And there were some articles that really seem to be trying to

work those numbers backward. And both ends of the spectrum are problematic. Like trafficking is a poorly defined term. And then the way that we count who's trafficked is not also very well defined. But it seems to me like if it's 10 million, that's a lot of fucking people. It is. That's just a vast, insane, crazy number of people. That's an immense number. That's a huge number. And the 10 would be me just randomly taking the smaller number and cutting it in half for the purposes of demonstration, right? Yeah. I didn't read anything that said it was 10. Like, you know, part of the problem is like

the idea of human trafficking, the idea of human slavery, like we're, I'm going to use the term, like we're better at things now. We're like, we're less overt in terms of like as people, in terms of like how we abuse other human beings. You know, during the African slave trade, that was an incredibly overt type of slavery, right? It was a very out in the open, a very well-defined, this person is a slave. I use the word slave. They're literally in shackles. They're literally on boats being transported across the ocean as slaves and then sold at auction in these vast numbers. And all of that was protected by institutions and legislative bodies, right? Who said like, hey, slaves are a real thing and we want slavery and we need slavery.

And the way that it's done now is way higher numbers, way, way higher numbers, but like much less overt, but nonetheless real and nonetheless numerically significant. And that's a really important part of that trafficking piece. And I think that is a huge part of why it's so hard to put your finger on it, right? Like in the Americas, it's like, well, who's a slave? I don't know. Are they black? Because then they're probably a slave. Like if they're black and below the Mason-Dixon line, chances are good that things are not in their favor. Like it was real easily defined. Yeah. And one of the things that they try to do is pass it off in some ways to sort of mitigate that size by saying that as a ratio of population on the planet to slavery. It's the smallest in the history of the world, right?

So 7 billion people, let's say high end 30 million enslaved people. Now you're looking at a tiny, tiny ratio in comparison to how many people were on the planet back in the times that we were using enslaved people here in the United States. And that's a way to hand wave 20 million tragedies, right? That's a way to just say, okay, yeah, but that's, I mean, it's really just a disingenuous argument. Until it's zero,

it's not good. It's unacceptable. It's unacceptable at one. Right. Yeah. Because like, if that's you, like you would find it fucking un- If you're like the last fucking slave, you wouldn't be like,

well, you know, there was a one in seven billion chance it was going to be me. So I just drew the short straw. I got the very short straw. The tiniest short straw. It's funny though,

because like nobody thinks of it in terms of like, we always think of it in terms of like putting the, when those arguments that you just made are sort of put forward, they're put forward in a way that like just like removes the humanity and the actuality of the personhood, you know? And like, it sort of suggests that like, well, there's a certain acceptable amount of human trafficking. There's a certain acceptable. And it's like, yeah, just because something terrible is the best, least terrible that it's ever been, like does not make that thing an acceptable. There's some things for which we should have a zero policy, right? Zero tolerance policy. Zero tolerance. Absolutely. things for which we should have a zero policy, right? Zero tolerance policy. Zero tolerance. Absolutely. And slavery has to be one of those. Like if you can't fall on the side of slavery as a zero, like we don't have a moral argument to make. Like we're not interested in having that. One of the things that they also do is try to talk about when enslaved people are put into bondage, sometimes it's not done

through coercion or force. And so that feels to some people like less of someone being enslaved when it's not. And they say something in one of the articles that 20% have been unwittingly trafficked by predators through deception or coercion. That's still, 20% of 20 million is fucking 4 million people. That's not, I mean, that's a large amount of people. Now, again, it's not a large amount in comparison to 7 billion, but 4 million people is a lot of people. If we get to the end of the coronavirus thing and 4 million people die, that's a lot of goddamn people that die. Yeah, that's a lot of people that's like, one of those is maybe you. Like, just always think of it that way.

Like, maybe that's you or your daughter or your buddy, like whatever. Like, if that's unacceptable, then it's just wholly unacceptable. The thing about like the coercion argument, it gets, and this is something I want, this is a huge angle to this, is like when you, when you start reading into this, especially when it comes to the sexual exploitation of minors, the sexual exploitation of immigrants, a huge, huge part of what drives the possibility for this is a lack of social systems

and a lack of social safety nets. Absolutely, 100%. You've got people, and they talk about this in terms of particularly teenage runaways and young people. And there are arguments, and I think they're bullshit, disingenuous arguments for so many reasons, and we'll go into them. But there are arguments that are made that like, you know, some of these people consensually put themselves in places where they're becoming prostitutes, right? When it talks about sexual slavery. Sure. And it's like, well, if the only option that somebody has is to sell themselves for sex, That is an institutional coercion. 100%.

So when the only option somebody has to feed themselves, to put a roof over their head is sexual slavery, then that is still a form of institutionalized slavery. It is just a form of institutionalized slavery that comes as a direct result of poor social structures that don't provide people a means to make a living without literally prostituting themselves. That's fucking troublesome. Like, if that does not trouble you, if you don't live in a world where you're, if you live in a world where you look at that as a sense of, like, personal

responsibility or personal, you know, that 17-year-old girl, she made that choice on her own. Yeah, that was just like that 18-year-old girl, that 19-year-old girl, that was a choice that that person made like apropos of nothing. Like that is a disingenuous way to look at the world. Like that's a choice somebody made as a result of the absence of better choices. as a result of the absence of better choices. Absolutely. A hundred percent. When you think about it,

what would that person do if they had an opportunity to live without doing that? Right. If they had every opportunity to live without doing that. And it also is a failing too when you talk about the way people get into it. They talk about the drug, a lot of people get into it because of drug use, right? So you get into it. They talk about the drug, a lot of people get into it because of drug use, right?

So you get into it because you're into drugs and you need to pay the money for drugs. If we had better programs or different ways for people to get high, we talk about, you know,

legalizing certain drugs so that they're recreationally available and there's no steep prices that you have to pay on the black market for them. And then you talk about programs that help people get off drugs

that are a lot more accessible and a lot less religious and a lot less cold turkey with God. And then suddenly you start changing some of those systems. This is a systemic problem. It's not that it's just a single person out there and that's the only data point we have. It's a genuine systemic problem. It's not that it's just a single person out there and that's the only data point we have. It's a genuine systemic problem. If the only thing that person can do is sell their body to buy drugs or to live out on the street, well, then we're doing a poor job of making sure

that those people have opportunity. Yeah. And it's like, one of the things I was thinking about is how the issue of selling or commercializing sex, and I'm curious what you think of this. So, you know, we have this idea and it's a bullshit idea that there's an age and it's 18 and it's a magical age. And that at the age of 18, suddenly somebody becomes an adult and virtually everything is available to them in terms of how responsible they are for their own actions and how capable they are

and how much access they have to the legal system. And when I say it's a bullshit idea, it's an inherently recognized bullshit idea. And we don't let people typically drink until they're 21. And the big part of the reasoning behind that is because we recognize that people have not reached an age of actual maturity until they reach the age of 21, and drinking carries with it certain risks, until they reach the age of 21, and drinking carries with it certain risks, significant risks. Interestingly enough, if you look at car insurance, car insurance is vastly more expensive until you reach the age of 25. And it's vastly more expensive until you reach the age of 25

because the actuaries have crunched the numbers. And the data represents that really until the age of 25, people's risk behavior and their understanding of the consequences of their actions is such that you just look at the economic reality of what that all means. It's more expensive. They're going to crash more often. They're going to engage in higher risk behavior. High risk behaviors are more likely because people's brains aren't done forming. I read this article relative to this that suggests that your cerebellum and your prefrontal cortex typically does not finish cooking until you're 25. You don't understand consequences. Your impulse control is low until about the age on average of 25. And for men, it's actually two years less. So like women

mature, their brains literally mature faster than boys do. But we have this bullshit made up thing of 18, which has never been based on anything data-driven. What it's been based on in part is to get people to join military service before they reach an age where they realize military service is fucking terrifying. And like, if you get people to sign up before they have, when they're physically mature, but not mentally mature, they won't have a sense of their own mortality. And so that's a great time to get people to join the fucking military, right? You're physically strong, you're mentally weak. It's the same thing for prostitution. It's literally the same thing for sexual slavery. If you get people who are physically mature,

but who are not emotionally and psychologically mature, they're simply easier to manipulate. So the idea that we have these consent ages where people can engage in behaviors that all the data tells us we know they don't understand the consequences of. They can't. Their brains aren't done forming. They literally, like all the rest of the data around how we treat young people, suggests that we know young people don't understand the consequences of these behaviors. But we still allow a certain amount of commercialization of sex and sexuality and consent and consensuality at ages which don't meet the data. And that just encourages more young people to be victimized by these systems. And these are legal systems that do this. Sure.

Do you think, you know, I agree in principle, but I also feel like there's another factor at play here. And the other factor at play is that we are very protective of women. And that if this was guys doing this, especially when we're talking about the porn piece later on, 18-year-old guys, I don't think either of us would raise an eyebrow. But if it's an 18-year-old girl, we talk about consequences. Well, what are the consequences? The consequences, are they that she's spoiled

at that point? Are they that she's ruined at that point? Because I don't believe that sex ruins you. I don't believe that sexual activity hurts you. I think that one of the biggest problems is our own prudishness. Our own societal prudishness makes it feel like there's bigger consequences at stake for sexuality than there actually are. There are definitely sexual consequences. You know, you can have a kid, but the other problem is that, you know, we also don't talk about

the ways to prevent those sexual consequences, right? We keep those things away from people. We say, oh, we don't want to talk about you using condoms. We don't want to talk about you using birth control. We don't want to talk about you using abortion. We don't want to talk about any of those things, but then they all happen. And then we're stuck with a bunch of kids that we don't want. So that's a real problem. But when we talk about sexual consequences, we need to talk about what are the sexual consequences? Because a lot of times the society is the one

that is enforcing sexual consequences on stuff that if we think about being sex positive, it doesn't really, there's no real consequence. What is the,

what's the real problem of someone being on a sex tape? What's the real issue about someone being on a sex tape other than society thinks that that's a bad thing.

Right. Even though all of us are fucking and you can have, I mean, at fucking 16, you could have a walking, breathing, shitting sex tape. You just didn't get a chance to see it. It's a fucking baby. Right. Right. There's plenty of kids that have babies. You have the evidence, right?

Yeah. It's a fucking evidence of a sex tape. Right. You just don't have the actual sex that someone can see. But societally, we look at it as if it's some sort of huge consequence. And again, we do it by gender. We do it in the sense that it's female consequences. It's never male consequences for that.

Yeah. Well, does that make sense? It does. It does. And I think if we could flip a switch tomorrow, like I think I think this shit gets pretty complicated. Like the sexual power dynamics and like especially American sexual power dynamics. But I mean, it's true just across the board. Like they get real complicated, real fast, for sure. Would it be great if sex and sexuality were socially recognized as just an inherently

ethically neutral activity as long as everybody consents? I think that that would be awesome. I think that, unfortunately, I don't think we'll ever live in that world. I genuinely don't think that we're ever going to live in that world. I think the consequences for sex as an activity, even recreationally, always fall overly on women. Women are the only ones that can get pregnant. And to avoid getting pregnant, women have to take medications which have significant potential side effects. They can still get pregnant on those medications. So there's some amount of biological gatekeeping that women have always had the burden of holding. And I think we've built-

But technology has mitigated that significantly. It has, for sure. But like not without consequence because those medications are not consequence-free and they're not perfect. And like I think that we have built social structures and ideas about who men and women are based on that idea of biological gatekeeping. And like, I don't think there's a reset button that anyone's going to flip. Sure. So the social reality is that women, at least I think as long as I'm alive, will always bear the largest brunt of that sexual-

I don't think that that's unreasonable. Yeah. Sure. bear the largest brunt of that sexual. I don't think that that's unreasonable. Yeah, sure. So like, I think about that and it's like, yeah, man, like, and it's also like the case that I think that the kind of sex that's sold and portrayed and commercialized is not the kind of sex that is typically consensually occurring between normal adults. People get coerced into progressively more extreme activity than would probably be the case for them to agree to if it wasn't commercialized. Anything that you sell has a tendency to amplify. So all of that seems like genuinely problematic in the now you know and i think

that there's like good solutions for it i think you can have i think you can have first of all a differentiation of age for the commercialization of sex so you could say like the age of consent for relational sex is 18 or whatever it is you know 16, 16, 17. It's 16, mostly in the United States, it's 16. And then I think you can say like, well, maybe we shouldn't allow the commercialization of sexual activity until a later age, until people have more opportunity to gain access to resources, education, and for their brains to be done cooking. So maybe there needs to be a different age of consent for the commercialization of sex. And it should be higher, you know, like drinking or getting good car insurance, you know? That seems like an easy data-driven answer, you know what I mean?

Like where that it acknowledges not just the social reality of the ramifications of sexual behavior and the differences that exist between men and women, but also like how our brains cook differently, you know, and how like the effects of commercialization versus relational sex have different consequences, you know. Does that make sense? Does that idea make sense? The age then is 25 because that's when you're cooked? Yeah. Maybe even 21. I mean like- 21. 21. I don't know what that answer is. I'm suggesting that there should be a different answer than, because 18 doesn't mean anything. It's literally been decided randomly. 18 is celebratory. Yeah. And well, I think 18 is more culturally, it's culturally celebratory since you're graduating high school. That's when you become a person, like an adult. So there's

cultural significance around becoming 18. And some of those cultural significances happen when you are around that age. And so that's the sort of thing we think, you get more independence at that age, right? That it's not 100% random, but I get what you mean when you say, it's not, there's no magical age.

You can't just throw a dart and say, everyone is adult at this point. You know, unless you're throwing it way higher than most people will be at that adult at that age, right? You gotta, you'd have to really hit farther.

I want, you'd have to say 30 because there's going to be people that are, you know, or you got to say 40 because there's probably some people that are still maturing at some point. There's some Peter Pan ass motherfuckers that are 50, right? Yeah. Hell yeah, man. There's people that never grow up. Yeah. So it's, it's, you know, so you, you got to do what's best. So I understand, I understand what you're getting at. Uh, I think that, I think that there's, that it's interesting that it's, that it's also, in some ways, taking some earning potential away from women.

You know what I mean? Like, it's taking some of that potential away of things that they could have done at 18 to 20— Call it 21, 22, whatever. You know what I mean? Like, there's a possibility that they could. Anyway, let's talk a little bit about, I want to talk a little bit about actual, like, people that are not in sex slavery first. So let's get back to that really quickly. So a couple of things I want to talk about specifically are the people who,

who we watched in, Tom and I watched a Nova special, or not a Nova special, a Frontline special, and we'll post it on the show notes. There's a group in Ohio, a chicken farm, where they would get people from another country that they would essentially illegally get them into the United States from another country, put them in terrible living conditions, make them work terrible working conditions at an age that's much younger, coercing them to think that they're going to get a better life in the United States. And then in some countries in Africa, they take these young children and sometimes it's like a family friend or an uncle or something will take a child, put that child in another village where they're collecting and working on the cocoa beans that we turn into

chocolate. And they take all those, they take them and put them in these almost, it's not a forced labor, but it's, you know, they're too young to consent to this level of activity. They're school-aged children. And they're not different than forced. Like, do you see that as, like, it's forced. Yeah. It's forced. It's forced in the sense that they were just sort of dropped off at daycare. And daycare happens to be pick chocolate all day, cut chocolate open out of pods and separate the gooey bits from the other bits and then dry them out. And that's your life.

That's what you do every day. And these are long, hard, shitty hours. Chocolate is a hand. It's a hand, you have to do it by hand. There's no real mechanisms for us to have machinery that does that work. It's done by human beings.

And those people are mostly, a lot of them are children. The chocolate trade, they try to do things to try to stop that by injecting money into it and making it so that there's fair trade chocolate and things like that but there's still plenty of chocolate on this planet that's consumed and it was harvested by essentially

slaves these are slaves these are enslaved people they're just enslaved by you know they're too young to consent to this level of work and the same thing is happening in the United States and this is a large you know this isn't a small number this is a large group of stuff that we consume all the time that is produced by people that are not treated the same way as other workers. Right. And in a huge way.

And the sugar industry has the same problem. The sugar cane industry has, although less children, industry has, although less children, but it has very much the same problem. And part of it is like the global demand for extremely low prices and extremely high turnout of these products puts an enormous amount of downward pressure on the market, which causes people to use whatever is cheapest. And what in the world is cheaper than exploited immigrants? We'll talk a little bit about these people, the guy who's like Shanghai'd onto a fishing boat in Thailand.

We read an article from The Atlantic about that guy. The cocoa industry, the sugar industry does it. The cobalt industry does it to mine shit for your cell phone. Yeah. It's like part of the problem of the ever-growing demand for

ever-cheaper products that are always at your fingertips is it just necessarily creates this economy, this exploitative economy. And that is 100% a form of slavery. If you have no other choice, if you're born into some kind of labor bondage, if the only option in your community, in your town, in your life, if the only option for you to survive, and it's a subsistence bullshit living, is to work these dreadful hours and these dreadful jobs, that's effectively slavery. That is like, if you have no other fucking option, like it's slavery. And like, that's something like that often isn't considered as slavery. Like, especially when, like, migrants do it, especially when, like,

grown-ass people. But there are so many communities and so many industries where a dearth of options and a complete lack of social systems and a total inability for exploited workers to reach into a legal system

to complain about their rights, to complain about abuses, to complain about not being paid to complain about abuses, to complain about not being paid. Still, it's a form of institutionalized slavery when the institutions protect those economic structures. In the United States, especially in this PBS special that we watched, that chicken farm looked like a hellish, absolute hellish working condition. 100 plus degrees inside of there. Smells like a million chickens packed absolutely hellish working condition. 100 plus degrees inside of there. Smells like a million chickens packed into a cage

because it's essentially a million chickens packed into a cage. And they have to go through and literally remove the dead birds. Their job is to go through because the living conditions are so bad, chickens can't even live in it. It's so terrible.

And they go through and just remove the dead birds and it's so you can have eggs at a dollar a dozen. It's so terrible. And they go through and just remove the dead birds. And it's so you can have eggs at a dollar a dozen. Right. It's so you can pay. And I don't know what eggs are cost in the sense that I always buy, my eggs are always so expensive. I always buy the ones of the chickens. I make it feel like the chickens run free and they have sunlight on their back and their,

you know, their name is Colin. And you know, like I get a chicken of the month picture, those types of things. That's what, those are the types of eggs I buy, but it's, I get that, you know, that there's a lot cheaper eggs and people buy those eggs because, you know, because we don't pay people living wage in this country.

So of course they're going to buy, you know, the cheapest eggs out there. And so, you know, I understand that, you know, they're going to buy the cheapest eggs out there. And so, I understand that they want cheap eggs because we don't pay people enough in this country, period. But those people live a terrible, I mean, it's a terrible life. And they're lied to before they leave about how they're going to go to school here

and how they're going to have a better life here. And then they show up here and they're, you know, on occasion, one of them was going to school, but he was falling asleep in class because he was working 14 hour days outside of school. It was just an unreal level of work he had to do. And it's like a huge number of those people are like, they're never going to complain about those working conditions. They're never going to like reach into the legal system and are like, they're never going to complain about those working conditions. They're never going to like reach into the legal system and say like, that's not okay.

Because like they're afraid of being deported. They're afraid of like, there's a huge amount of like consequence. We've actually built systems that encourage slaves not to raise their hand

and say, I'm a slave. Like across- Specifically with prostitution too. Yeah. Because it's an illegal activity. And so if it's an illegal activity, and if you're someone from another country who has, now you're committing an illegal activity,

you're also not legally here. Right. You have two strikes against you going into the police office and saying, I'm being exploited. Right. So like when the police show up, like, and there was a couple of articles that mentioned this. So, when the police show up to bust one of these, like,

like, slavery rings, the slaves themselves are trying to hide from the people that are there to protect them. And, like, it's the hidden problem of using, like, using immigrants and using young people who don't understand their rights and are, you know, they don't understand like what's being asked of them and what they can and can't do.

And they think their family's going to get deported if they're caught. And like, so you put all the consequences for being a slave on the fucking slave. for being a slave on the fucking slave. And that's like, and then all of those systems that should be there to protect these people don't work because the people who are subjugated to this level of slavery feel like the system itself will simply victimize them differently than they're currently being victimized. And it's like, it's kind of the devil you know problem.

Sure. You know? Sure. You know? Sure. Like, so with respect to like prostitution and sexual exploitation and sexual slavery, like there were a number of articles that we read that really suggested very strongly, I think, and certainly suggested to me that like, one of the solutions to this problem

is to legalize prostitution itself. And that when they did it in New South Wales, in Australia, and when they did it in New Zealand, they found that the incidents for human sexual trafficking plummeted in New Zealand to zero, to like nothing. And then in New South Wales, Australia, to virtually nothing. And part of that, and there seems to be a number of reasons for that, but like one of the reasons for that is like as soon as you pull something out of the black market, you collapse the black market economy for it. That's a big part of it. And the other thing that you do is you empower the people who would like to engage in sex work. You empower them to then tap into legal systems

that protect them. The same legal systems that would protect a factory worker from being abused or that would protect an office worker from getting beaten up on the job. Those things don't protect you if the thing that you're doing when you get abused and beaten up and pimped out, they don't protect you when the activity that underlies all of that is illegal, right? You have to go in and say like, it's kind of like the drug problem. It's like, if you got a beef with somebody because they stole your shit,

but your shit was illegal, the likelihood is that you're going to settle that beef on the street instead of in the courts. Because you can't take somebody to court and be like, he stole my drugs. Those were my drugs. Ask yourself this, would you rather work, These are for people who watch The Wire. Would you

rather work for Stringer Bell or a dispensary? Right. You know what I mean? Ask yourself that because to be honest, I don't want to work for Stringer Bell. You come up to Stringer Bell and say, yeah, sorry, somebody took my take. You get shot in the face. If I come in, if I go in and say, yeah, I accidentally spilled a bunch of stuff in the back room and I ruined a bunch of gummies, I don't get shot in the face. No, right. Yeah. You get fired. It doesn't happen. That's it. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So suddenly you take out a level of, you just have workplace protections,

period. Right. Right. You just have workplace protections and that changes the entire game. You have a minimum wage that you can get. You have a minimum age, for God's sake. Yeah, exactly. You know, it doesn't employ minors. Like, well, McDonald's doesn't employ 10-year-olds, right? Yeah, right. Like, they follow the law because there's no reason for them not to. There's no inherent incentive for them to hire underage people to fucking make French fries, right? And like there would be a significantly smaller incentive. Right now, all the incentives

are to exploit young people, right? Because young people are easier to manipulate. They're both psychologically and frankly, physically easier to manipulate. And they're easier to financially manipulate

because as soon as you remove a young person from their home and from their social base, they now have no other resources. Young people don't even know how to tap into other resources. So young people are a great source for sexual exploitation because they're just simply easier to manipulate. That's, I mean, like, but McDonald's doesn't have to do that, right? McDonald's needs people to flip fries or make fries or whatever. They don't need it to be young people because there is a workforce willing to do this work

that you don't have to manipulate horrifyingly into it. Yeah. It's a game changing, and the data suggests that it's game changing. The data suggests that in places that give sex workers workplace protections, that those people, that the incidence of sexual exploitation and human sexual trafficking drops dramatically. I also think that people would prefer to purchase things legally when possible.

Yeah. You know, but as soon as somebody's pushed into doing something illegal, it's like, well, if I'm doing something illegal, there's so many other things. Yeah. Right. It opens the door. It's, it's, it's a gateway. Yeah. You know, there's, there's, if I'm already doing something illegal, why don't I do this other thing that's also illegal? That's tangentially related to, right. There's just no reason not to, you know, what I'm not going to, I'm not going to be doing, I'm going to be doing this X, I should do Y, you know, whatever. I do want to talk,

I want to shift just for a second and we can always come back to this, but I want to talk about that article that you're talking about because in that article, they say no evidence of recent tracking of female sex workers is marked, is in marked contrast to the 1990s

when contracted women from Thailand and were common in Sydney, right? So that's what it said, is we're common in Sydney. But in that same article, it says, another common claim is that there's 100,000 to 300,000 children locked in sex slavery in the United States. That number is a distortion of a figure from a 2001 study, which estimated that the number of children, adolescents, and youth at risk of sexual exploitation, sex trafficking were basically, that's the number of people that were at risk of sexual exploitation. Sex trafficking was the least prevalent form of exploitation in their definition. Other forms included stripping, consensual, homosexual relations, and merely

viewing porn. And so that's why that number was so inflated. And then it says Estes himself estimated the number of legal minors abducted into sex slavery was very small. We're talking about a few hundred people, but yet on the early in that article, they say it was common. Yeah. Right. So they say it's common in one point and then they say it's not at the other. And so it's like, it is really hard to figure out what the numbers are here. It is genuinely difficult to figure out whether or not it's a huge issue or not. Now, it's definitely an issue.

It's definitely something that happens. It's not that it doesn't happen. And as we said earlier, there should be a fucking zero tolerance policy on people being abducted and raped. That's the easiest zero tolerance policy. I know the Catholic church still hasn't gotten this done right, but there should definitely be a zero tolerance policy. But finding actual numbers on this is really difficult to find

out whether or not it's something that is a big thing or not. And one of the things that was really interesting was there's a sort of reaching across the aisle handholding, because on the one side, you have sort of a democratic group of people, a left-leaning group of people that want to help protect women, right? So that's their idea is there's women that are being exploited and want to help protect women. And on the other side of the aisle, you have the Christian right, who's anti-prostitution, anti-sex, and they're reaching across the aisle to create some laws that, that wind up hurting sex workers because, uh, and, and Democrats are jumping on board because they want to try to help people

that are being exploited. And so there's a weird sort of tidy bowl thing going on here where people that maybe wouldn't be normally working together are working together. And some of those laws might actually be harmful to the people who are in the sex work, in sex trade. Well, and they're not looking at, like it's, I think in large part, it's because it's not research driven.

Like, you know, like that, it's ideal. Like that stuff that you're just mentioning about the politics piece, it's not research driven. Like, you know, like that, it's ideal. Like that stuff that you're just mentioning about the politics piece, it's ideologically driven and like going through and doing the reading for this, like a lot of the numbers, like you say, like a lot of the numbers are muddy. And part of the reason that they're muddy is because different groups define differently what, like if, if the standard is that you have to be abducted and raped, like that's like, I would say like, that's probably a pretty low number. if the standard is that you have to be abducted and raped, like that's like I would say, like that's probably a pretty low number. If the standard is like

a 14-year-old runaway who gets coerced into sexual activity by a pimp, like that's going to be a much higher number, but that's still a child. You know? Like, and that person wasn't necessarily abducted in the sense of like snatch and grab, right? Sure sure but like we're

just we're not like none of the numbers are real consistent about like how these terms are defined and then the ideology the ideological pieces like you said that surround this are not driven by the research they're not driven because the research is shoddy and the research is all over the place and the terms are poorly defined. But I think what we do see is in places where you legalize prostitution and you have more sex positive cultures, you have more sex positive outcomes. You have less exploitation of other people. And like the United States is kind of this like boiling cesspool of like sex negativity and or inconsistent sex positivity, maybe another way to say it. Like there are parts of this country that seem to be very sex positive.

And there are other parts of this country that are super fucking sex negative. Like there's still parts of the country that like, we've covered on this show recently where they're just like, would you want to chew this chewing gum or fucking hock a loogie

and drink it from a cup or whatever? That's what sex is. Everyone in this room, yeah, everyone in this room, cum on this paper, I'm going to make this girl eat it.

Right. You know what I mean? And it's essentially what they're saying in the high school is like, yeah, basically women are cum dumpsters. Right. That's what women are, basically women are cum dumpsters.

That's what women are. They're giant cum dumpsters. Stay away from them. Once cum goes in there, it never comes out. Every time. She's a roach motel for cum. That's what she is. It's so fucking, it's so fucking, and like, you know, that's part of that.

Like we talked about earlier, like that's part of that baked in social misogyny. Yeah. America is basically a big insult. Right. Like America has weird insult-like thoughts about women all the time. Women and like sexuality is like, we're the worst about that stuff. Just the absolute like stomach churningly worst about all of that shit. Absolutely. stomach churningly worst about all of that shit.

Absolutely. You know, what's interesting though, is that there's almost like a titillation paradox, right? Because on some levels, you want to try to keep sex as a taboo-ish sort of thing so that you're titillated by it. Right. And then, but the more you do, the less titillation there is.

And so it's less, you sell it less. And so you want to keep it. So there's this weird paradox that we try to fill because I would imagine if you're somebody who's trying to sell sex, it's not good for your industry. It might not be great for you if sex becomes more positive. If sex becomes more positive, you know what I mean? Do you understand what I mean? Like if sex becomes, if sex positive stuff becomes positive, then there's some, there's less of a, it's not less of a demand, but there's less titillation. And so then you have a culture that is less titillated by sex and therefore your product isn't as worthwhile as it was. Do you understand what I mean? Does that make sense?

I do. I don't know. Part of the thing about sex and selling sex is it's baked into our biology as much as we're just going to get horny. People are just going to. Right, right. It's the perfect product in demand terms. It's just like to get horny. Like people are just going to like, so like, there's like, it's the perfect product in demand terms. Like, it's just like, sure. Somebody's always want, somebody always wants that. Like there is always going to be an ask on that. You're absolutely

right. You're absolutely right. But like where I, where I think that like America gets weird on the titillation scale is like, we, we want to be titillated, but we vilify those who titillate us. we want to be titillated, but we vilify those who titillate us. Yep. And like that, that social poison is problematic. Like that social poison is, is problematic.

And I think that's going to be generationally difficult to fix. Like that is just so baked into like the Puritan culture. Yeah, we want a slut, but we want a shamer. Absolutely. That's what we want. We want both of those things. The thing is like, we want like even, and it's true of like, we want, you know,

a lot of people like, you know, they want sex work to be legitimized, but they don't want their wife or daughter to be a sex worker. And so like, if you don't want it, if you don't want your wife or daughter to do it, worker. And so like, if you don't want it, if you don't want your wife or daughter to do it, then like, there is still a stigma attached to that work, right? Absolutely. And I think that gets into the reality that like sex is a more complicated interchange

because it's not like, like I've seen that analogy before. It's like, well, you know, a construction worker goes out and sells his body. And like a woman going and saying, what's the difference, you know, between a prostitute and a construction worker? And I just think that's like kind of a bullshit reductionist argument that denies that sex is more than just a physical act that people engage in. Sex can be just a physical act, but it can also be much more than a physical act. And there's a reason why people get upset when other people cheat on them. It's baked into like the language around like love and the language around romance, around fidelity and around like loyalty to your spouse. And like sex can have like a deep emotional connection. And then it can also not. It can also not. But because it's so complicated,

because it weaves so much together personally and socially and religiously, I don't think it's a fair argument on the other side to be like, well, it's the same as a construction worker. And some people don't want to work construction and they have a bad day at work and they get hurt sometimes at work. Cause I've seen this argument and it's that, how is that different than a prostitute, you know, who gets hurt at work and doesn't like her job, but you know, everyone's got to make a living. And it's different because of all the things I just said, because sex is inherently a much more complicated human interaction. I don't want to throw that analogy 100% out because I think that, you know,

like there's sometimes when you talk about people leaving a job, right? Say you started something, you did something, and then you left it. The same thing could be true for anything you didn't like, right? You know what I mean? Like, so a sex worker could get into sex work

and then not like the sex work and then leave the sex work. Oh, for sure. You know what I mean? Like, and I think about, I think when I think about that, I think about the deadliest catch, right? That show, and then leave the sex work. Oh, for sure. You know what I mean? And I think about, when I think about that, I think about the deadliest catch, right? That show, The Deadliest Catch.

Right. Those fucking guys have the shittiest job on earth, but there's people clamoring to go up there and do it. They want to challenge themselves. They want to work these eight, 10 hour days. They want to show how tough they are. Whatever it is, whatever brain thing that you got going on to do this.

And they hire 18 year olds to go out and do that work. But there's a lot of people who fucking wash out of the deadliest. There's a lot of people who are like, fuck this shit. And I imagine porn and sex work is the same thing. There's a lot of people that see, you know, those people on TV or whatever, and the deadliest catch and think, I want to do that. And then they show up and they're like, oh, I got to lift fucking 600 pound crab pots all day. Hard pass. Same thing when it comes to porn, you know, oh, it looks glamorous. It looks nice because they did an edited version. They didn't show you, you know, blood shitting on the toilet after you had sex. So there's a, there's a definite, I think there's, there are some correlations there where you can look at it and say, yeah, you know, sometimes they glamor

things up and it looks like it's going to be a lot more glamorous than it is. And it kind of sucks. And you know, that, that's why people leave it. But I understand your point a hundred percent. And you're like, the sex is a different thing. It's a different animal. It's not just labor, right? It can be just labor, but it's not always just labor. And the ideas we have around it are a hundred, I'm a hundred percent with you. You know, you, you, you see, uh, I don't, I certainly wouldn't want my wife to be a sex worker, right? I wouldn't want my wife to be a sex worker, but my wife and I, we have a promise, right? We made a promise. We did a thing where we made a promise. If I was coming into that relationship and I knew she was a sex worker from the start, that promise may be very, very different. I'm coming at it. I'm coming at it from

a guy who's been in a monogamous relationship for over 20 years. And so I don't know what that looks like for somebody who isn't in a monogamous relationship. I don't know what it's like to be in a polyamorous relationship. That may change things very differently and change things very drastically. And so I think that when we talk about being sex positive, I think we also talk about being relationship positive too. And that would change our culture too, to be more open to polyamorous relationships, to be more open to people that have relationships that aren't traditional monogamy. Because you thinking about that about your daughter is also imposing your relationship with who you have on your

daughter. Oh, absolutely. Don't mistake. I just want to be clear. I'm saying these are social realities. I get it. I'm not accusing you of anything. I just want to make that clear for the audience because I know sometimes that shit can get confused. I think that there's

a necessity to acknowledge social realities. And one of the things, we watched this Netflix show, Hot Girls Wanted. And there was a scene in it that was kind of, that demonstrates the social realities

of the ramifications of commercializing for video pornography, especially at a young age where people like, so these girls at the beginning of the movie, they're in the car and they're like, oh, we're going to be famous. This is going to be great. And they've got this idea of how things are going to work. And then fast forward a very short amount of time, a couple of months, and the one girl is dating this guy and she's at a party and everybody has figured out that she's all over porn websites.

And then they're like, oh, let's put it on the TV for everybody to watch right now. And she's standing there next to her guy and she's humiliated and he's humiliated. And there is a permanence to that, that she can never escape. Like there's a permanence to her activity

that she picked at an age where her brain is still forming how she makes decisions. And there is a permanence and there's a record of that. And that's troublesome. You know, that's a troublesome part of that industry is like forever that could happen, you know? And she felt obviously very embarrassed and ashamed and he felt obviously very embarrassed and ashamed and he felt obviously very embarrassed and ashamed. And that is inescapable now forever. Like that's just a forever, it's like, it's like getting a tattoo on your face.

You know what I mean? Like you can't escape it no matter what from now on. Well, that's a good analogy though. Well, like at what age should we allow people to get tattoos on their face then? You know, I don't think it should be, I don't know, I don't know that maybe, maybe it should be considered.

Maybe it should be thought about differently. You know, maybe if the reality is that like, we are not in control of how, of our, if we don't have good impulse control, like if we, and we know these, then maybe certain things which are permanent should not be

either socially legal or actually legal until a much later age. Dangerous jobs? Yeah. Very dangerous jobs? I was thinking about this in relation,

yeah, I think, in relation to the military specifically, right? Like there's a reason we, you can sign up for the military. I looked this up this morning. You can sign up for the military. And this is funny at 17, if you have parental consent. And when I read that, I laughed with parental consent, your parents. So you're too young to make a choice. Yeah. That has mortal consequences. It's ridiculous.

But your parents are allowed to make a mortal consequence choice for you. Like that's insane. Like that doesn't jive with like what we know. It doesn't jive with the research, you know? Sure. And like, it seems to me that like, if we're going to be good skeptics, we should look at the research and we should be driven by what

research says about who we are as people. But I also think too, if we're going to be skeptics, let's try to make sure that we're skeptics across the board and not just for sex, right? So like, like if we're talking, because I think that there is something in us that is that prudishness that is society driven, that makes us feel like that sex, that somehow that girl should feel shamed for having sex on camera. That somehow there should be something underlying in that, that makes us feel like that's a, that's a shameful thing she did. Whereas I don't think it's a shameful thing she did. Whereas I don't think it's a shameful thing she did. She had sex on camera. She chose to have sex on camera. She was a willing participant at an age where everyone, I mean, age of consent in this country is mostly 16. So it's two years after that age that we consider sexual consent. It's two years after that age that we consider sexual consent.

It's two years after that. And I feel like she was a person who went into that at the, I understand, I totally understand your points where you're saying, she doesn't understand the ramifications of her, maybe she doesn't, maybe she doesn't understand the ramifications, but she doesn't understand the ramifications

in a sense that we are, that those ramifications, but she doesn't understand the ramifications in a sense that we are, that those ramifications are there because of, because society thinks that that's a bad thing that she did. And that's something that I think that really needs to be the one major thing is that shows that it's systemic is that all these things are dug deep into our society, that somehow she should be shamed and her boyfriend should be shamed because that happened to them. Does that make sense? Yeah. I think like the prudishness and the like puritanical roots of this country and the evangelical Christian roots of this country and like all of that is a goddamn sexual poison. Like it's this goddamn sexual, social poison that like makes all of these problems so much worse because the,

the social ramifications really are a big part of the problem. Like the, like, like are there, is there a potential for like physical ramifications and personal emotional toll? Absolutely. But like, this is America and there's a certain level of like personal freedom that we're

just like, that's, that's also baked into what we accept and like, like value just as a, as a nation. The problem is like, like you're saying when it comes to sex and sexuality, like we're fucking horrifyingly inconsistent.

Yeah. You know? And like we, we sex shame women in ways that are absolutely exclusive to women. And 100% in that scene, flip the genders. Flip the genders in that scene. That dude's a fucking hero. That dude's a fucking hero. He's getting high

five from everybody at that college party. It's the fucking, they would put it on the TV. They would put it on the TV. Let's talk about that for a second, because like, that's that toxic masculinity shit that's also part of the fucking problem. Okay. Let's talk about that for a second, because like, that's that toxic masculinity shit. That's also part of the fucking problem. Absolutely. And like, I do want to point out that like, if we're being, if we're genuinely like looking at like research and we're saying

like men's brains develop two years younger than women. And if we're saying that like, two years old is not okay. Two years later, two years later. Yeah. Did I say it wrong? You said younger, but yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah. Did I say it wrong? You said younger, but yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah. So like, if we're looking at that, we're saying that like, men are, men are just inherently less intellectually and cognitively mature than women. Like, yeah, we don't, we don't do the work to protect them either. You know, like they also don't understand. It's like, there's a sense that because like, there's a sense that because men tend to be the sexual aggressors, that there are no ramifications, right?

And like, that is just not true. And like all the same, like many of the, not all, but many of the same logics prevail. And like, we're like, we should not, we should not have a culture that celebrates men for sexual conquest, right? Because when you celebrate men for sexual conquest in that way, we're denying the intellectual and cognitive reality, the emotional repercussions. We're saying men are encouraged then to have sex in greater amounts

than they may be emotionally or psychologically equipped to handle. Yeah, it's not almost, sometimes it's almost not encouraged. It is required. You know, it's not just encouraged. It is, it's almost as if you're less of a man if you didn't do those things, right? Right.

And so, you know, like someone who graduates from high school, meets one person, has sex with them and, you know, they're in a relationship and he dies having, meets one person, has sex with them, and they're in a relationship, and he dies having sex with one person, that guy's inherently less of a man than Gene Simmons, who fucked 100,000 women. Right. Why is the 40-Year-Old Virgin a comedy? Yeah. 40-Year-Old Virgin is a comedy because it's about a guy who doesn't have sex until he's like 40 years old. How many movies, how many teen movies

have you seen where the focus of the teen movie is for the guy to go out and find somebody to have sex? The sure thing like comes to mind, but there's like a million of that trope. That trope is baked into like, into our social expectations. Absolutely. And it's in, it's in full like denial of the reality of how we mature. Sure. We don't mature that way. Sure. And all that shit is deeply fucking problematic.

All of that shit. If you want to have a culture that celebrates toxic masculinity, a really good place is to start when people are real young and forming their ideas about sex, sexuality, and gender relationships and encouraging that hero worship of the guy who bangs a bunch of chicks. You want to make sure that we always have a shitty, toxic masculinity culture that subjugates women and shames them for sexuality? That's a place to look at it. That's a place to look at the problem and begin like looking at solutions. Sure. I want to talk a little bit about pornography here because we want to talk about Pornhub as a, and this is again, is sort of reaching into some other things

that we've talked about on the show before that content conveyors and not producers are not responsible for the things that are posted. Right. And so Pornhub is, there's several pieces that we found that talk about Pornhub being a place where you can find rape. You can find, there's videos that have been taken off of there. They've been taken off of there. There's been people who have been sued because of, because the company's been sued that they did this, the porn under, because they were coercing and forcing women to have sex. So there's, the porn industry is not completely innocent here. No.

And, and the porn, the places where you consume that porn, like Pornhub, also not completely innocent. Yeah. Well, one of the problems with content that goes to these hub sites, these tube sites, is there is a complete abdication of responsibility by the site holder as to the content of the site. So, hey, we don't produce the content. We're just the house for the content. And because pornography deals with sex and sexuality, it's inherently different than something like YouTube, right? So you can post material on Pornhub and Pornhub has had instances where people have had real rape videos posted, like their actual traumatic fucking rape video posted on fucking Pornhub.

There've been underage people whose porn videos have been posted on Pornhub because there's no real substantive vetting process that Pornhub uses to make sure that what you see and what they make money on, right? Every time you log on, they're making money. Every time you look at Pornhub, that's it. Like, you go on there, and they're like, they're getting click-through. That's how they're monetized. So, like, it's not just like, it's not like you go to that site and like,

oh, as long as I steer clear of this certain kind of objectionable material, then I'm fine. It's not, that's just not the case because the site is inherently problematic because it doesn't vet the material that goes on the site. And we know that some of the material on the site is rape.

That is just, that's just a true thing. There is at least, and Pornhub has not been quick to respond and they are not easy to contact and they don't have a good system for making sure this doesn't happen. And they don't have a good system for making sure that if it happens, it doesn't ever happen again. So like videos can get posted multiple times by multiple different accounts. And it's that abdication of responsibility. And it comes back in part to the idea that content should be free when, in fact, no content

is free. The price that we pay for content is maybe not a transactional cost, a one-to-one, I bought this, you gave me that model. But nonetheless, that content is being produced as cheaply as possible in order to get as many clicks on that site as possible. And all of that drives the exploitation of people, of minors, of women, of people with low options in order to produce what feels like free pornography, but which is not in any way free free and which we know contributes to the exploitation of people. That should be entirely an unacceptable proposition for us. Well, it's interesting that YouTube can somehow keep murder videos off of YouTube. Right. Right. I think Pornhub probably does the same thing, right? I'm

sure that there's got to be somebody out there who uploaded a murder video or whatever. You whatever. They didn't commit the murder, but they had the video. They found the video. They put it up there. There's ways in which communities can come together and flag things to get them taken down. The problem with porn is that sometimes some of those things are the kink, right? So the rape thing might be a kink. Right. And so you don't know whether that person is actually forced or not. You don't know it. So if it's a rape video, you don't know whether or not that person was actually raped or not.

You presume they weren't in the sense that it's all just for the camera, right? It's all just a play for the camera, right? It's all just a play for the camera. You watch all kinds of movies in the regular world with murder in them, right? I watched Dexter cut a guy apart while he's in saran wrap to a table. You know what I mean? That never really happened. That didn't really happen. We do this all the time in film. And so the same thing can happen here in pornography. It's just very difficult to decide whether that thing is. And so in some ways, I'm sympathetic to the idea that it might be hard to do. It's not an easy, simple thing to do because one, you don't have the community flagging process that you would normally have. And you can't create an algorithm that can just pluck these things out, right? It would require some sort of

thing on their end to do it. And so it's a sticky situation. It's not as easy as, literally, it's not as easy as you would think to just sort of wave your hand and say, this can happen. But I think it's the responsibility of that company to try to make it as minimal as possible. In one of these articles we read, this woman sent a message multiple times saying, I have been raped. It is on your site. Please take it down. And they said no a bunch of times until she pretended she was a lawyer. And then they're like, oh, okay, yeah, I guess we'll take it down now.

You went through the trouble of contacting a lawyer even though she didn't. She just pretended she was a lawyer. You know, the problem there is like at that point, so much damage has already been done. That video could be downloaded. It's now shared. It's saved. It's fucking out in the world.

Six months for crying out loud. How many, and every time that video is viewed, that person is victimized in a different way. Again, again. It's horrifying. Yes. It's absolutely unacceptable. Like one instance of that is a horror. And it's like, what's the trade-off? When I think about this, I think like, what's the trade-off? Like the trade-off is like some people are being horrifyingly sexually abused and then re-victimized by a fucking tube site in order to make money.

Yes. And on the other side is you get to look at Pornhub for what feels like free. That's the trade. And that is an unacceptable trade. That should, for all of us, be an unacceptable trade. The thing is, as long as a site doesn't create the content and then does not have a vetting process for every piece of content when it relates to sexual activity, you have no way to guarantee consent. You just cannot do it. And like the trade-off is not worth it. Like the trade-off is like, well, I want free porn. That's what you get out of something like Pornhub is you get quasi-free porn, right? But you can just buy ethical pornography.

That's the other option. The other option is to consume pornography that you purchase and that you have vetted that is created in an ethical way. That's just always a better option. The other option is like, yeah, well, I don't care that a certain amount of my ad click view revenue goes toward an unvetted site that doesn't respond to claims of women to be sexually exploited. You have to acknowledge that reality because these tube sites are inherently insecure platforms and they're inherently platforms that abdicate responsibility for their content. And even if the community can flag and take things down, by the time it's flagged, it's been viewed. Sure. It's been viewed several times, yeah.

How terrible would I—I mean, like, I would feel like a goddamn monster if I viewed child pornography by accident. Sure. Right. And there's a way to make sure that never happens. And the way to make sure that never happens is to look at the special circumstance of sex and sexuality, recognize that it's different than other commodities that we purchase, and make sure that you purchase it ethically. The same way that you would something that has a history of exploitation, like chocolate. Yeah. Yeah. What you want is fair would, you know, what you want is fair trade pornography.

That's what you want. Yeah. Free range, cage free, fair trade. Although, let's not go cage free. I like cages sometimes.

Cock cage, not a bad thing. If you're interested in a cock cage, you can go to adamandeve.com. I don't know that they sell cock cages.

But, you know, one of the things that I want to talk about though too is, which is hilarious, is that when I looked up ethical porn, what came up is when the porn sites that also where women get off. Like the thing is, is that when a woman is also happy in the porn production, suddenly it's ethical. And then what that shows you is, is the amount of porn that literally objectifies a hundred percent objectifies women. And then there's the, the tiny sliver of porn out there that is like, oh no, women are people too. And they get off as well. And we should probably, you know, have porn that does. And so like, oh no, women are people too, and they get off as well.

And we should probably, you know, have porn that does. And so there's going to be two sites that will include, two articles that will include on this week's show notes that list several options, and they may overlap, I don't know, but they list several options of places that you can go and get that kind of pornography that you want, that kind of ethical sort of pornography that is sourced in a way that is not going to hurt people. Yeah. When it seems like, just in general, generally speaking, if we're going to allow for the commodification of sex, and I think that as a society with the heyday that sort of pornography has reached, like the broad social acceptance of porn

and pornography in our culture, if we're going to allow for a certain amount of commodification of sex, we need to make sure that like, we properly pay good actors, literally good actors. Sure, they should be a screen actor skilled for pornography. Yeah, right. You know what I mean? If there isn Sure, they should be a screen actor skilled for pornography.

Yeah, right. You know what I mean? If there isn't, there should be, right? Where you can't just, you know, you can't just go and get a job there. You have to go through a giant process to get a card that puts you in a union that they vet you seriously

so you're not another Tracy Lords where you're doing porn at 16 or whatever. You know, so they vet you. They figure out who you are. They make sure that you're 100% willing to be doing this work, you know. And then you get jobs through that union or through your agent who works with that union. And so there's not a chance that, you know, but what does that do though? And I don't know the answer to this.

What does that do for all the people out there that want to do the amateur thing that get off on showing other people that they're, they're sex and sexuality? You know what I mean? Where does that go? Where do you, where are you able to put that sort of thing? And how do you, how do you then now police that to make sure that that isn't some of that bad stuff that we've been talking about? Yeah. And you know, I don't, I have, I have no answer for that at all. And that's, that's a tough question, right? Like, cause there are people that want to film themselves having sex and then they want to put that out into the world because that's part of their, that's part of their kink, right? Like, and I, like, I totally recognize that reality. I guess like, although I

don't have the answer for that, I think like, like until we figure that out, the trade-off is like to do the least amount of harm possible. And if somebody else doesn't get the same sexual gratification, at least nobody was raped or like nobody was like sexually exploited. Like let's, you know, like there's a certain amount of like unacceptable damages. Right. But there's a, the problem though though is when you push that sort of thing away and you make it something that is less available, then those things like we were talking about earlier, now, oh yeah, well, I'm breaking the rules by putting this online, so I might as well do it with a kid too. You know what I mean? So you're opening up that sort of illegality of it, and now the illegality can then branch off into other things that are illegal.

So when you, and we found that more and more on almost everything that we looked at, the more that this is pushed underground and the more that we repress these things, the more chance it has of exploiting someone. Does that make sense? It does. I think, I think part of the answer though is consumer driven. You know what I mean? So what I mean by that is that the vast majority of consumers that consume pornography, if they move to ethical consumption of pornography, will increase the market for ethical pornography and decrease the market for unethical pornography.

Sure. Part of the problem is that, like, we have a sense that everything online should be free. And so, and that includes access to porn. So it's not a law thing as far as, my thinking would be like, let's change consumer attitudes. Let's make people aware. Because like, what I really think is that most people

would not want to consume pornography sold to them by an actor that is indifferent to the exploitation of women. I think that most people don't want to do that. So given that most people don't want to behave unethically, I think that you just, you change the consumer marketplace and you change the consumer marketplace by saying, look, if we're going to commodify people's sexuality, we should compensate them fairly for it. And you can't do that in a marketplace where the standard is free. When the standard is free, it pushes the price down. And when you push prices down, you have to get people to do more for less. That's true of like cocoa. That's true of like

sugar cane. And that's true of the sexuality of other human beings. Yeah. I think that, you know, there's an interesting balance there because we've done two Citation Needed shows about porn statistics. Yeah. And both of those high on the list was amateur.

Right. High on the list is people want to see the bad camera, bad angles, normal person having sex over the porn star. And so when you start talking about how people are being paid, you're talking about porn stars being paid. You're removing that amateur thing. So that's a complicated idea. it doesn't go for what the market wants. The market doesn't want the hottest porn star 100% in HD makeup getting most of the time. What they want is the average person with a fucking potato camera

getting banged in a wherever. You know what I mean? So there is a market thing that's happening that's very complicated. For sure. But you could make Blair Witch very complicated. You know, for sure. But like, you could make Blair Witch the porn. You know what I mean? Like a production studio can make an amateur view,

amateur looking movie and satisfy that market need because it would look amateur. Sure. But then to your point about like, all the actors would be screen actors, you know, they would be like paid and compensated and safe and like of legal age

and like under, you know what I mean? Like, so you can, I think you can meet that demand the same way that you meet the demand for rape videos that don't involve rape.

Yeah. You can, because it's fake. It's fake. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I don't know where we got today, Tom. I literally don't know where we got today. Well, I think it's important to talk about. Yeah.

Yeah. It's an important, but it is important to talk about. Yeah, it's important, but it is important to talk about. And I think like, like, you know, I want to come away from it. You know, I know that I come away from it in a way that is

still a little confused about a lot of the statistics that are out there, still a little confused about our approach, especially as a nation, when you talk about some of the laws

that we've enacted, some of the things that we've done, taken down places where people were illegally able to find other people. One thing we didn't even cover was sort of the back page thing, where people were finding other people on back page. And that was in some ways mitigating some violence against women, but also then perpetuating some violence against women. And it's just, it's such a muddy water. It's so hard to pick one, to be able to say that this is a hard and fast rule,

hard and fast rule about sexuality because it's so tough to decide whether or not that's a good thing or a bad thing that actually happened when Backpage came down even. Yeah, it's funny because part of me, I've read a bunch of articles on the Backpage issue. And there was a ton of sex workers who were like, this is a goddamn tragedy for our industry. Sure. But then there was a ton of grossly unethical shit happening through Backpage,

like the exploitation of minors. And it's like, you want everybody to be protected. And I think where we both come to is like, what you need is you need to treat people fairly. You need to decriminalize. You need to have some transparency and sunlight in this issue. And once you have transparency and sunlight in this issue. Once you have transparency and sunlight, what is the need for Backpage if this was decriminalized? Yeah, you just literally, you can advertise anywhere.

Yeah, you can put it anywhere. When we were in Sydney, Haley and I were walking around and we saw, it's funny, we were walking around. I didn't know prostitution was legal when we were in Australia. I just, it's just something I didn't know. I knew it was legal in parts of it, but not in Sydney. So we were walking around to go to dinner one night. We walked past like what looked like a house and it had a red light. And Haley was like, I think that's a brothel.

And I'm like, no way is that a brothel. That's, that is outrageous. You are outrageous. And she was right because we Googled the address way is that a brothel. That is outrageous. You are outrageous. And she was right because we Googled the address and it was a brothel. And it was just like any other business. It had a website and it had a phone number. And Cecil, it had reviews you could read. Sure.

It had transparency and sunlight and it wasn't criminalized. And so it was just another business in a nice neighborhood that we were walking through on our way to get dinner. And that's just such an inherently safer transactional space than some sketchy shit on Backpage. Once it becomes legal too, it changes how our society looks at it as well. Think about the difference nowadays with modern dispensaries and when you were a kid. Right. Think about the difference of how you would think about just pot. Right. Between now and then. And to think about

the ways in which you think about people who consume pot. Right. Between now and then. And it's a totally different, it feels like a totally different thing nowadays. The moment it becomes a legal thing is the moment that you get not only protections, but I also think that you also get society to open its eyes and say, yeah, that's not a bad thing. That's okay. We can do that. That is a domino effect for the entire sex industry, not just for sex workers who do one-on-one sex work or one-on-many sex work or whatever. It changes things for pornography. It changes things for all types of sex work and

sex-related businesses. So that was interesting. That should be fun. Thanks for joining us. If you have any comments or questions, post them on this week's show notes on the Facebook page or send them to us at dissonance.podcast at gmail.com. We'd love to hear what you think. We hope that we covered this topic in a way that was interesting for you.

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