Highlights from the Whatever Podcast “Sex Work” Debate

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. I just got back to my hotel room after doing the three-hour-long debate on the Whatever Podcast. I did that last week, and the debate was on sex work, but I prefer to call it pornography and prostitution, is it bad for society? Myself and Lila Rose engaging Destiny and Jazmen Jafar from OnlyFans. I think it went really well, and I have some highlights here I wanted to share with you guys. If you want to watch the entire debate, I mean, it’s not like a formal debate. It’s more like three hours of dialogue and cross-examination. If you want to watch the whole thing, click on the link below. Otherwise, I think you’ll enjoy a lot of these highlights I want to share with you.

I do have two disclaimers before I show that. Number one, there was a fair amount of immodesty in this episode on the part of the dress of, well, one of the participants, won’t be hard for you to figure out who. Of course, so there’s an issue of immodesty that was beyond my control when it comes to this setup on someone else’s podcast. If you find that to be something that you’re not comfortable seeing or it’s a stumbling block or it presents a difficulty, I would recommend, just go to iTunes or Google Play and download the audio link to the episode. I might put that below as well. If that’s just more helpful for you, maybe listening to the audio would just be better.

Another thing, even if you do listen by audio, though, is that we’re talking about pornography and prostitution. The conversation was very graphic at times. There was profanity, and there was references to graphic depictions of sexual acts, because I felt it was important to discuss pornography for what it is, just as I would show people abortion for what it is and how ugly it is. While I wouldn’t show people pornography, because that’s evil to depict, I felt it was important to, without euphemism, describe the disordered acts that occur in pornography and among prostitutes, prostitution, and so I described that in very frank and graphic ways. If you’re not comfortable hearing that or profanity, which we just didn’t have time to really edit out because there’s just so much of it in the discussion, then this might not be a good episode for you to watch, but I did feel like it was important.

I mean, pornography is widespread, people are always defending so-called sex work. I felt this was a very important conversation to have, to engage this issue, and especially to be on a podcast like the Whatever Podcast, to engage this in front of an audience of many people who’d probably disagree on a lot of these fronts, to put that out there, so it was great. I’m really thankful that Brian let Lila and I come on and brought Destiny and Jazmen in as well. I’d love to do more dialogues like this in the future. That’s all I want to say to introduce it, and then just give those disclaimers. If there’s immodesty, if you find that to be difficult or if it’s a stumbling block or whatever it may be, listen to the audio of the podcast. Also, in the audio, there is profanity and graphic depictions of sexuality. If that is something that you have a stumbling block with, you may want to skip this episode. Otherwise, I hope you appreciate these highlights from my debate on pornography and prostitution on the recent Whatever Podcast.

There are studies that show, I have one right here, that shows that married people who more frequently view porn, even if it’s together, even if it’s like, “We’re consenting, this is a thing we’re doing together,” are more likely to experience marital dissatisfaction down the line than couples that do not look at porn together, so pornography has a pernicious effect even on consenting couples who are saying, “We’re doing this together. It’s so great.”

That was a longitudinal study based on the social science survey with 2,000 people. It’s not just a correlative effect.

Even if in our minds we rationalize and we live in the unreality of, “This is not affecting me, I can have this open marriage or I can have this open relationship and my partner can look at porn or have another sexual relationship,” it still affects you in the real world, and it still affects your long-term potential for happiness, and not just fidelity, but happiness and fulfillment in the relationship. We can tell ourselves a theory or a myth of, “Hey, it’s going to be okay, I’m cool with this,” but in reality, it doesn’t work that way in the long run.

See, with a lot of this, I’m not sure if you guys are really frustrated looking up this stuff too, because so many studies conflict when it comes to porn and viewing. It’s like, women who view pornography report higher sexual satisfaction when they view it with a partner. In fact, the data on women, a lot of-

Why would that be, Jazmen? Why would that be?

What do you mean, why would that be?

Well, you just said women report higher satisfaction if the porn is being viewed with a partner, because at least they feel like, “I’m not being 100% cheated on in this moment, because I’m doing it with them.”

No, I don’t think. I think you’re just putting your framework on everybody else. I’m a woman, too. I don’t care if my partner watches porn. It’s not just me trying to satisfy him. It’s not just me being like … I think a lot of people, you have to separate being with another partner physically versus porn, because I think the numbers there would be vastly different on who’s okay if their partner, when they’re not around, is watching porn, versus who is okay with them sleeping with another person in real life. I think you’re going to get widely different opinions there from girlfriends, wives, women, on whether that’s okay or not.

I would say when we look at the studies, like for example, in 2023, Engelkamp et al published a study in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy. It did a quantitative analysis, and the most common themes among couples where the man views pornography is that the woman is glad that he talked about it openly, but disapproves, or is allowing the husband to look at pornography but does not want to hear about it. I think you would say that only a minority of women are positively in favor of this. It’s either negative or ambivalent.

Well, and I think the point of the longitudinal study you mentioned and I mentioned is that even those that say they’re in favor of it and are watching it as a couple have worse outcomes down the line. I think that’s part of the point here, is that even if you … You’re in a very unique situation, you’re making your living doing this thing, right, and so in your mind, of course it’s going to be great. I know you’re going to defend it and say it’s going to be great, but the reality is, even people that are defending it or saying, “It’s fine in my marriage,” down the line, don’t have the best outcome.

Do you think it’s bad, Jazmen, that the average first stage of exposure to pornography is 11 years old?

I don’t think that’s ideal, but I don’t think [inaudible 00:06:49]-

It’s not as, I said, “Is it bad?”

Yeah, I think it’s bad, but I’m not seeing that it’s so bad that it’s leading to such terrible outcomes, because it’s not. Where are these outcomes?

What happens when children are exposed to pornography?

Actually, there’s also a lot of conflicting data on that. A lot of the data on this is really frustrating because it’s really conflicting. I have studies-

I want to know, is it bad when 11-year-olds, their first exposure to pornography … I’m just saying, that’s a bad thing.

Yeah, it’s a bad thing in the sense that it’s not real.

Why is it bad? What does it do to them?

They’re not old enough. Their prefrontal cortex isn’t developed enough to be able to look at that and realize what’s real, what’s not real, how sex is supposed to go, so I don’t think porn is a great way-

How is sex supposed to go?

Probably not like … If you’re on PornHub watching eight people gangbang someone, they’re going to think that that is normal.

That’s not normal? Me-too is a response to people seeing women as commodities that they can acquire and seeing sex as a means of acquiring that commodity, basically. It’s responding to a dehumanizing view of sex. Now, I agree many people don’t have that view, but I do think that the hedonistic view of sex does lead to that, but here’s the question I wanted to ask, just to get back to what sex is for and why. I think it shows that this view of sex is absurd. All right, suppose you had a friend and they said … Because this is partly an idea that sex, it’s a hedonistic activity people can share with consent. Like, say, for example, like martial arts. Martial arts, if I go-

Nobody thinks sex is like that, though.

No, no, hold on, let me make the analogy.

Okay.

If I start martial arts with somebody without their consent, I’ll go to jail because that’s assault, right?

Mm-hmm.

If I just go up and punch somebody, but I can ask them, “Hey, do you want to spar with me a little bit?” Then, that’s okay because we have consent, and it’s this kind of activity. Now, would it be healthy to have a friend who says, “Hey, I’m glad you and I are getting into martial arts together, but I really feel like we can only be friends if you only do martial arts with me,” or, “We can only be friends if you only do tennis with me,” or, “I want you to be my only friend. You’re the only friend that I have.” With those examples, would you say that those are disordered friendships?

Probably, yeah.

All right, so my next question would be, is it disordered for someone to say, “I want you to be the only person I have sex with. You’re the only person who has sex with me.” Do you think that’s disordered?

Not necessarily, no.

What’s the difference between activities that are pleasurable and consensual, martial arts, chess, tennis, spending time together, and sex, then? What is the difference between the two that one is disordered, it’s a friendship you should not get in, and the other we would say not even that it’s not disordered, but it’s the way things ought to be, with sex.

It might be the love of your life in a marriage.

What’s the difference?

The difference is going to be the preference of the people that are partaking in these things. Some people might feel like they like to do martial arts with a lot of people, and for sexual activity, I think people tend to prefer to be more exclusive with that. There’s probably other things we could think of that tend to be-

Is that natural, or should we think that’s the way they ought to treat sex?

Whether or not it’s natural or not is a separate question.

Well, it seems obvious that if someone says, “I want you to be my only friend and you can’t have other friends,” we’d say that’s a friendship you probably shouldn’t get into, right?

Generally, yeah.

Then why-

If we’re going to use the natural-

Why don’t we say the same thing then, about, “I want you to be the only person I have sex with”? In fact, we say that’s a good thing.

If we’re talking about sex, we’re-

Hold on, wait, wait, because-

If a subscriber told to me, “You’re only person, I’m the only person I want you to have,” I would say, “No, that’s not the context of this relationship.”

Well, it’s your business.

Yeah, because you’re selling a business and you can’t have one customer.

Yes. Problematic porn use is bad, but is porn bad and is sex bad? That’s the question.

I think sex is great. I think porn is bad.

Jazmen, what’s the difference between porn use and problematic porn use?

Problematic porn use is where people personally identify. That’s the medical term, with it being a problem in their lives, which is very small. The only representative sample we have puts it at 4% of men.

Is it possible for someone to use porn in a bad way if they don’t personally feel anything bad about it?

What do you mean? Can you give me an example of how using porn in a bad way in the context of-

A husband looks at porn, talks to OnlyFans girls, masturbates to them, and his wife hates it, but he doesn’t think it’s a big deal and it’s really hurting their marriage, and she wants to leave.

Yeah, just like if he drinks alcohol too much and she doesn’t like it, but he still does it, that’s bad. It’s bad when people violate the boundaries of their relationship.

Let me try another one, then. Let’s say, what if the wife says, “You talking to any woman on the face of the earth hurts me and makes me upset.” Would you say that that wife has an inappropriate boundary?

No, because there’s a lot of people that are like that and they literally don’t-

That her husband cannot talk to any woman, even a female secretary. She’s so hyper jealous.

My family is from the Middle East. This is literally how they set up societies.

Do you think that’s good?

I don’t think that’s good, but if there are people who that’s the way that they’re happy … I don’t think that’s good. I think the way you guys live your life isn’t great. You guys don’t think the way I live my life is great. The point is that when we allow people to do what’s conducive to their own happiness, that’s-

No, but what I’m asking you is that, can a spouse have boundary expectations that are reasonable and unreasonable?

I think if we’re going to use a reasonable person standard, that depends on the community, sure. I mean, certain communities, and in your community, porn is bad. In our community, it’s fine.

I’m just talking about community … Even this community out here who is, non-disclosed location, would be listening in on this, that an unreasonable boundary would be, a girlfriend says, “My boyfriend can’t talk to any other women,” that that would be unreasonable, and a reasonable one would be, “My boyfriend should not be going around looking at other naked women.”

That’s fine, so you guys also think masturbation in general?

Yeah. What do you mean by you guys?

Well, I’ve watched your video. You said masturbation just in general is wrong. I don’t think that our community standard would agree with you. I would agree that maybe I’m farther this way, but you are definitely nowhere near where the reasonable person-

I’ll bite the bullet, there are definitely boundaries that are pathological, that are not okay, and there are probably some that are okay. We can probably draw a circle around some that are okay or not.

We’re not debating whether our sexual ethic is good or bad. We’re debating whether your sexual ethic is bad.

If there’s a woman who’s 13, 14-

Do think that’s bad?

I was one of these and I was like, “Oh, choking is kind of hot,” and then when I got a boyfriend I was like, “I want to try out choking,” and we both agreed that this is what we want to do. How is that harmful?

Are you saying that it’s not bad for a 13-year-old girl to seek out choking porn?

No, I don’t think it’s bad. I think if that’s what you’re into-

You think maybe it’s a good thing to show that to her.

Right, and then I also want to say, where is this harm?

You think, repeat this. It’s not bad for a 13-year-old girl to seek out porn where women are choked as part of sexual violence.

I don’t think it’s wrong for girls, when they’re exploring their sexuality and they do that through porn, if they like being dominated. I’m one of these girls, to see that represented in porn.

Would it be wrong for an adult to show a 13-year-old girl that?

Yes, but that’s different. It’s different because there’s an imbalance thing. You’re not supposed to show children this, but if a child … If I, when I was 13, 14-

How about a 16-year-old boyfriend shows it to her?

If he’s like, “Hey, are you into this?” I don’t think that’s bad either.

Wait, wait, 16-year-old boyfriend with a 16-year-old girlfriend, or 16-year-old boyfriend with a 13-year-old girlfriend?

With a 13-year-old girlfriend.

Oh, well that’s different. It’s three years. Three years is typically-

15.

If it’s within the, before it becomes statutory rape, when they’re not even supposed to be having sex, if it’s 16 and 13, in most states they’re not even supposed to be having sex.

16 and 14. I know that the Romeo and Juliet law is different in every case.

Yeah, so 15 and 16, or 13 and 14, whatever you want to say, if it’s two people of the same age and they’re just exploring what each other likes and there’s consent and both people are comfortable with it and it turns them on, it’s okay for them to explore things.

Wait, now let’s go back, then. It sounds like what you’re saying is, fine, 13. How about a 10-year-old girl is looking up this stuff?

I mean that’s really young, but I think that’s still part of normal exploration. I agree. I wish this wasn’t available to children.

Are children harmed when they see pornography?

Well, the research on that is kind of mixed. I actually have a couple studies.

Your answer is, “I don’t know”?

The answer is that there’s research going in both ways and it’s not just me that doesn’t know.

Let me ask you this. If the research goes both ways and we don’t know, should it be a crime, then, to show children pornography?

Yeah, I think children, yes, but we’re not talking about-

Why? Because saying you’re saying we don’t even know if it causes harm.

It’s also a crime to give children alcohol. Is alcohol bad? The other thing I wanted to point out is, if you’re talking about the link to sexual-

It can be very bad for children.

No, here’s why it’s a crime to give children alcohol, that children cannot consent to activities that are capable of gravely damaging them, or even damaging them at all. Kids have to have their parents sign them up for sports teams. They can’t just sign up on their own. It seems like, then, that we’d have to agree that if porn doesn’t damage kids, then they don’t need parents, they don’t need consent, and they don’t need a law to protect them, right, if it doesn’t damage them.

I think that it’s really mixed on if it damages or doesn’t, so to err on the safe side, with children, I’m okay with … I wish we could keep it away from children, but we can’t.

Okay, let me-

By that logic, then, there’s differing opinions about whether childhood football damages children too much or not, so by that logic, we should treat childhood football teams as being as wrong and necessary to outlaw as showing porn to children.

Okay, wait, here’s a question.

Which doesn’t make any sense.

What damages the child?

Yes, that’s my question. It’s not just porn, it’s also, we haven’t talked to this very much. It’s also prostitution. You want data? I’ll give you data. Look up Cho et al, C-H-O, a 2013 study covering 150 different countries showing an increase in human trafficking when prostitution is legalized.

Wait, none of us even disagree with this.

That’s sex work. Why is sex work bad? Prostitution is sex work. Sex work’s bad because it leads to other bad things like human trafficking.

Do you criminalize it-

Wait, that doesn’t make the sex work itself bad.

Yes, it does, because you can use other methods such as-

Hold on, wait. Let’s say it was the case that most of the alcohol we drank in the United States came from the cartel. Would that make alcohol bad?

No, it would make it bad if using alcohol also fueled some other extremely dangerous violent form of alcohol.

That’s what I just said. Let’s say that hypothetically opium was grown in the fields of Afghanistan and that was a huge export for them. Does that make it bad to consume all products, all medical products related to painkillers?

No, I’m not talking about remote cooperation with evil. What I am saying is that if you have different policies when it comes to something like prostitution, for example, if you have a policy where you legalize it, and so it’s legal to both buy and sell sexual services, like you say, you have in Germany or other countries where that’s allowed, you have an increase in human trafficking, but if you have other countries that-

Wait, the increase in human trafficking isn’t necessary for the sex work. It’s just a byproduct. [inaudible 00:17:18].

Yes, it is, and I’ll explain why. Because when you legalize prostitution, and let’s say human trafficking goes up or down, there’s going to be two different things that happen here. There’s going to be the scale effect and the substitution effect. The substitution effect would be, oh, you would think if prostitution is legalized, human trafficking will go down because you have legal prostitutes now. They substitute for the illegal prostitutes, and the hope would be it would go down because of this substitution.

Wait, I’m sorry. What is the substitution effect?

There’s the question of the relationship between human trafficking-

Wait, I’m just curious. What is the substitution effect?

The substitution effect is that human trafficking would go down, illegal prostitution goes down, because it’s substituted with legal prostitutes. You have sex with a legal prostitute instead of an illegal one. That’s the substitution effect.

Okay, got you. Okay.

That would drive the number down. The other problem, though, is the scale effect, that when you make it legal, there is now a massive increase in demand for this and there’s not enough prostitutes in order to satisfy the demand, so trafficking goes up in order to meet that demand. The Cho et al study, 2013, 150 countries, including longitudinal, to show Germany before and after, so it’s not correlative, shows that the scale effect always dominates the substitution effect.

I will give you an example. I’m curious to see how your guys’ ethics would apply to this, because I think that this view of sex is not that it is grounded in pleasure. Even if it’s grounded in consent, you’re going to have problems. I’ll give you an example. A month ago, Peter Singer, one of the most famous philosophers in the world, shared an article on Twitter from the Journal of Controversial Ideas, and he said, “This is really interesting,” and it was a defense of bestiality, okay? It was an interesting defense of it, because I think it goes through many of the common arguments that are made against bestiality and shows why a lot of them don’t work. For example, well, I guess, I mean, I could ask you. I’m sure I know what your reason would be, but it seems like, okay, I’ll put it this way. All right? I think what you might say is that obviously bestiality is wrong because in order for sex to be moral, there has to be consent and animals can’t consent.

Yeah, that would be my view.

Okay. I don’t think that that’s a good argument because-

We eat animals.

Number one. Yeah, that’s good. We eat animals without their consent. Normally we just say, to do a scientific experiment on somebody, you need their consent. Right? You’re a lawyer.

Yeah, you need their consent, but there’s certain things at least you can’t do even with their consent now.

Right, but to do any scientific experiment, you need the patient’s consent.

Yes.

Well, we do scientific experiments on animals all the time without consent. I’ll give you one more example. Let’s say, police canine units. I gave the martial arts example earlier, that if I do martial arts with somebody without consent, that’s assault. They need to be okay with me punching them in the head. Police officers train canine units and they assault them, they fight them, they teach them how to subdue a suspect. They basically get involved in fighting with a dog, and the dog can’t consent to that, but we don’t consider that animal abuse, so if it’s okay for cops to rough up a dog to teach them how to subdue a suspect, why wouldn’t it be okay for someone on OnlyFans to let their clients see their dog lick peanut butter out of their vagina?

This is different. We probably have different views on this. I don’t think that that’s okay. I don’t think the way we treat animals is okay. I would disagree with … I don’t think we should be testing on animals the way that we are. We treat them as completely non-human. I don’t think that’s necessarily intellectually consistent.

Are you vegan?

I’m not vegan, but I’m an asshole for that.

Okay.

Yeah. I should be.

No, but of all the ways we could treat animals, of eating them, doing experiments on them, making them do hard agricultural work, do you think that the least violent way to treat them would be things like letting them eat peanut butter off somebody’s penis, for an OnlyFans site?

I think some of the experiments that they do on animals, especially when it comes to mental health, where they purposely put monkeys and scare them and do all this, I think, yeah, if you just fucked a monkey, it’d probably be better than if you did all that shit to a monkey so that you can gauge how-

Whoa, how did we get to monkey fucking?

Because if sex is just for pleasure, animals like pleasure too, and we’re all animals, we’re a different species. This view that undergirds prostitution and pornography can’t coherently explain why it’s wrong, and I think that that’s a problem.

I would just like to make a quick statement. I’d just like to make … The Whatever Podcast does not endorse bestiality. Just waiting for it to pop up. Hey, Devonne Frame. Thank you. Human beings tend to twist and molest everything they dip their toes in. You religious folks should know that well. How do you propose we better build healthy functional adults? Hassar Milker, I have no idea what that means, but how do you propose we better build healthy functional adults? I don’t know if that’s a virtue really worth-

Habitual predisposition to choose the good.

Okay.

I think you have to have a realistic assessment and you have to acknowledge the real biological forces that exist in people rather than trying to design systems around virtues that are of religion or other sorts of origination. We’ve seen this fail over and over and over again, and it has failed, and it will never come back. The idea that sex can just be confined to one marital thing is just something that even for most of human history, hasn’t gone well.

I think when people try to have relationships where sex is open and could be shared with lots of people, that’s where we see failure.

Sure, but we see 50% of marriages fail that don’t even have those issues. I think that the better thing to do is to say there are different ways that you can engage with sex. Here are the pros, here are the cons. If you engage with it in this way, things like this can happen or things like this can happen, and then if you engage with it this way, here are the good things or bad things. I think the problem is, everybody is so ideologically driven to attack one side or support another. They end up making absurd statements like, “Everybody should be happy with this style of monogamous sexual relationship and marriage and anything else is wrong,” or, “Everybody should be in a polyamorous, fucking 500 people, and that’s totally okay.”

We would say everybody deserves love that doesn’t need to be satisfied by other people as sexual objects.

All right, we have Kyle Whittington. Question for Destiny and Trent, at what point is consent irrelevant? What would be some examples of actions that would be wrong regardless of consent, and why?

Well, actually I have an example of this. Destiny said something that reminded me. He talked about, he also said exploitation, and you talked about selling kidneys. That actually does have a little bit of a relation here. It’s not just … We’ve been talking a lot about behavior, doing this, doing that, but the big problem with prostitution and pornography is the money. Okay? It’s money that leads to things like exploitation. For example, I would say it’s good for somebody to donate plasma, donate bone marrow, donate kidneys. That helps other people and it’s good that they do that, but if you pay people for those things … For example, the United States is one of the few countries on earth that pays people for blood plasma. Most other countries on earth, you can’t be paid for blood plasma, and we do it here, and most blood plasma donation centers, they’re on the border, they’re in the poor parts of town, and when you pay people, so we have to ask, even though they’re consenting to giving up parts of their body, is that exploitation, that they’re basically doing it because they’re trying to get money?

If we have ethical problems about using money to get people to give up their body, their blood, their bone marrow, their kidneys, and that we’re exploiting them because of the money that’s involved, the same questions will be raised about people who will get money by giving their body on something like OnlyFans, and it’s out there as a virtual image and it’s out there permanently. The same ethical issues get raised about exploitation.

Who’s exploiting me?

Who’s exploiting you?

Yeah, you just said that if you do sex-

The CEOs that make millions of dollars from OnlyFans and don’t have to take their clothes off.

You could say that about any industry in America, then. You could say just capitalism is-

No, because most industries you don’t take your clothes off.

It’s possible to exploit oneself.

It’s the taking the clothes off, it’s the taking the clothes off that you have issue with. It’s the moral issue you have with taking your clothes off.

No, it’s not the moral issue, it’s the commodification.

It’s possible to exploit oneself. That’s why you can’t sell your own kidney.

I think that one of the things you’re talking about when you talk about the kidney thing is, we’ve talked about consent a lot, but I think the topic that we’re really getting towards is something called informed consent. Somebody’s ability to give consent to something … For instance, a 14-year-old can theoretically consent to sexual activity with an adult, but they can’t have an informed consent, because they’re only 14. We would say, can they decide to have sex? Sure, but do they understand all the ramifications? No, and that’s where the issue between whether it’s moral or immoral comes in. I think when we look at things like kidney donations, I think that when we look at the informed consent, we’re looking at, is there a group of people that, they have enough knowledge to make a decision? If they do and there are no other mitigating factors, the question then becomes, why would you prevent them from doing so? Let’s say, for instance, we say, okay, we do blood plasma donations that we pay 50 bucks a service, or medical studies we pay people for participation in. If you do that, is it an unethical transactions?

Well, let’s say you say yes, it is, and then we get rid of it. Well, what are the social goods that you’ve achieved there? We have less blood plasma donated. People that are poor that could have made money donating the plasma don’t have it anymore. What is the positive outcome that’s happened there?

Because we can’t just make ethical decisions based on what is the most positive outcome. That’s consequentialism or utilitarianism, even, that we could do all kinds of things to try to make the best positive outcome. For example, you could maybe set up a system where orphaned children, a small subset of them, are used for child SA, and then that prevents children overall from being victims of child SA, and so the overall rate goes down. Would that be good, because we had better consequences? No, because we did something grossly evil to try to get the good consequences, and it’s similar. Even if we have more of a shortage of things like kidneys, and we do need more kidneys and organs, it doesn’t justify us doing things that are evil or exploitative, like taking organs from dead people without their consent, even though they’re not alive anymore to consent.

Sure. Then the question-

Or using money, so that the people who end up doing it are the poor, who are in a worse place to be exploited and want to go and be able to do something where they are greatly benefiting society but incurring massive harms because of this kind of exploitation.

When it comes to sex workers, you cannot argue that the Nordic model is helping sex workers more than decrim, right?

A 2003 study by Farley et al in seven countries showed that 89% of prostitutes want to quit their job but can’t because of financial reasons.

Same, I bet, if you look at janitors and people who scrub toilets.

Do you have any data on that?

That they don’t want to work? I can probably find something. Is that what the job satisfaction is for people-

Then, let me put it this way. Is it bad that … If somebody wants to stop doing something and they can’t, so it sounds like we have women, the majority of them, want to stop having sex with men, but they can’t. It sounds like we’re facilitating rape on a mass scale, then.

I don’t think that’s rape, right? I’m not saying that there are prostitutes who wouldn’t want to have sex. They have to do it for money.

No, no, no. If someone’s a prostitute who feels like they need to do this for money and they can’t quit because they need that money, and a man comes and pays to have sex with them, you don’t think their consent has been infringed?

No. I think that, yes, sex workers, I’m sure a lot of prostitutes would rather be rock stars. Okay? That’s not the point.

Are they consented? Are they fully consented?

Yes, they’re consenting. Just like somebody who doesn’t want to make you a sandwich but doesn’t have a choice is going to make you a sandwich.

When a Hollywood actress consents to the executive producer having sex with him because she’s worried about losing the role, that’s not rape?

That’s completely different, because with sex work, you are saying, “Hey, this is my job. I will have sex with you if you pay me.” How is that-

It’s because these women don’t … It’s not voluntary.

What is the marketing impact?

“I’d rather go somewhere else and make money.”

Wait, then why are they working as sex workers?

Because they can’t get employment anywhere else, or because-

There are a lot of sex workers-

Or because they have previous sex, sorry, previous prostitution and drug convictions preventing them from getting other gainful employment.

And trauma.

You can’t get a job at Burger King if you were a prostitute?

You can’t get a job in a lot of places if you have felony conviction.

That why decrim is really great, because in New Zealand where they did that, the Criminal Records Clean Slate Act of 2004, sex workers can have past prostitution related offenses expunged from their records, places where-

No, going back to my example with the executive producer and the actress, would you say that consent is something you can’t fully have if the person you’re having sex with controls whether you’re paid or not?

No. You aren’t consenting there because you didn’t consent to that arrangement.

What if she went into it expecting that to happen?

If you went into it consenting for it to happen, then fine.

Well, it’s often expected in lots of parts of Hollywood.

No, hold on. Hold on. Something being expected and something being expected are two completely different things.

Well, what if they went in there and they said, “This is part of what I want to do in order to get ahead”?

If it said on your contract, “You can write this, you can do that, blah, blah, blah, and you also have sex with this guy,” then that’s a lot different. It’s not a [inaudible 00:30:10]-

You think it’s okay for a boss to have sex with the secretary-

Or, not even a boss.

Or not even a boss.

You’re intuition loading so hard. A boss [inaudible 00:30:18] secretary, because a secretary is-

You’re dodging a question with talking over me, Destiny. You’re not listening to what I’m saying.

Secretaries don’t sign off to have sex with their bosses.

You’re not listening to what I’m saying. I didn’t even ask the question. I didn’t even get through to the question because you-

We could pick another example, like an audition where you’re not currently employed and the director says, “Yeah, I want to get you in this movie, but I’ve got to see if you really look the parts, if you can really pull off these sex scenes,” and so she’s not employed yet, but she would really like to get this job and really needs it. There’s certainly coercion and we would say that that’s rape, right?

If everything is broadcast out in the open and it’s part of the thing?

They have to share it publicly, is what you’re saying?

You can say that it’s scummy or it feels wrong or whatever, but is it coercion? No. You’re walking into there, you’re accepting the job and it’s like, “Okay, fuck it. I’ll do it.” If that’s something that comes at the end of the process, like, “Oh, by the way, you’ve got to fuck me, oh, by the way, you’ve got to do this,” then yeah, you can say that’s coercion.

You think it’s acceptable for a boss to make a move on an employee provided the employee consents and is [inaudible 00:31:13]-

During the interview process.

Why would that be wrong?

I can explain consent to you. I guess, because you’re religious, you don’t understand it. The reason why it’s wrong is because consent can’t be negotiated between parties that have power over you.

What if you went in there with the analysis that this might end up happening?

No, this might end up happening is not … This is part, contractually, of what I do.

We understand. We understand consent.

Okay, wait, wait, hold on. [inaudible 00:31:34].

Because you’re polyamorous, you don’t understand the dangers of consent.

I have to explain. I have to explain. [inaudible 00:31:39].

Now we’ve seen what’s happened from that.

I have to explain. Okay?

No, you went after us. I’ll go after you.

No, no. Hold on. You are asking me, why can an employee not consent to having sex with a boss? The reason why you can’t do that is because you cannot determine if consent exists there, because you don’t know if the employee-

Because they’re being paid?

Let me finish. You don’t understand the topic, so let me finish. Okay?

Yeah, Destiny, you don’t need to be rude about it.

The employee doesn’t know … Then, stop trying to cut me off when I’m trying to explain something. The employee cannot consent because the employee doesn’t know if they say no, if they’re going to get fired. That’s why you can’t have consent between people over power, but if the job says, “You have to do X, Y, and Z, and Z is having sex,” that’s not the same type of consent as, in the middle of a non-sexual job, your boss is trying to get you to have sex with then.

To Trent’s scenario, if you’re going into this and it’s a scene that involves sex scenes and the boss says, “This is something we’re going to do to practice the sex scene,” would you consider that a problem?

If it’s advertised as part of the job, then no. If it’s sprung on you and you weren’t expecting it, then yes.

Sounds like Harvey Weinstein should have just been more forthright, then.

Yes. Ironically, yes.

Would you bring your child in while you and your husband have sex?

Of course not.

For the same reason we wouldn’t bring you guys there.

For the same reason sex work is bad.

That’s, because, if sex work is bad-

You said it’s designed, not between me and my child, but between me and my husband.

You said the reason that it’s bad is because I wouldn’t bring my kid in to watch me have sex. You wouldn’t bring your kid in to watch you have sex in this great, loving, wonderful proper use of sex, either. That doesn’t mean mean that I’m bad.

Jazmen, I’m not doing work when I’m having sex with my husband. I’m expressing love. I’m not being paid by him. I’m expressing love.

Then, why won’t you bring your child in there?

Because sex is private between two people. That’s how it’s designed and that’s what it should be.

I disagree.

That’s one of the reasons why pornography is so harmful and one of the reasons why sex-

Because we can confidently say exposing children to sex is bad. It just is, because that’s something their brains are not prepared to handle in the right context.

Even marital sex, though. Even exposing them to marital sex is bad.

Yes, because marital sex belongs between the people, not on a porn site or in front of kids.

I don’t think it’s a good argument to say that.

Yeah, it belongs to the husband and wife.

Because children can’t come with you to your porn site. Children can’t come with you into your bedroom, either.

No. The point of asking that question and Trent going along that line of reasoning was to show there is a difference between the noble work of being a janitor, and I would say to look down on people who work in a fast food restaurant or look down on a janitor and say that they just want to get out of the job, it’s a horrible job, yeah, there are difficulties, but to say it’s such a horrible job, there’s an nobility to that work. There is not nobility to selling your body to someone else to ejaculate off to.

This is just putting your morals on … This is noble. This is [inaudible 00:33:56]. That’s just you.

There is morality around sex. There’s morality around sex and you would even agree with that. You would even agree that there is some morality around sex, would you not?

What do you mean? Yeah, of course there’s some morality around it.

What is it?

There’s some morality around a janitor.

Beyond consent.

There’s some morality to being a fast food worker. Right?

[inaudible 00:34:04], morality.

There’s certain regulations.

So far, the only morality I’ve been able to ascertain from both of you is that there should be consent between two adults. Is that the only morality that you believe exists around sex?

That’s a huge starting point. Yes.

Is that the only morality that you believe exists around sex?

I can’t answer yes to that because I’m sure we could think of some exceptions where there might be some other qualifier.

Generally, yes,

Well, you’ve thought about it a lot, clearly, and we’re at this debate.

Well, yeah, but if you’re going to ask me a hypothetical of, what if when you have sex with somebody, it causes a fusion of two atoms and a hydrogen bomb explodes? I don’t know.

That’s not what I asked. I just asked, is there a morality around sex?

In general, I think most morality is going to be built around a reciprocation of consensual respect for other people. Yes.

How about consensual incest among adults?

If you want to do it, if you have a really hot sister, then go for it. Knock yourself out. Yeah, there you go.

There’s, yeah, no harm, you’re not producing. If an animal is consenting, then bestiality is okay, but I don’t think an animal can.

I think I would rather live in a world-

Bestiality is okay? Bestiality is okay? What?

There’s no way. There’s no way for the animal to consent, just like there’s no way for a child to consent. Trent was trying to be like, “Oh, but we do all these other experiments on animals.” We shouldn’t do that, and you said, “Oh, which one’s worse?” It depends. It depends. Some of the experiments we do to animals are horrible. We literally take out their ovaries. We do all this stuff.

Can I play Frisbee with a dog?

I would rather, if I was … I think sometimes even having sex with animals is better than some of the shit we do to animals like moving their ovaries around, killing them, literally killing them in order to get-

Does a dog consent to being trained?

What?

Does a dog consent to being potty trained? Does your four-year-old consent?

Wait a minute. You’re saying that sex with animals is not as bad as killing them?

What do you mean, I said-

Did you just say that killing them is worse?

I think killing animals is … It depends, right? It depends what you think is.

Wait, say that one more time.

What do you want me to say?

Just the way you said it.

Wait, like what?

Did you say killing animals is worse than sex with animals?

No, I’m saying sometimes the experiments we do-

Anyway, you can bite the bullet. Yes. I think probably generally, yeah. Why? What’s the next question? How could you possibly flip that? Do you disagree? Do you think that having sex with an animal is worse than killing it?

Yes. Yes, it is worse, because-

For who? For who?

Because animals are non-rational beings that we can eat. There’s nothing immoral about that. Sex is for human beings, and I’m sorry you guys can’t see that.

You think that sex … Well, because we’re not religious. You think that the sex-

No. You’re not sane, you’re an insane person.

Wait, who is the sex worst for versus the killing worse for? Are you just looking at the perspective of the human and not the animal at all, or, who is it?

No, I’m talking about the act. You’re reframing it as what causes more or less harm. I’m talking about the-

No, no, you said sex for an animal is worse than killing the animal. I’m asking you worse for who?

It’s not just for an animal, I think. [inaudible 00:36:30].

I’m saying the act of killing an animal is … Sorry. The act of sex with an animal is morally worse than the act of killing the animal.

The only thing that has any moral perspective in your eyes would be the human.

Yes. Not the only thing. There are ways to treat animals that are immoral, like animal torture.

Like killing them?

Is it immoral? It can be immoral to kill an animal if you’re doing it for a cruel purpose.

In an inhuman way.

Cruel purpose or an inhumane way.

Cruel in whose judgment?

No. Let’s say, if you’re stuck on a desert island and there’s …

Let’s say that we’re in California and you’re eating a cheeseburger.

I would like to finish.

Oh my God.

If you’re stuck on a desert island and-

We’re not talking about stuck on a desert island. It’s very obvious. You’re killing an animal to eat it for burgers because it tastes good and it feels good.

No, here’s the example. If you’re stuck in a desert island and you find a wild pig there and you kill it to eat, that’s not morally wrong, because you want to satisfy hunger. If you’re on the island and it turns out you’re just horny and you use the pig to satisfy that, yes, that is morally worse.

Is it morally worse, if you just hunt, to kill an animal just for fun?

Is it morally worse than what?

Is it morally worse to kill an animal because you just want to hunt for fun, than having sex?

Yeah, two people go into the forest. One guy’s hunting with a spear, one guy’s hunting with his dick. Who’s more immoral there? The guy that stabs the pig and kills it, or the guy that fucks it and it runs away.

Is he going to kill it with his member?

Which is more immoral? Well, if his dick is big enough, maybe.

Our position, our position-

I’m asking. No, I want an answer. I want an answer. What’s more unethical? The guy hunting with the spear or the guy hunting with a dick? The guy that throws a spear, he’s more ethical to kill the animal then leave it to rot, or?

It is much more gravely depraved to have sex with an animal than to kill it in a slightly more malicious way.

That’s not answering the question. Okay.

Just to clarify something, our position-

The reason for that is what?

Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.

The reason is that is that you want to eat the animal?

Our position is that-

I think ultimately what I would want people to consider from this, to go and look at the data and just to ask, if sex work, if prostitution and pornography are bad for society, look at what it actually is, not an illusion of what it is. Go online, go and look at the most popular search for things on PornHub, X-Hamster, cam sites, what prostitutes say that men usually request from them. It’s violent, degrading, and so it takes sex and it cheapens it and makes it ultimately meaningless, and so then it loses its power to be that amazing bonding force that unites people together and create a new human life. Sex, it makes a new person, so of course it’s going to attach people together intimately. We don’t want therapists and doctors having sex with people. Sex is designed to attach people because when a baby is born, it’s really good, hey, if the people who created this child are bonded together in some way, and sex helps to do that, but if you turn sex into work, it destabilizes the important role it plays in society and it leads to degradation, abuse, and all these things that we’ve listed. That’s why I think people should see past the illusion to see the ugly reality of it.

I would say, of course, I think sex work, pornography, prostitution, is bad for society. It’s bad for everybody involved. I think the data not only shows that, but people’s life experience shows that. I think many people today are dissatisfied with their dating relationships, marriages struggle. We’ve talked about the mass use of pornography and porn consumption and porn addiction. I know that’s a word that you guys don’t like, but porn addiction, in addition to child sexual abuse, material proliferating, all of this. I think that’s the consequence of forgetting the beautiful design of what sex is for and disrespecting and cheapening sex. I think that we should actually elevate sex and celebrate it more. It’s not puritanical. It’s actually saying, reject that viewpoint as well. Say sex is something that’s beautiful and good. It designed for love, designed to bring life into the world, and that’s amazing and should be celebrated. It’s so sad that people’s sexual experiences and their orgasm is now being caught up in all of the horrific social harms that we’ve been talking about at this table, when instead they should be caught up in a beautiful relationship of love. That’s what we’re fighting for.

I do think it’s interesting. We didn’t get a chance to have any common ground, but I do think between this table, a lot of us have common ground. There’s a group of people on the internet, men, who might say, “Yeah, the promiscuity and these sorts of things, it’s okay for … ” It’s the position between ours. You’re saying it’s okay for everybody. We’re saying it’s bad for everybody. They’re saying it’s bad for women, good for men. I think we actually have common ground. We all agree that that’s actually a bad position. I’m sorry. I just wanted to throw out there actually a common ground between us, that that’s an untenable position, that we might have.

I agree, yeah.

Should we just tag on an extra 30 minutes and just talk about abortion? Abortion, little 30 minutes?

That’s a teaser. That’s a teaser. Maybe we could have an even friendlier conversation about that and other things.

Okay.

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