The fact that some prodtitutes are victims of human trafficking doesn't mean that all are. In fact, there are countries where sex work is legal but not human trafficking. So it's possible to even have a legal distinction there.
I don't know how things are in Spain, but in the US there's a huge stigma associated with being a sex worker besides it being illegal and actively enforced. In these conditions it would be very difficult to have sex workers who are not somehow a product of sex trafficking. However, in societies where it's not really a taboo, some people will pick that profession, at least for a while.
I'd like to believe that the people who are against sex work are actually thinking of the good of the sex workers and because of human trafficking.
Yet there is a lot of human trafficking in other areas, like farmwork or maids in the Western world, and the non-Western world is filled with sweatshops and literal slaves. And you never hear them mention it.
Which makes me convinced these people are just anti-sex work for religious or moral reasons (because they have internalized that sex is sinful or bad), reasons they then lie about.
> Which makes me convinced these people are just anti-sex work for religious or moral reasons
If it matters I'm an atheist. I'm against "sex work" because women (it's women in the majority of cases) are trafficked and taken advantage of, in both a material and a direct physical way.
I see this "sex work" non-sense mostly coming from people who have had no direct contact with the reality/materiality of it all, i.e. mostly from the Western middle-classes.
Later edit: Because this has touched a close nerve with me, copy-pasting some stuff related to that reality/materiality I had mentioned from a news article about Romanian prostitution rings in Spain [1]:
> The women were freed from brothels in Malaga and Girona where they had been sexual exploited by their compatriots and made to work for up to ten hours a day under the threat of violence.
> Some had come to Spain after being falsely promised better lives by the Romanian sex traffickers while others had fallen victim to the so-called 'lover boy' scam, according to a police statement.
> This method involves one of the sex traffickers forming an intimate relationship with the woman to earn her trust before later forcing her into prostitution.
> One of the women freed, who was only 18 years old, had been reported as missing by her family in Romania.
> Police described the 'iron control' exerted by the 'well-organized' sex-trafficking ring and said that the women had been kept completely isolated from the outside world.
I don't know of any sane person who would call that legit "work" and "liberating".
It's just when I pragmatically think about solutions to the very real problem of human trafficking, banning sex-work seems like the least effective thing to do. And what constitutes sex-work? Any sex where payment is involved? Any sex act outside of marriage?
Human trafficking is already illegal. Fund investigators and get rid of traffickers.
Empower sex-workers instead of banning the practice, because it will still happen but just more in the shadows. Bring it to the front and truly regulate it.
Why would sex outside of marriage be considered sex work? For something to be work you need to receive some sort of material compensation. Usually it's just money. But I guess if someone gives you a car or some jewelry in exchange of sex it could classify too. I don't see how having sex with someone in a party where both people wanted it could conceivably be considered sex work
> I'm against "sex work" because women (it's women in the majority of cases) are trafficked and taken advantage of, in both a material and a direct physical way.
That's a very naive and harmful take.
Criminalizing sex work means that only criminals would be involved in it, hence the trafficking.
Given that you can't do anything about supply and demand, the only sane solution to trafficking is decriminalizing sex work. Not being "against it".
> Yet there is a lot of human trafficking in other areas, like farmwork or maids in the Western world, and the non-Western world is filled with sweatshops and literal slaves. And you never hear them mention it.
> Which makes me convinced these people are just anti-sex work for religious or moral reasons (because they have internalized that sex is sinful or bad), reasons they then lie about.
> thinking of the good of the sex workers
Good for whom? for the johns and a handful of high profile female "socialites"? It certainly brings nothing good for females as a class.
You blame "religious" morals for opposition to prostitution, but even Marx was opposed to prostitution, nobody can't accuse him of being very religious...
I don't know how things are in Spain, but in the US there's a huge stigma associated with being a sex worker besides it being illegal and actively enforced. In these conditions it would be very difficult to have sex workers who are not somehow a product of sex trafficking. However, in societies where it's not really a taboo, some people will pick that profession, at least for a while.