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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • Logically, if he treats the sex worker right, with no demanding, no (non negotiated/sane) violence, and his actions don’t extend into monogamous relationships, and his views on future sexual partners are neither transactional nor cruel, it should be fine.

    Emotionally would likely be a different story for the partner, or at least for me. Partly due to the stigma attached to sex work, and partly due to feelings of inadequacy or worry about needing to perform unwanted acts, and partly due to a suspicion that that really would affect his views, because people’s thoughts and feelings are messy, sprawling things that don’t fit into the mental cabinets we stuff them into. But if the partner couldn’t get over that, then they’re not for him.

    And yes, this applies to women who pay for sex workers, too. Or at least it damn well should.







  • America is harder to live in the poorer you are, and it’s on a steeper scale than in other industrialized nations because there are fewer and less robust social services, especially health and child care, and declines in union membership have paired with a rapid increase in wealth inequality that is forcing the shrinking middle class downward and stomping on the poor even harder.

    You can live a comfortable life (for now…) if you are firmly middle class and up. Your higher salary than your counterparts in Europe is eaten away at by higher costs, and you deal with risks that they don’t in the form of transportation being car dominated (more accidents and less walking exercise) easy access to guns (the most dangerous being the one in your own home, to you) and less strict food safety laws. Compared to those in Eastern Europe, however, your likelihood of suffering from a foreign attack is drastically lower, not that it was ever very high to begin with.

    One thing that Americans take pride in (and rightly, mind you) and full advantage of is our First Amendment right to not have our speech be curtailed, so a large amount of the bitching about America, and especially in English, is Americans bitching about America(ns). So there’s a cultural element to it that may or may not exceed the truth.








  • The question as posed paints with very broad strokes. I’m guessing by “religious people” you’re probably thinking of American christians of the larger denominations.

    Why do you think that religiosity is necessary to oppose queer people? In my experience, opposition to the queer community and expressions of queerness is tied to views on gender and conservative/regressive views overall. While there is certainly overlap between orthodox/regressive religiosity and said roles, you can still see a lot of bigotry from people who don’t care about what any god says, they just think “that limp-wristed fairy isn’t a REAL man”.

    As with anything outside the mainstream, the experience of being an atheist (and being “out” as an atheist) can lead people to question more things that are considered normal and empathize with others, but it isn’t a given.

    Sometimes deviance enforces a sense of humble and earnest examination of common truths and connection with others and their own struggles, and sometimes it enforces the view that this person knows better than the crowd so no need to really question what is definitely their own views.