Prostitution

[the_std]

Or, rather, the stigma against it.

Yes, I know it's been used as a way to abuse women and men, boys and girls, since pretty much ever. But I believe that, if we had a legally-controlled prostitution system, such as we do with previously-outlawed substances like tobacco and alcohol, it could be a healthy thing. People are always going to do it, no matter how illegal the government makes it. So why not legalize it, protect the women who choose to do it and make it safer for everyone involved?

If they are consenting adults and safety (including health safety) is seen to, why should we dictate what they're allowed to do with their bodies?

(For more information on my views on this subject, watch "Penn And Teller's Bullshit" episode on prostitution.)

[powerboy]

Or, rather, the stigma against it.

Yes, I know it's been used as a way to abuse women and men, boys and girls, since pretty much ever. But I believe that, if we had a legally-controlled prostitution system, such as we do with previously-outlawed substances like tobacco and alcohol, it could be a healthy thing. People are always going to do it, no matter how illegal the government makes it. So why not legalize it, protect the women who choose to do it and make it safer for everyone involved?

If they are consenting adults and safety (including health safety) is seen to, why should we dictate what they're allowed to do with their bodies?

(For more information on my views on this subject, watch "Penn And Teller's Bullshit" episode on prostitution.)

I believe the same way. I saw that episode also

[Amethyst Hunter]

Problem with legalizing it is that it'll just make those who have even sicker tastes (think kiddie porn and the like) go elsewhere, or truck in human captives to fill their wants. There are a shocking number of men who think it's OK to treat prostitutes like trash, since she's "just a whore." You have to wonder how they treat the other women in their lives...

I used to think that legalizing and regulating it was a good thing, till I read some very compelling arguments by a person whose journal I frequent. I just read a study there that was done comparing two different countries who took two different approaches to dealing with prostitution. One (I don't remember the name of it now, unfortunately) legalized it, but the result was that the abusers ignored the regulated prostitutes and just brought in captives to use instead. The other, Sweden, kept it illegal but made it criminal to *buy* sex, not sell it - thereby placing the blame where it ought to be: directly on the john. The result there was that prostitution levels lowered and they didn't have nearly the same number of problems that the other country did.

This approach makes better sense to me. Keep prostitution illegal, but criminalize the *johns*, not the prostitutes, and help those women find their way into better paths so they don't have to risk life and limb in what is essentially a Russian roulette of flesh. (And the whole myth about high-priced call girls having it good is just that, a myth. Once their looks go or they hit a certain age or have certain habits - and maintenance to keep those good looks costs a shitload more than you'd think - they're out on the street and out of luck.)

[Saydrah]

Folks on both sides of this debate should check out one of my favorite bloggers: http://mistressmatisse.blogspot.com

She's a pro-domme who does LEGAL sex work, and who was an escort in the past. If you look at posts tagged 'sex work,' you'll find stories of her own and her friends' experiences in various parts of the sex industry, as well as her arguments for decriminalization.

For starters, vice will not go away. It is human nature to have vice. If we make it legal for any person to do what they want to do with their body to earn money, then those people become protected citizens who don't fear calling the police if a client turns violent, rather than people flying under the radar and fearing arrest if they report abuse.

For that matter, while many sex workers would still live in the "cash economy," decriminalization would provide a way for those who would like to pay their taxes like good citizens to declare their income as self-employment income, deduct expenses like lingerie and mileage on their car, and pay into society like every other self-employed person. For those who choose not to do so, tax fraud is already a crime, as it well should be,

In addition, sex workers who are not in danger of arrest would be more willing to go regularly to a gynecologist for checkups and STD testing, and clients not in danger of arrest would find their sex workers on legal, dedicated sites that connect them with people who take care of their health by abstaining from drugs and getting regular checkups. Plus, in a decriminalized industry, escort services would have an easier time screening calls to weed out abusers, and the workers would have more leverage to demand safety precautions and eschew unsafe sex practices.

The only negative side effect I can imagine is an increased need for services like employment counseling, rehab, therapy, and small business training in communities with a lot of prostitution. Sex workers would need to have services available to help them save and invest for the future, run an effective business, get off any drugs they're on, and help getting out of the industry if they want to. However, many sex workers love their jobs and truly enjoy making clients happy, and are already saving and investing in advance of the time when their looks will expire.

[the_std]

Problem with legalizing it is that it'll just make those who have even sicker tastes (think kiddie porn and the like) go elsewhere, or truck in human captives to fill their wants.

But these 'sicker tastes' are illegal for a different reason - the fact that they include children, who cannot be defined as a "consenting adult". It turns from "prostitution" to "statutory rape". Therefore, legalizing prostitution won't stop the child sex business, because it's not included in the definition of "prostitution" that I originally stated. That's a whole other kettle of fish.

The reason I suggest legalizing prostitution was all those things that Saydrah has said, essentially boiling down to: better care for the people who choose to do it. I think what I'm arguing against here, Amethyst, is your view that prostitution is bad and someone should be punished for it. I disagree with that. Like I said in my original post, if safety is taken care of, who are we to dictate what a person does with their body?

[Norton]

Prostitution is one of the oldest known professions - many say the oldest known profession.

I'm all for legalizing it. I think it would be better for sex workers to have a clean, safe enviroment in which to work. I would think most sex workers would rather choose to work in a legal organization, with safety precautions and health benefits than risk violence and disease in an off-the-books operation. It would also give them a better overall image to be part of a legitimate profession.

Also, hopefully it would stop the practice of pimping. If a prostitute wants to hire a bodygaurd to deal with violent or deadbeat customers, that's fine. However, men getting rich off the efforts of women that they treat like animals or objects sickens me.

[LadyMage]

I have to agree with legalizing it (and yes I saw the penn and teller episode too) It is not the practice itself that is bad like so many think, its the fact we make it bad, thus the women get treated like shit. By legalizing it, anyone (men and women) who wants to sell their body for sex can do so without worrying about being killed by some random idiot who has major damage to their psyce.

[Seshat]

Problem with legalizing it is that it'll just make those who have even sicker tastes (think kiddie porn and the like) go elsewhere, or truck in human captives to fill their wants.

I don't understand your argument. I don't see how you get from 'giving consenting adult prostitutes the legal protections of workers in any other industry' to 'encouraging people who perform criminal acts to perform criminal acts'.

Legalising consenting adult whores will protect those consenting adult whores - and if they're in a position to notice the child whores, the adults will be able to go to the police and report the child rape & abuse without fearing for their own jobs.

Yes, there are people who go to prostitutes to deal with impulses and fetishes that society frowns on. Some - possibly many - of those people are satisfied by harmless interactions with consenting adults. I'd like to see those adult whores get OHSA protection, regular medical checks, and the right to call in the police on their sucky customers.

Yes, there are doubtless people who go to prostitutes who also engage in criminal activities. I'm aware that a large amount of human trafficking, slavery and other abuse feeds the sex industry.

But if there are legal brothels, then people who want to go to prostitutes and not be involved, even peripherally, with the trafficking/slavery industry can make sure they go to the legal brothels. The ones with the list of regulations stuck on the wall, and the open advertising in the entertainment section of the newspaper, and certifications of the staff's most recent medical exams behind the reception desk.

This will make it much harder for the illegal industry - their johns will know there's a high chance that the hookers aren't consenting adults. (Unless they're stupid or hopelessly naive, anyway.)

Without that clear distinction between consenting-adults-only brothels and high-chance-of-slavery/child-abuse brothels, the johns can't tell - and the ones who kind-of don't care, can lie to themselves.

[Amethyst Hunter]

I think what I'm arguing against here, Amethyst, is your view that prostitution is bad and someone should be punished for it.

Can you honestly say there is anything GOOD about prostitution? Here's what it boils down to: misogyny and basic contempt for other human beings. Even if it's willing, it still involves treating someone else as a commodity, something you can use and then throw away like a condom wrapper. I just can't see how anything good can possibly come of that.

I'm not arguing that everything should all be sunshine and flowers and stuff, but if you're going to get that intimate with someone, you (generic you) should at least have some sense of awareness that the person you're going to do the horizontal tango with, even if it's a blind date you just met, is a *person*, and *not* just a hole (or a pole) you can mess around with and then go your merry way. I can all but *guarantee* that the majority of johns, even if they're not the abusive types, who frequent prostitutes don't consider them to be people with real feelings and real everything-else that being human entails - they just see them as people to be used at best, things that have no value other than immediate entertainment at worst.

Even if prostitution was legalized and regulated, I seriously doubt that the worst of abuses would stop altogether, or that prostitutes would have any easier time getting respect and decent treatment in the real world from those who don't do it. To me it's just like giving a free pass to treat women (who comprise the majority of prostitutes) like objects that are there solely for self-gratification. We already do that way too much in the world, what with things like the whole 'boys will be boys' mentality and the cultural expectations of what women "should" do or be.

I don't doubt that there are a few out there who genuinely enjoy what they do. But for every one that does, I'll bet there are a dozen who find it dehumanizing and who wish they could get out of it, but for whatever reasons (poverty being a big one) can't. I remember reading a story in Glamour magazine about a year or so ago that dealt with the story of a woman named Harmony Dust (yes, that's her real name). While she was not a prostitute, she was a stripper, and she detailed just how revolting her experience was.

She got into stripping to pay for school and to pay off family debts (including that of an ex-boyfriend who basically stuck her with the tab for all his expenses), which were upwards of $20,000. By the time she'd quit stripping she'd made over twice that amount, well enough to cover debts and other expenses. But the ultimate price she paid, she said, was flat out not worth it. She told one story where a man was throwing dollar bills at the stage expecting the strippers to *crawl* onto the floor to pick them up. She refused and got a broom instead to sweep up all the money at the end of her dance. She walked away with about a thousand dollars that night. Another story was even more sickening: a former guidance counselor once asked her where she was working as an offhand sort of question; she was visiting him in order to try to find another career that didn't involve stripping, so she told him - and later that same week, guess who showed up at the club she was dancing at?

Yes, the money can be good, there's no denying that. But if you have to spend your days and nights dealing with people who treat you like you're little more than something they scrape off the bottom of their shoe in order to get that money, it will eat you alive. (Those of us in retail know only too well what that's like; at the risk of sounding 'holier-than-thou'ish, not for nothing is there a Biblical verse which states "for what shall a man profit if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?") Harmony, in fact, now runs a not-for-profit business that is dedicated to getting (and keeping) strippers out of that business, having had firsthand experience of just how demeaning it is. I can only imagine how much worse prostitution is - because what happens to our bodies is so very closely linked to our minds.

I don't understand your argument. I don't see how you get from 'giving consenting adult prostitutes the legal protections of workers in any other industry' to 'encouraging people who perform criminal acts to perform criminal acts'.

I didn't word that first part well. I do NOT at all encourage criminals to commit crimes, especially ones as disgusting as child abuse. I was trying to say that it would only increase those particular sections as opposed to leveling off or (preferably) eliminating them. As I said, to me, legalizing prostitution would be like giving a free pass to treat women (and those men that "masculine" men deem unsuitable) as bona fide objects. For one thing, who would decide the appropriate age range for legalization? For some places, age of consent is as little as 15 or 16; others don't have any at all (these are the kinds of places that think marrying off girls as young as 7 is perfectly natural). Get a misogynistic enough group (and there's no shortage of those) in power, and the ones that get off on abuse will almost certainly take advantage to skew the 'laws' in their favor. As I believe Rahmota likes to put it, "what's right isn't always legal, and what's legal isn't always right."

Without that clear distinction between consenting-adults-only brothels and high-chance-of-slavery/child-abuse brothels, the johns can't tell - and the ones who kind-of don't care, can lie to themselves.

Personally, I don't have any sympathy for the johns. I really have to question why so many men (and some women) think it's okay to use another human being like that. I have yet to hear any explanation anywhere that can successfully describe how legalized prostitution is not degrading to both women and men.

As to the emotional side of the equation, you (generic you, again) screw around in your marriage or your chosen committed relationship (without your partner's explicit consent), you deserve whatever misery comes your way. You just don't have the right to take down anybody else with you when that check comes due (as it inevitably will; see former NY governor Spitzer's case - if he was at all sexually active within the boundaries of his marriage, he very likely exposed his wife to potential nasties).

[the_std]

But, Amethyst, not all prostitution is misogyny and abuse and hatred. Not everyone's sexual and romantic tastes run to monogamous, single-partnered sex or even sex with someone you know. Anonymous sex holds a lot of thrills when the person you're having sex with doesn't know you. They don't know that you're a quiet, shy IT admin for Small Company, and, with them, you can be a dominant tiger in the sack.

But, some people don't have the opportunity to meet other people who want to have anonymous sex, plus, there's no way of certifying they'd be clean. With legalized, controlled prostitution, they would have this choice, if they so chose to pay for it.

That's just one example of many sexual preferences that would be aided by the legalization of prostitution. Yes, I will give you that many desperate, poor people turn to selling sex as a way to pay off debts, some do it because they fell in to the wrong crowd, etcetera. It's not always a pleasant, positive thing. But, then again, neither is waitressing, answering phones in a call centre or stocking shelves. There're gonna be sucky experiences everywhere. But, because prostitution is illegal right now, the people who are in the business and want to get out, but can't because of a pimp or other circumstances that are beyond their control, cannot, because they have no one on their side.

If prostitution became legalized, it would give these people more control. More support to leave, if they so desired. I think, again, that my true argument with what you're saying, Amethyst, is it seems that you're saying that lust cannot happen if you don't know the person to some degree. That's so very untrue. Maybe love needs a bit more time and commitment, but getting horny can take all of a few seconds, no need to say anything at all. This way, if you don't want to talk, you don't have to. If you're going to a high-class, well-maintained, legalized brothel, you don't even have to ask, "do you have any STDs?"

[Saydrah]

For a woman (or man for that matter, but I'll use female examples since you specifically discussed misogyny, Amethyst) who doesn't want to work in the sex industry, the work is ABSOLUTELY demeaning, horrible, awful, humiliating, and shameful. But for a woman who loves her body, loves her ability to bring smiles to the faces of her clients, loves the connection she makes with the people she sees regularly week in and week out, loves spreading just a little more happiness in the world? Prostitution can be one of the most empowering industries in the world.

I forget who said, "Every action in the world has been, at some point in history punishable by death, and at some point in history a religious duty." Prostitution is a perfect example of that truism. There was a time when whores were called priestesses, and giving sexual pleasure to those who visited them was a sacred act intended to create happiness and harmony in the community and with nature. In fact, in the early history of mankind, matriarchal societies often revered people who would today be called prostitutes, seeing them as answering a calling to give love to everyone equally. Whoring is considered the world's oldest occupation for that reason, because it's the first example of someone choosing to occupy herself in a particular way, and the community valuing those actions enough to support her. Rather than hunting and gathering, the whore could answer her calling to provide sex, and the men who came to see her would bring offerings of food and clothing; the first work for pay arrangement in human history.

It was not until humans turned from a matriarchal to patriarchal society that women were demonized for choosing to use their bodies to earn a living and provide a service to the community. Even then, there are examples through history of societies that valued or at least tolerated prostitutes. In Colorado where I live, the mountain towns during the 19th century built red-light districts and required prostitutes to remain in those areas to ply their trade, but save for this discrimination, the whores were highly valued and provided a necessary service in a community mostly comprised of single male miners and prospectors. Some of the prostitutes of Leadville and Carbondale were almost celebrities in their day, and are buried honorably. It was an imperfect system that still allowed for abuse and discrimination, but even as recently as that, in my own state, the contributions of sex workers to the community were recognized.

The reason sex work is demeaning and unpleasant to many of those who engage in it is that they feel forced into it, that they have no other recourse. Were there additional resources to help these people, they would be able to transition into other jobs, and leave the jobs in legal brothels for women who feel that using their bodies to make money is empowering and caring, and who understand that the job of a sex worker is not just to provide sex, but to provide emotional escape from the stresses of the world and of day to day life.

[Boozy]

Not everyone's sexual and romantic tastes run to monogamous, single-partnered sex or even sex with someone you know. Anonymous sex holds a lot of thrills when the person you're having sex with doesn't know you....
That's just one example of many sexual preferences that would be aided by the legalization of prostitution.

This particular argument is complete baloney.

Some people's sexual preferences run towards children. Does that mean pedophilia is okay?

No, it does not.

I don't have strong feelings either way about the legalization of prostitution. I just don't think this particular argument is any good.

[Greenday]

Some people's sexual preferences run towards children. Does that mean pedophilia is okay?

Comparing anonymous sex to pedophilia? That's stretching it PRETTY far. Anonymous sex is just two consenting people hooking up just to get rid of their horniness. Pedophilia is a completely different thing.

[Boozy]

Comparing anonymous sex to pedophilia? That's stretching it PRETTY far. Anonymous sex is just two consenting people hooking up just to get rid of their horniness. Pedophilia is a completely different thing.

You misunderstand my point.

the_std was putting forth the argument that, because some people are into anonymous sex, it should be legal.

That's a silly argument. Just because you're into something sexually doesn't mean it should be legal.

That's all I'm saying.

[Greenday]

The problem is, there are a LOT of people into it. Not just a couple of random people.