Even if you are morally opposed to prostitution, is there really any benefit to authorities when you remove a centralized location and move it to the street or many different websites? If you really want to manage the prostitution "problem", having it all on a single website seems like a benefit for managing and researching the issue.
Most sex workers agree that their safety is improved dramatically by having the business side of it out in the open. And, there have been studies on sex worker safety that indicate strongly that legal prostitution is safer for everyone; it also reduces coercion when it is not underground (women don't need a pimp, if law enforcement is on their side).
Since I started paying attention a few years ago, I've noticed that most commentary from law enforcement and politicians on the subject of prostitution frames it as "human trafficking" or just "trafficking", even when there were no non-consenting parties involved (and nearly all prostitution is between consenting adults). It is misleading, unethical, and actively harmful to the safety of the people they're claiming to help, but, they do it anyway. The implication that someone is being forced into sexual slavery makes them seem like the good guys in the story...when, in reality, they're mostly just harassing and imprisoning poor women who are making an honest living the best way they know how.
Of course no one wants to see children being sexually abused. No one wants to see children or otherwise at-risk people forced into prostitution. But, that's already illegal; they don't have to victimize all sex workers to pursue and prosecute those crimes.
The kicker here is that the police found these kids who had been forced into sexual slavery because of the ads on this site. Had it been completely underground, they wouldn't have found them, wouldn't have been able to set up a sting, and wouldn't have been able to get the girls out of a dangerous and abusive situation. Now, it goes further underground, where the risk is even higher.
"Most sex workers agree that their safety is improved dramatically by having the business side of it out in the open. And, there have been studies on sex worker safety that indicate strongly that legal prostitution is safer for everyone; it also reduces coercion when it is not underground (women don't need a pimp, if law enforcement is on their side)."
I did a lot of research on that in college for some legalizing prostitution essays. The research I found, both scholarly and anecdotal, totally supported this. The worst thing I found is that there were many incidences of rape or abuse by clients, pimps, or even cops that were made easier to get away with via the stigma of prostitution. Just bringing up the details of the crime was enough to get themselves arrested. In some cases, judges tossed it out since they equated prostitution with asking for it.
So, taking action like this isn't just taking a stand against the act of prostitution: it's also supporting worse crimes to happen to prostitutes and others around them. Not even necessarily people participating. It can be just a caring person that runs afoul of the pimps that want the status quo to remain for specific women.
""In some instances, you can only get high marks on performance if you perform" without using condoms or other protection, Graham said."
Back then, I didn't think about the effect recommendation systems would have outside filtering bad clients. This negative effect on positive reviews is totally believable after all the stories I've seen about people extorting eBay or Amazon store owners for good reviews. This needs further research to figure out how to reduce its effect. It's essentially a form of subversion in practice where prostitutes get positive reviews the more dangerous (i.e. STD's) they are for their more honest clients. On top of pregnancy risks.
It also seems logical that having a market in the sunlight makes a 'black market' for the same goods much less appealing.
I have to further speculate that the same type of 'impact' we see from legalizing 'recreational use' would also be mirrored with this topic; possibly to an even more positive degree.
On one hand, there are those who believe that conducting these arrangements in the open is safer for all involved parties.
On the other hand, there are those who believe that sex work can never truly be consensual, because even if consent is given, a sex worker may have felt pressured to seek this life because all other choices available to them to make a living and attain food and shelter were sub-par or nonexistent. This argument supposes that given a different, idealized circumstances free of such pressures, few people would choose sex work.
I find this argument very similar to the idea of age of consent, in which society declares that people below a certain age are incapable of informed consent, and similarly, the widespread societal taboo against suicide, which implicitly suggests that no rational person free of undue pressures would consent to ending their own life, therefore anyone who commits suicide was pushed to do so by serious factors that impaired their ability to properly consent.
Finally, there are those who just want to be 'tough on crime', and actions like this fit the bill at first blush, while letting it operate would be construed by the same population as inaction.
> there are those who believe that sex work can never truly be consensual...idealized circumstances free of such pressures, few people would choose sex work
In idealized circumstances free of economic pressures many of us would spent all day at the beach. It's great many found their dream career and are getting paid to do what they love. But for most what work is just work, a means to an end. Not sure why sex workers should be especially singled out and stigmatized. Would the janitor who cleaned the toilets in your office be doing that if they weren't getting paid to? Would you even be in said office if you weren't getting paid to be there?
No one should feel shame at having a toilet at the office and needing to pay someone to help clean it.
Everyone should feel shame at coercing a person who would otherwise not have sex with them into having sex with them. Buying someone's labor is different than buying their bodily autonomy and consent to sex.
This isnt rape, it's just paying for an exchange. If a person doesn't want to use their body, they're free not to. Manual labor also involves using your body with wear and tear, it's not that different or special.
The sex workers don't care about your morals. They have different morals than you and care about different things. Stop telling them and other people what morals they should have.
Regulated prostitution may be bad in your eyes but unregulated prostitution is even worse for those who are already in this industry.
The heart of the matter is simple: if you buy the services of a prostitute, you have little means of knowing his/her backstory. She may be doing this willingly, or she may have been coerced. So you are willingly taking the risk that you're raping somebody.
The conclusion is that it is an immoral act to visit a prostitute. And that's all you need to know really.
Oh and here's another dirty little secret for you: a good percentage of the customers do it exactly because they LIKE the rapey aspect of it. The world is a darker place than you may prefer to believe.
I don't think so. I have 2 close friends who used to be prostitutes, and I'm pretty sure both of them would eye-roll hard at this. All you're doing is willfully choosing the focus on the dark instances, regardless of their actual prevalence, and try to claim that the whole picture is like that across the board.
Only because it's all illegal. If prostitution was legal, you could go to a well-reputed bordello where the managers are known, and know that everyone in there is doing it consensually.
I'm sure the owners would be happy to provide background checks for all employees, if it gets the police out of their business.
We have a perfectly good approach already; it's called the Nordic model. Arrest johns, not prostitutes.
And there are thousands of former sex workers that will give you an earful about what you think you know about prostitution and what prostitutes think.
I know several sex workers personally, and regularly sit on the sidelines of their discussions when they talk about their work in sex-positive spaces. I can assure you that all of them would prefer that it were a lot easier to perform their job without fear of the police, or of losing their home, or of the stigma from friends and family.
They also have a tendency to wish that people who didn't want to be in their line of work didn't have to be in their line of work. So why not actually try to solve that problem - reach out to individuals, listen to them, and help them achieve their goals - instead of trying to tell people what they want and don't want? The only reason I can think of is that that doesn't allow you to force your morality on people.
> So why not actually try to solve that problem - reach out to individuals, listen to them, and help them achieve their goals
I do. I reach out to would-be purchasers of sex and those who would defend them, and point out the dire consequences of their approach. Economic transfer doesn't suddenly make rape something one should aspire to or tolerate.
I was talking about sex workers. The ones you're not listening to.
Edit: Specifically, if the goal is to help sex workers who want help, the solution is... to help sex workers who want help. It's to perform research into the barriers to seeking help, and try to remove those barriers. It's not to prevent consensual trade between a person who has few issues with their job, and someone seeking their services.
If, on the other hand, the goal is to eradicate sex work against the wishes of those sex workers for reasons of morality, punishing people who participate in it is a wonderful idea.
OK. Exactly what about sex work is immoral, when the sex worker can choose their clients? Is it that sex is inherently something special that other work isn't?
The sex workers aren't the ones whose moral choice is in question here; the sex purchasers are the ones who should feel shame and whose behavior is for society to condone or to curtail. Slaves weren't the bad actors in that peculiar institution, either.
The right of a person to not have sexual access to their body be reduced to the object of purchase with the purpose to gratify a person who holds economic power over them. Purchasing sex is an abuse of power.
This isn't really an opt-out right; surely there are people who would "consent" to situations of slavery or apartheid. This doesn't mean we should make those things legal.
That's a very specific right, and very very based in a specific morality, isn't it? There's certainly a good many people who don't think sex is as magical or special a thing as you obviously do. Many think of sex work as nothing more special than being expected to perform labour for several hours a day for a pittance.
Selling an organ implies the loss of something necessary for a full life. Not having an organ results in shortened lifespan and lower quality of life. If you could grow back the organ in a matter of seconds, we wouldn't have an issue with it. It'd be sore and likely physically demanding, but so's a lot of work.
And literally thousands and thousands of current and former sex workers agree. They have conferences, and industry groups, they lobby Governments, they have systems by which they can ensure the safety of themselves and each other and pick out their own clients. This isn't the situation of somebody who was trafficked half-way across the world and forced into sex slavery.
The solution is not to make sex work illegal, or to make seeking it illegal. It's to help the people who don't want to be performing sex work. It's to give them food, and shelter, and training to re-enter the job market. But that's expensive, and it's difficult to explain to people with Christian moralities about sex why you'd allow people to perform sex work if they wanted to.
Which is to say, it's about imposing morality. You want to force these people into options they've already decided are worse than having sex for money because you're more comfortable with them earning money that way, and your moral judgement is more important than their freedom.
No, I want men to stop thinking that exploiting the economic and social disadvantages of women is an acceptable way to get sex. Because I'm a decent human being and would like other men to be decent human beings.
WTF, you're so ridiculously one-sided about this in both thought and action. It seems you dont know what decent means either. Stop thinking you know better for the entire industry.
Ah, the Nordic model... The country in the middle bans prostitution and offloads it to the neighboring countries. I have yet to see any macro advantage on it, besides a little reduction and a lot of smug people feeling better about themselves.
A while ago I spent quite some time researching the prostitution thing, trying to make up my mind about it. I remember the UN report on global trafficking[1] being specially enlightening. The conclusions I took from it:
-Prohibition doesn't work. It just drives the prostitution underground, and as the pimps are already doing something illegal they don't mind going the extra mile, make it straightforward slavery and abuse the women so much than they are too terrified to escape. A small country (like Sweden) can offload the prostitution to nearby countries, but if all Europe were to do that the consequences would probably be really dire for a lot of women.
-Full legality increases human trafficking. As there is a lot of legal prostitution going on, it's easier to get away with the trafficking. In Europe usually takes the shape of organized crime importing awful lot of women from western Europe to Holland and Germany. Long term, it's thought to increase the well being of prostitutes, both imported and local, but we still have to grok how to do it without make it without the traffic.
-Not legal nor illegal. This is the situation in most countries, and the implementations vary wildly. In some countries the police does not intervene at all and it's a cesspool of mafias fighting for control, others make it a tourist attraction, while others haven't made it legal but don't prosecute the prostitutes. Curiously enough, this last approach is the one that gets the best results at stopping exploitative human trafficking as long as pimping is really prosecuted, don't remember anyone really explaining why. My guess is that in this situation large scale trafficking operations stand out much more, but who knows.
TL;DR; It's hard. Swedes are a tiny bit hypocrites in this one.
Indeed just having one region legalize skyrockets trafficking. Prices also go down, so prostitution becomes less attractive to locals as a way to make money which means foreigners in poor countries have to be imported, which leads to trafficking rings. Vice claims of the 500k prostitutes in Germany two-third's are foreign http://www.vice.com/read/a-visit-to-one-of-germanys-all-you-...
It's extremely difficult to stop gangsters from trafficking because they operate in the trafficked persons home country as well, so if you run to the police in Germany or Canada they can seek retribution on your family members back home in Ukraine, Vietnam ect. Thus the not legal nor illegal does a good balance of preventing super brothels opening up full of imported sex workers while at the same time being able to arrest pimps without relying on the testimony of the sex workers.
Ah, the Nordic model... That's the one where they criminalized landlords who knowingly rented to sex workers, then used that law to kick sex workers out of their homes for reporting their rapes to the police, right? The best part is that when Amnesty International took a stance against this, the sleazy slimeballs in the anti-trafficking movement accused them of making it up because those countries didn't criminalize sex workers (which technically they didn't - just everyone around them).
Am I correct in interpreting that as you suggesting that anti-prostitution activists did not, in fact, claim that Amnesty International were making things up when they pointed out the negative outcomes of "the Nordic model" for sex workers, the people you're claiming it was supposed to protect?
Amnesty International relied on a flawed and now-retracted study that initially said violence against women had increased in Norway since banning the purchasing of sex, when in reality it had not.
Every model has trade-offs, the trade-off of the Nordic model is that clients are less willing to disclose information which makes it more difficult for sex workers to weed out violent troublemakers. Implementing the Nordic model would in some cases undo some recent advances in identifying and blocking these ugly clients and result in some workers being violently abused or even possibly killed.
Don't go thinking there is a silver bullet here, all solutions somewhat suck.
> Implementing the Nordic model would in some cases undo some recent advances in identifying and blocking these ugly clients and result in some workers being violently abused or even possibly killed.
Sorry to break the news to you: all clients are ugly clients, since they're all just fine with the idea that people's bodies are something to be bought and sold.
So's all of capitalism - what is employment but the buying of somebody's body and mind? But I don't see people like you arguing towards the end of that, or the reduction of the circumstances which cause people to perform sex work - only reducing people's options within the framework we've already forced them to live in. I know people who have chosen sex work over a minimum wage job at McDonald's - apparently they think the sex work is less degrading, and it's much better paying.
Also, I assume you don't actually mean bodies, as that would imply you're similarly against non-sexual modelling, acting, etc etc, where people employ people directly for their bodies, to varying degrees.
> So's all of capitalism - what is employment but the buying of somebody's body and mind? But I don't see people like you arguing towards the end of that
This isn't germane to the issue, which is that purchasing sex is a reprehensible act. However, there is indeed a strong strain of anti-capitalist thought in radical feminism; it surprises me that you don't know this.
> Also, I assume you don't actually mean bodies, as that would imply you're similarly against non-sexual modelling, acting, etc etc, where people employ people directly for their bodies, to varying degrees.
I meant literally their bodies, not images of their bodies, or actions that their bodies perform. I meant direct access to their mouths, rectums, vaginas for the purpose of sexual gratification. I suppose if purchasing that kind of access had other purposes besides sexual gratification, "sex" wouldn't seem like such a special case.
> However, there is indeed a strong strain of anti-capitalist thought in radical feminism; it surprises me that you don't know this.
I moderate a handful of self-titled "social justice warrior" chatrooms, which are full of everyone from libertarian socialists to anarcho-communists. I'm reasonably aware of various strands of feminism. I've been having a discussion on the morality of sex work for much of today.
Sex work is immoral for the same reasons other work is immoral. It's not a special case, and shouldn't really be treated much differently. If you want to protect the sex worker from the necessity of performing their work, you should be similarly protecting the minimum wage retail clerk from the necessity of performing their work. Neither is worse than the other, and they have similar solutions.
Again you are misrepresenting my position; it's not that "sex work" is somehow more immoral than other work, it's that the purchase of sex is immoral, shameful, and frankly, pathetic. It has nothing to do with capitalism vs. anarchism or anything else.
Even under capitalism, purchasing e.g. food for your family that was somehow acquired under coercive circumstances is still less shameful than purchasing e.g. diamonds that were somehow acquired under coercive circumstances. What you're purchasing matters; it's not all the same.
Assuming you own a TV - the purchase of your television was immoral, shameful, and pathetic - you bought into the incredibly poor working conditions of various mines in developing countries, coercive labour in China, and more. And yet you bought it for entertainment. If you don't own a TV, I'm reasonably sure I could pick out something else you've done that involved coerced labour that you didn't need to.
The solution is to get rid of the system which is coercive. It's not to tell everybody who ever wanted to buy a television not to within the context of capitalism.
No, the purchase of a television is less immoral, shameful, and pathetic than the purchase of sex. It is qualitatively different. There is nothing inherent in my possession of a television that demeans or degrades another human being; it's simple circumstance that makes working conditions more or less morally acceptable.
The purchase of sex inherently demeans and degrades another human being because it places one's own sexual gratification over another person's bodily autonomy.
> The purchase of sex inherently demeans and degrades another human being because it places one's own sexual gratification over another person's bodily autonomy.
I'm a contractor, and I get to choose my clients. If I don't want to work with someone, I don't. Why would it be "inherently" demeaning in sex work, if they got to choose their clients and there were better protection and regulation?
Why is it an implementation issue with your TV purchase, and an inherent issue with sex work? I don't follow the logic.
TL;DR no prostitute can "choose" a john that isn't going to sexually exploit her (and thus violate her human rights) because that's the nature of purchasing sex.
A direct quote TL;DR
Does the 'right to prostitute' exist?' Clearly prostitution cannot exist as a right because it usurps and negates already established human rights of the prostitute woman to human dignity, bodily integrity, physical and mental well-being...Human rights are universal and inalienable. They cannot be reduced to the instrumentality of individual choice alone because individual choice can and does include the right to harm or propagate harm on others or inflict harm on oneself.
"It's morally acceptable to be a slave but not to own one? That's asinine."
The "economic transaction" model is in almost all cases a fig leaf for the abuse of women, even in jurisdictions where prostitution has been legalized or decriminalized.
You aren't purchasing the person and agency of a person when you engage the services of a sex worker, and it isn't yet established that sex work is inherently abusive. Miles of digital ink wasted on just-so stories do not suffice for evidence.
The vast majority of your posts in this thread are variants on "You hate women, you cryptofascist". When presented with a lengthy rebuttal of your claims that cited a UN report on white slavery, your only rejoinder was to continue in this vein. Methinks you care less about the dignity and safety of women and more about feeling like a martyr.
That's the Nordic model where the police tell a landlord that if they don't evict their whore tenants they're profiting from prostitution, which is a crime, right?
Sure, it's shameful to force someone to do something without their consent. Your interpretation of consent seems very bizarre however. Inherently anyone paying anyone else to do anything means they wouldn't have done it without getting paid. Does that mean they didn't consent?
No, it's shameful to coerce someone into having sex without their consent, not merely to coerce someone to "do something." The rest of your question is not relevant.
Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not. (Community service is an alternative to jail, for example.)
Coerced sex is rape, however. It is qualitatively different from coerced labor. As Dworkin wrote a long time ago, "in prostitution, no woman stays whole. It is impossible to use a human body in the way women's bodies are used in prostitution and to have a whole human being at the end of it, or in the middle of it, or close to the beginning of it. It's impossible. And no woman gets whole again later, after."
It's condescending to women to tell them that what they choose to do with their bodies is not their free choice. It's deeply patronising and actually an anti female argument.
I think the actual moral problem with commercial sex is that it commodifies something that some people see as sacred. I think it turns on one's view of government as moral guardian vs individual liberty. Governments aren't usually very good moral actors, which is why we usually limit their moral policing.
If it was their free choice, they wouldn't need to be paid for it, and they could be as selective or as indiscriminate as they like with partner selection and frequency. It's not about anything sacred (unless you consider basic human rights sacred, I guess).
This is feminism 101 stuff; even if you want to take the "choice feminism" side of the debate, you need to learn the basics of radical feminist critiques and positions on the issue.
No, my argument hinges on the idea that exchanges of money for sex are inherently coercive -- or at least almost always coercive in practice -- because they are. Other exchanges are not relevant.
No, it means that if sex were their free choice, they would not need to be paid for sex (they could have it as much or as little as they like).
Instead of trying to wordplay this in HN comments, why don't you take a look at https://www.demandabolition.org/resources/evidence-against-l... -- they've done a far better job than I ever could on lining up the different arguments -- and there are many! -- against blithely skipping into legalized or even decriminalized prostitution. If none stick, then certainly nothing I say in this discussion will have any effect.
If selling fruit was the shopkeeper's free choice, they would not need to be paid for fruit.
This sentence has structurally the same form. If you think it's ridiculous, it can only be because you think there is something special about sex - i.e. it is sacred in some way. And thus your position actually doesn't relate to free will.
I think you're very confused. Your statements aren't logically consistent and I have to make guesses and leaps of dodgy inference to make any sense of them at all.
I believe you have a prior position on the morality of prostitution and are using arguments you don't understand to defend the position. I think a different tack would be wiser.
> This sentence has structurally the same form. If you think it's ridiculous, it can only be because you think there is something special about sex
> As Dworkin wrote a long time ago, "in prostitution, no woman stays whole. It is impossible to use a human body in the way women's bodies are used in prostitution and to have a whole human being at the end of it, or in the middle of it, or close to the beginning of it. It's impossible. And no woman gets whole again later, after."
I feel like the Dworkin quote is more the basis of their argument, that the human body itself is different to other external objects, and selling your own body is different to selling something external.
In that context, comparing selling fruit to selling your own body doesn't seem like a fair comparison.
That said, I know a couple of people in this industry, none of them are particularly fond of their work, but they don't seem any more unhappy than anyone else in a job they don't particularly like. shrug
Then replace selling fruit with backbreaking manual labor: coal mining, digging ditches, whatever. Something that causes real and permanent damage to one's body over time. Is selling your labor in such a way morally wrong?
No, but purchasing it might be. Employers can mitigate their culpability by including health and disability insurance, and workplace condition standards. They typically only do this when required by government regulation, though.
And in the end there's a qualitative difference between purchasing access to a person's time and labor, and purchasing access to their mouth, vagina, and anus.
Maybe you can start purifying your soul (because clearly there's some sort of puritanical religious thing going on here) by abstaining from the use of electronic devices: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coltan_mining_and_ethics
Just for clarification, your position is that the only class of services that are immoral to exchange currency for are sexualy oriented services. Is that correct?
I currently hold very different views from you on this issue, but some of your arguments are certainly giving me some things to think about. They all seem to assume the above point, which I have a really hard time accepting.
> Just for clarification, your position is that the only class of services that are immoral to exchange currency for are sexualy oriented services. Is that correct?
Not at all, it's also immoral to purchase assassinations and many other things both illegal and legal. They're not germane to the question of prostitution though.
Prostitution is qualitatively different than other "services" or even non-prostitution sex work (phone sex operator, erotic fiction writer, even some pornography) because it involves purchasing direct access to and use of the prostituted person's body. That is the problem with prostitution, not the fact that it's about sex per se.
It's simply a matter of the human condition that the (male) sex drive is the most common thing that, when left unexamined and unchecked, results in such a system where people's bodies are reduced to the objects of economic transaction.
I've probably burned enough internet points on this thread, but if you want to read far better-researched and better-stated writing on this subject than mine, http://www.feministcurrent.com/category/prostitution-2/ is a good place to start. It's a shame that religious and social conservative voices are often the only ones being represented and considered on this subject. It's a shame that men on the left and atheist men should feel deeply.
I suppose in a society where women were free of patriarchy and rape culture, and had full reproductive and sexual autonomy, then Dworkin's statement wouldn't even apply to women.
But that society is a fantasy, and I doubt any capitalist society could ever free women from economic exploitation of their bodies by others.
So if I coerce someone into cleaning my house without their consent that isn't shameful? Seems coercing someone to do anything without their consent is shameful.
If someone only consents to cleaning a house if they're paid enough money to do it that isn't "without their consent" by any definition of the word I'm aware of. It's unclear to me why sex workers should be specially called out and stigmatized.
Based on what you've said so should the patrons of any service if the worker is providing a service they wouldn't otherwise be providing if they weren't being paid to do so.
Pornography is a form of prostitution and its consumers should also do a little introspection about their use of it.
Marriages usually involve many other things than sex-for-resources; it is certainly possible for economic coercion to be an aspect of marriage. It is not the defining feature of the institution, however.
Drug trials are not a more socially tolerated form of rape so they are not really relevant here.
How are drug trial not a form of "rape"? They are not sexual, but you are exposing your body to potential damage in exchange for money. I really don't see how that's different than prostitution, in fact I'll argue that it is worse (we can make prostition less risky, we cannot eliminate risk from drug trial).
Some people absolutely have been getting married to be able to get out of poverty, and in my book this is worse than prostitution in the sense that not only do those people have to have sex with their " client", but they also have to live with them and probably do other work such has cleaning and cooking. At least with prostitution, the contract is clearer, there are negotiated limits on what is provided for the money. I'll argue that if society had less hangups about prostitution, they'd be less of those economical marriages.
If you think that drug trial for money is more acceptable than sex for money, I think you should have a little introspection about your attitude towards sex.
> So should pornography be illegal in your opinion?
I think that very much like dangerous drugs and cigarette smoking, attacking the demand side of this issue will be more effective than outright prohibition.
> How are drug trial not a form of "rape"? They are not sexual...
... that's how they're not a form of "rape," then.
> Some people absolutely have been getting married to be able to get out of poverty, and in my book this is worse than prostitution in the sense that not only do those people have to have sex with their " client", but they also have to live with them and probably do other work such has cleaning and cooking.
Yes, that's a terrible situation as well, but it has nothing to do with how reprehensible it is to purchase sex from a prostitute.
> At least with prostitution, the contract is clearer, there are negotiated limits on what is provided for the money. I'll argue that if society had less hangups about prostitution, they'd be less of those economical marriages.
I'd argue that if a person--OK, let's call a spade a spade, a man--didn't think that their own personal and sexual gratification was more important than someone else's--OK, another spade a spade, a woman's--bodily autonomy, then there'd be both less prostitution and fewer of those marriages. And less rape, and less domestic violence, and less misery overall. But this involves convincing men to introspect about their own privilege vis-a-vis personal and sexual gratification, so it won't happen.
> If you think that drug trial for money is more acceptable than sex for money, I think you should have a little introspection about your attitude towards sex.
The danger to people participating in drug trials is far, far less than the danger to people participating in prostitution. One merely needs to look at the comparative mortality rates to ascertain that.
> that's a terrible situation as well, but it has nothing to do with how reprehensible it is to purchase sex from a prostitute.
If you take "morality" out of the picture, there is no difference, one is selling a one time sexual act for a negotiated amount, the other is selling a lifetime of sex + work for food and shelter. Both are economical deals. The difference is purely the spin one's willing to put on them, in other word, opinions, we obviously disagree, no point arguing further.
> if a man didn't think that their own personal and sexual gratification was more important than a woman's bodily autonomy
What you describe is rape, where there is no consent. If two adults agree to have sex, society should not be concerned on why, and not interfere.
Different people have different level of hormones and sexual needs. Saying things like "people should be less sexual" is not going to solve any problem.
> The danger to people participating in drug trials is far, far less than the danger to people participating in prostitution.
Because society has made prostitution illegal and is not giving the same level of protection to prostitutes as to other citizens. Prostitution should be regulated and made safe.
> Saying things like "people should be less sexual" is not going to solve any problem.
Who said anything like that? All I'm saying is that people should not exploit other people for sex. If they do, then they should feel ashamed. The rest of us should not feel impelled to defend people that do exploit other people for sex, whether they use violence or economic disadvantage to do so.
> Because society has made prostitution illegal and is not giving the same level of protection to prostitutes as to other citizens. Prostitution should be regulated and made safe.
That's just not true; even in countries which have decriminalized or legalized prostitution, a prostitute's life is much more fraught with peril than people participating in drug trials.
This sounds more like a moral judgement. Labor is labor, you don't get to redefine labor just because it involves an action which is very controversial.
What really matters is the safety of the person(s) involved. And yet, there are plenty of occupations where safety is in question.
It is precisely a moral judgement. Moral judgements are a human responsibility.
The question is whether or not we want to be a society that views people's bodies and sexual access to them as a commodity to be bought and sold. I find it baffling that anyone would laud this condition after giving it a few moments of compassionate reflection.
Consider the possibility that a few moments of compassionate reflection have lead Alice to conclude that when Bob says he loves what he does, it's not because Mallory is forcing him to say that.
It's all well and good to say that it's against your own morals, but as soon as you start defending that on the basis of the consequences, you're conceding the "but it's just morally wrong!" argument. And in general, we (okay, at least I, as I can believe that you wouldn't necessarily agree here) laud societies that have transitioned from deontological to consequentialist ethics.
> And in general, we (okay, at least I, as I can believe that you wouldn't necessarily agree here) laud societies that have transitioned from deontological to consequentialist ethics.
If you want to get all academic about it, I am coming from a position of virtue ethics, which is why I am focused on the vicious men who purchase sex, and to a lesser extent other people who are explicitly or implicitly defending those men's actions.
Don't you? The past few years have seen a spate of "high-class call girl" memoirs. Unless you want to make the novel claim they're all fabricated, or try somehow to argue they are negligible, that would seem to suggest that your second claim here is not accurate.
"People who see prostitution as something which exists on a number of different, exclusive and distinct class-related levels are people who do not understand the interrelated nature of it, and some of the people ignorant of the shifting nature of prostitution are actually prostitutes and prostitutors themselves."
Absolutely, which is why I would like to hold people who choose to purchase sex accountable for their human rights violations. They have agency; they have the choice not to purchase sex and yet they do so anyway.
By that logic, me going to work is slavery. Also, there are people who sincerely believe that women can't consent to sex with men, full stop, for basically similar reasons to what you wrote. You're probably playing devil's advocate, but I really think these bizarre ideas about consent are rooted in a damaged psychology that has a very unhealthy view of both women's agency, and the relationship between the sexes.
> On the other hand, there are those who believe that sex work can never truly be consensual
Discussion about sex work is always interesting. Sex workers are so often left out of the discussion about their own lives. How about we listen to what the sex workers want?
Here in Australia, sex workers are completely on the side of decriminalisation.
This is of course entirely by design -- liberal opponents of sex work have to rely on automatically, by definition denying agency to any sex worker who disagrees ("she is brainwashed/has internalized oppression/..., therefore her arguments cannot be considered, let us see what this ex-worker has to say") -- otherwise the illusion of compassion that they work so hard on creating would instantly evaporate.
It is really quite infuriating -- to me personally much more so than the conservative opponents position, which while equally repugnant in terms of actions implied, at least leaves some scope for respectfully disagreeing: it does not bother me to be called sinful, or evil, or immoral by someone else's moral code (surely all of us are quite immoral by /someone's/ moral code), but I would consider it deeply offensive to have my opinion about my own life dismissed out of hand.
> On the other hand, there are those who believe that sex work can never truly be consensual, because even if consent is given, a sex worker may have felt pressured to seek this life because all other choices available to them to make a living and attain food and shelter were sub-par or nonexistent. This argument supposes that given a different, idealized circumstances free of such pressures, few people would choose sex work.
Oh no, those poor people, the best option they have is sex work!
I know, let's make their best option illegal! That will certainly improve their lives!
I think mutual consent and money for sex are probably fine.
The problem is that reality isn't black and white. Trafficking is very real, especially in Chinese communities, where victims are shuffled all over the place on cheap intercity busses.
These are complex problems, and the typical HN lazze faire approach doesn't address that complexity.
Voluntary in the sense that people are working off some "debt" owed to smugglers that can never be repaid.
Chinatown busses are a snake pit of all sorts of crime. Here's an article that scratches the surface. There are numerous sources in the news and academic publications about the links to sex and other human trafficking to these busses.
You are right, these are indeed complex problems, however this is no directed effort against this type of activity.
If anything, having a common platform would make it easier to focus on such things, and I suspect platform owners would gladly cooperate (as they probably would on weeding out underage ads, etc.) -- but in practice, the alternative we see is either going for low-hanging fruit (which these relatively complex operations aren't), or just a blanket effort, like in this case.
All of these hurt legitimate workers far more than the operations you describe.
And for the legalisation of contract killing or the legalisation of slavery. Of course one might think that drugs or prostitution should be legal but then you don't need to "allow" a special marketplace for an illegal activity.
The worst case scenario will be a website where it is very hard to impossible for law enforcement to scrape or retrieve phone numbers from and prostitution is blended in with normal activity. Turns out it already exists: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.
In the Craigslist/Newmark case, what one of the State Attorneys said was, "We don't care about a benefit. We'll just keep prosecuting until all of the sites are shut down."
Newmark made the same case as the parent commend, but that was the last thing the last thing the law wanted to hear since they are prosecutors, not social workers.
