Sex workers fear violence as US cracks down on online ads: 'Girls will die'
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
only if it is a private transaction. Making pornography is legal. You are correct, there lies no sense here.
..or I guess you could move to Nevada.
[1] If they use a fake ID and are underage, you can still be liable.
But then the way the laws are written, a couple recording a sex tape is covered under these regulations. If they don't maintain the proper records, they could find themselves being indicated under child porn laws, even though they were both consenting adults.
* drinking
* gambling
* prostitution
* drugs
* adultery
* homosexuality
* lending money
* black markets
Today Islam still holds this as a majority view in many places (not universally). I'm simplifying it a lot, so I really recommend the book. There is a strong correlation between debt and guilt. In Christian doctrine, they're very interchangeable (forgive us our debts/sins as we forgive those who are indebted to/have sinned against us).
Guilt, Sin and debt are the same word in many ancient languages, including old English. Guilt and debt are still the same word in German.
What about taxes on alcohol that fund anti-drinking campaigns and help fund treatment centers?
It's exactly the kind of thing I was talking about
> What about
That is not making it illegal.
Yes, exactly.
> What about taxes on alcohol that fund anti-drinking campaigns and help fund treatment centers?
They mostly fund anti-youth-drinking campaigns and responsible drinking campaigns, not anti-drinking campaigns (OTOH, tobacco taxes often do fund anti-smoking campaigns.) They also fund licensing and enforcement agencies that license vendors and enforce laws against selling to youth, selling in inappropriate venues, etc.
I think you would find that many people who oppose prohibition of prostitution would support loosely similar tax, regulatory, and enforcement structures.
Regulation doesn't need to "suppress an activity into inconsequence" to be useful. There are many ways regulation can beneficially impact activity in between the extremes. The vast majority of regulation does this. The extreme of "completely abolish an activity" isn't a practical or useful goal in most cases.
Usually, not that, just charging interest.
However, I would hope no one has to resort to unwanted sex work to afford life and liberty--just for a simple roof over their head, for food and basic healthcare. That's what I fear with legalizing prostitution... I just personally think the idea of knowing people have to do that out of economic necessity is horrible.
This is why I think the economic constraints argument is specious here, it is still a form of imposing one's moral values onto others; unless you are willing to provide a living wage out of your own money to anybody opting to renounce prostitution, denying them that option means subjecting them to something even more horrible in their view, only because you think it's not.
You've already suggested some places where US law restricts contracts that might seem to be between consenting adults. It's a moral choice for the law to restrict you from "selling your organs, selling yourself into slavery, highly dangerous drugs etc."
I think there's good reason for the law to be protective, because merely allowing some contracts to be valid, will allow large power-discrepancies to effectively force people into them.
Whether prostitution falls into this category is a question of culture/morality.
I think this ie consistent with my original point: society should not allow exploitation of people who are simply trying to survive.
The law is an expression of the social contract, so it's a truism to say it will be shaped by cultural norms.
However, some cultural norms are so universal and beyond debate that we can move to an utilitarian perspective to see how well those universal values are protected by various policy choices. For example, if we posit human life as a right, there is no moral question on whether, say, a market of hit men should exist.
Back to our regulation choices, I wanted to underline how banning a dangerous substance is a clear cut, less moral and more objective issue, because it objectively threatens life. Whereas banning prostitution is squarely into the subjective end of the scale, since there is no shared moral value that is objectively infringed.
That's not to say that tough choices don't exist (recreational drugs, handguns, certain pornography) where the law must espouse moral choices, but that prostitution shouldn't be such a case. It is only treated as such as a political appeasement to the minority of voters for whom it's a major moral issue.
This is true, only if individuals have a good education, job opportunities, a broad enough safety net, etc.
Otherwise, you are just pushing abused women or women with no resources to submit to sexual servitude.
When you have a high correlation between prostitution and poverty, you are just realizing that that choice was never there.
A good approach is to punish clients instead of prostitutes. This way you help to shift power balance and protect prostitutes that denounce abuse.
There is no freedom without a possibility of choice.
[0] Fast Food Nation (I think it's written about in Chapter 8 "The Most Dangerous Job").
Or any other job, really.
How would this help poor women?
Again, I'm asking because I dont know. To me, I think the above example would cause a lot of public harm in that people would be pressured into giving up their lives to potentially save their families from poverty. But at the same time, that reasoning could be applied to prostitution. But then again, with prostitution, you can always stop.
In a typical/expected sex worker transaction, the worker performs a sexual act and then goes about their day without any lasting issues (other than perhaps minor symptoms like soreness). In a typical/expected gladiator duel, the person doesn't go about their day because they die. I'm not sure how you can compare those at all.
When done safely and with precautions, sex work isn't very dangerous. See: Australian sex workers, after it was legalized there.
You could say that about employment in some SV companies...
There is a precedent for this type of law - Mutual combat is legal in Washington - https://fightstate.com/mutual-combat-law-in-washington-lets-...
Your scenario doesn't exist because these fights aren't a good deal/risk for most people. Prostitution is a lot more popular because it's not a risk, it's a sacrifice.
The point being, the societal harm of outlawing your suggestion is little, but the societal harm of outlawing prostitution is much more than prostitution itself causes. At least I think that's a reasonable conclusion, as many others advocating for prostitution legality do. In addition to ownership of one's own body, etc.
> To me, I think the above example would cause a lot of public harm in that people would be pressured into giving up their lives to potentially save their families from poverty. But at the same time, that reasoning could be applied to prostitution.
Another problem is that this is quiiiiite a stretch. Prostitution is not giving up your life, it's a profession. In some cases people even enjoy the profession, though this is not to imply that most or even many do. Should we say all unhappy accountants are sacrificing their lives as well? Prostitutes can still have normal fulfilling lives. You can't if you're dead in your example.
Aren't we all pressured into working in order to survive?
You wouldn't have SESTA / FOSTA if you didn't have the pathologically terrible Backpage.
You don't have to believe anything in this document. You can follow the links this documents gives to the court cases, and the court cases contain what Backpage themselves were saying.
I've heard they started auto-filtering words (teen, loli, etc.) but that could be interpreted with different intents. These aren't strict liability crimes, so intent will come in to play and need to be proven.
Bad actors doesn't excuse bad law, and good intentions does not make unintended consequences any less real.
I wonder who exactly the opponents of sex-legalization are trying to "protect". Trafficking victims? They will be vastly better served by a well regulated workplace. The sex workers themselves? I think this article debunks that myth. The Johns? Hah, there's a good laugh. The criminalization of the sex industry seems like Prohibition all over again.
why?
[1]https://www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/countries/2017/271251...
Statistics I can found show that human trafficking rates actually increase when legalization happens, since demand increases: https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-...
I might argue though that the countries who have legalized it so far are not taking enough steps to regulate it safely though. If Netherlands and the like can fix their system to actually reduce trafficking while allowing sex work, then this claim could be made one day. But there isn't research available that I could find which supports that this is the case in any legalized country today.
Sounds like it would be way harder to exploit trafficking victims in that environment than in one where prostitution stays in the shadows.
To play devils advocate,
* Regulation does reduce the risk, but reducing the risk may also increase the amount. Similar to legalizing drugs making them less dangerous but also more common.
* The article doesn't debunk the other position, as the sex workers interviewed may not be representative of the majority. That is exactly the claim put forth by the proponents, in fact (whether it is true or not, I don't think we can tell).
Women are having sex with men whom they otherwise wouldn't have sex with -- we should be removing the need for sex work rather than accommodating it. Sex "for survival," child prostitution, sex trafficking -- none of these go away when the stigma and illegality are removed and if anything it gets worse because clients just automatically assume their sexual partner isn't (for example) a victim of sex trafficking.
Sex is one of the last places where women have more power than men. I believe that illegalizing prostitution and other forms of sex acts is a way for a male-dominated world to try to, yet again, limit the power women have in society.
A regulated sex marketplace is going to mean women can be much more picky about who they choose to sleep with, and can do so much more safely. They can use their sexual power to make financial gains for themselves. I believe this is empowering towards women, much more so than trying to erradicate all forms of prostitution.
There will still be illegal activity, but legalizing prostitution will decrease the noise on activity that actually IS bad (children in sex work, forced sex work, etc).
It's interesting that you point that out. Some claim that plenty of women use their sexuality to manipulate men, to trade sex for resources (marriage), and other such things. By legalizing prostitution you deprive the rest of the women from being able to do this - guys don't have to buy the cow when they can get the milk on an as-needed basis for a negotiated price and no strings attached.
Are they more likely to do it? Maybe. But I think woman can still use their sexuality outside of the legal sex market to achieve the things they want, if that's what they choose to do.
Just because it happens doesn't mean it's something that can't be construed to ALSO cause harm.
I would be devastated to know that a partner was only having sex with me to further some other goal. I don't see how this is good for the parties involved.
By making sex work illegal you are preventing people in the industry from going to the authorities to report all the things you are against. You will never stop prostitution by saying it is illegal, all you are doing is allowing the criminal elements to thrive. If you care about preventing sex trafficking and child prostitution you need the help of people in the industry to ensure organized crime can not operate with a cloak of silence.
What would that look like, exactly?
It seems like the people who think prostitution is bad want it to just go away, favoring words like should/shouldn't. I want to know a solution to prostitution that takes into account human nature and markets.
What I meant in the first place (which I think was clear to begin with, regardless of language) is that many people make choices to do jobs they wouldn't otherwise because they need the money. Many jobs are taken for survival. Prostitution isn't really significantly different than any other undesirable job, aside from the emotional significance that we often assign to sex. But there isn't fundamentally anything about sex that differentiates it.
I would compare sex workers to something that is way more safer, mining jobs. You only have safe mining jobs if you strive towards it, same goes for sex work.
For the record I've lived with a family with a daughter/mother in the in the sex industry of a port city, but do not base my views on those anecdotal evidence. But sure it colours it a lot.
It is definitely different in that consent is removed by economic force rather than physical force.
There is a really interesting dynamic in humans where we have either evolved or socially constructed (or both) this very strong sense of importance (and also shame) around sex. Part of this has to do with ownership and the fact that we possess things and status which we pass on to a known set of descendants.
You can look at a beautiful peace of art that's colorful and evokes incredible emotions .. and that's art. Two people fucking and it's not art, it's porn .. unless it's in an art gallery as an exhibit about the porn industry.
I wish our University wasn't so insanely big. It'd be interesting to find other sentient life and see if all life tends to evolve this specific attitude around sex or if it's unique to our species.
The way we're trying to "protect" the people being trafficked into sex work is putting them, and the ones who do it voluntarily, in even more danger.
Legalizing and regulating sex work protects them all so much more, but entirely too many of us would rather moralize about others' choices than approach the problem with harm reduction in mind.
Yep. I'm seeing many, many comments about how prositution is bad. I'm not seeing any that suggest workable alternatives. Most seem to be socialist-leaning (attaching market incentive to sex is bad), but we don't have socialism, and sex workers need protection now.
Ok, so whether or not we agree that prostitution is bad, what do we do about it? I think legalizing/regulating makes a lot more sex workers a lot safer. Those people were going to be doing sex work anyway, but now they have the state-level protections a plumber or a banker have.
Once that's done, then we can argue the morality of it to death.
We can make similar arguments for all illegal activities. Why don't we make murder safer for the murderers? They're going to murder anyways, so we might as well keep one of the parties alive and healthy. Why don't we just give thieves all the free money they want? They are going to steal anyways, so we might as well make it more convenient for them.
In short, why have rules with negative repercussions at all? People are going to do 'wrong' anyways, so let's instead of doing something negative to them, make it as positive an experience as possible.
Also, murder generally involves a willing participant and a non-willing participant. Sex work, is generally two willing participants, especially if it's done with the protection of a state's legal system.
I think the problem with prostitution is that people apply the moral platform of what happens in underground sex work to above-ground sex work. But so many things change once it becomes legal that it's not an effective comparison.
My goal with sex work would be to vastly reduce the number of unwilling participants and offer protection for those who follow the law while engaging in it. I think "it makes me feel bad therefor should be illegal" is understandable, but not incredibly nuanced and ends up hurting many more people in the long run.
It's fine if you don't like prostitution, but what is your practical proposed solution for erradicating it?
As human beings, we don't encourage other human beings to continue destroying themselves, just because that course of action is easiest. We try to save them from their self destructive course. We do not enable self destruction.
This is the language of moralizing, not of problem solving. You aren't interested in making anything better; you're interested in making sure everyone knows how "bad" you think this thing is.
The thing is: no-one's arguing there's badness here, just over what the bad and not-bad parts are. You aren't going to convince people that it's all bad, going about it the way you are, though.
... are you advocating non-consensual sex should be legal?[1] I don't think so, but I'm not really sure how "animals have non-consensual sex" really supports anything related to this argument.
[1] To be clear, there are people on various places on Reddit that do advocate for non-consensual sex to be legalized... as a measure to "prevent rape." I kid you not.
It seems like ihsw2 has a problem with markets in general. I agree that it sucks sometimes people are forced to do things they don't like for economic reasons, but that is not a problem specific to prostitution, and treating prostitution like a special class of work that's somehow different from other jobs is counterproductive to what sex workers are trying to accomplish, I believe.
One of the core tenets of feminism is that women have a right to do what they please with their own bodies.
A lot of bad things come out of prostitution. That needs to be addressed and policed. Jailing the women practicing it to survive fixes nothing.
Women are still free to have non-paid sex with whomever they want. But if they choose to make money doing it as well, I believe that is another form of empowerment.
Sex robots? (I'm not kidding). If there are people willing to pay for sex, and people willing to have sex for money, how do you stop them from entering into this transaction, whether regulated or unregulated?
I can see you are morally opposed to prostitution, but, like, what's your solution here? What, in your head, is the lesser of all evils that can be practically implemented and enforced?
The nordic model advocates that it's only the buyers who are penalized. Women are then given services that provide a path towards a different means of earning income. The idea is that by making it riskier for the buyer, the average John won't bother with looking for that type of service. The aim is to reduce demand for prostitution in general, which in turn should reduce the demand for trafficking for the purposes of prostitution. Studies do indeed show that countries with this model (Sweden) have less incidence of human trafficking than countries with legalization (Netherlands).
There is a tradeoff though with that model. Mainly that the Johns who remain in the market are more likely to be dangerous.
This is not a clear cut feminist issue though. Many feminists do indeed believe sex work as an industry is harmful to women, even if regulated for worker safety. There are feminists who are ex-sex workers that advocate this position.
A few years ago, Amnesty International found out about this and took a strong position against the Nordic model because of it. The response amongst feminist supporters of the Nordic model was not to disown this part of the Nordic model or try and change the law in Sweden; instead they launched a campaign against Amnesty International to try and shut them up. Its proponents might try and spin it as something that protects women in the industry and only affects johns, but pretty much all of them are fighting hard to strip those women of any police protection against rape and violence. Occasionally, you'll even find someone who openly admits that they want those women to be more at risk of rape because they hope it'll encourage them to give up a trade that they think is hurting other women, and no-one else in the supposedly feminist anti-sex-work movement seems to have a problem with this from what I've seen.
Political ideology over reality, this is the sad story of many of the policies pushed both by the conservatives and progressives, and here they agree. The real people are left with the consequences, pushed to the fringes and victimized both by the state and the traffickers.
The problem is that there's no good reason for prostitution in general to be illegal in the United States. While I have no interest in partaking in such activity myself, I realize that the sole interest in banning it appears to be religion... something which cannot and should not govern our country's laws. I'm a Christian, but I don't think Christian views should be the determining factor in our legislature... that's the Constitution's job.
Pretending that Section 230 willing enables participation in an illegal enterprise is a complete fabrication with no grounding in reality.
Prosecuting Backpage without SESTA/FOSTA was possible which is why Backpage was taken down and indicted BEFORE the law was signed (and therefore, enforceable).
Why do you think all the torrent sites get taken down? Or YouTube was sued? or 2903420934230 other things where a site violates some law be profiting from otherwise illegal UGC? Or the various dark net markets like the one Dread Pirate Roberts ran?
Section 230 has _never_ provided more than a reasonable barrier to overcome to prevent absurd legal attacks.
Even the DOJ even weighed in (https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4390361/Views-Ltr...) and said it will make catching traffickers more difficult. When you have the DOJ opposing a proposal to strengthen a law, that should be a significant red flag.
Of course, I understand my comment is specifically about the implications for trafficking, not self-decided/employed sex workers.
In regards to the latter, I think the article describes it well, regardless of it being illegal, SESTA/FOSTA only makes it more dangerous for both groups.
The last 20 years of web innovation begs to differ. Killing user-generated content will make us all worse off.
"AI" is not the answer. AI is not adequate or comparable to human moderators which small businesses employ. AI is a "solution" for providing lip service to accountability without spending the money to actually provide any sort of responsible service.
Of course, they don't, because thanks to Section 230 immunity, they have no obligation to.
If you can't think of any moral hazards around prostitution, then I don't believe that you are trying very hard.
>I don't think Christian views should be the determining factor in our legislature
Is Christianity the only moral system that looks poorly upon prostitution?
No, but is it probably one of the most vocal.
The only reason to make prostitution a crime is if you think prostitutes themselves are committing evil. That is 100% a religious position with no rational support.
And then adults being drugged and forced into prostitution?
And then adults feeding a drug addiction?
At which point of this ladder do you start to say "no, this is where we need to make it illegal"?
That's already illegal. You've just made discovering it harder.
> And then adults being drugged and forced into prostitution?
Also already illegal. You've made discovering it harder.
> And then adults feeding a drug addiction?
That's actually none of your business.
> At which point of this ladder do you start to say "no, this is where we need to make it illegal"?
There's no need since you don't actually solve coerced prostitution by making it illegal.
Maybe we should just make one singular law that says "be nice".
Hey, I bet you could make a religion out of that!
/s
Saying there is already a law that covers something is disconnected from reality, or at least disconnected form language and the way that humans communicate.
For instance: "drugging people is illegal". You haven't defined "drugging" or "people" in that case. Is it drugging a person when a school nurse gives a child a acetaminophen? You're definitely changing both their physical and psychological state, and are in some way establishing a relationship of dependence.
This is why we have more than one law, and why we don't base our laws on religion.
A lot of adults work jobs for a wage to feed their drug habit. Should we make that illegal too?
Kidnapping is already a serious crime.
>And then adults being drugged and forced into prostitution?
Say it with me, kidnapping is already a crime.
>And then adults feeding a drug addiction?
A legal and regulated sex industry will no longer provide the 'safe haven' for addicts that the illegal one does today. Note - I'm not claiming it will eliminate it.
>At which point of this ladder do you start to say "no, this is where we need to make it illegal"?
We need not start. By your logic, we should outlaw cars for all the deaths they cause.
This seems like a pretty outrageous claim. It seems obvious that:
1) There are moral hazards surrounding prostitution
2) The legal status of prostitution has a negative effect on the number of people participating in it.
So while legalizing prostitution certainly could (and anecdotally would) negate some of the hazards, to say that it would negate all of them seems foolish, or at the very least extremely poorly reasoned.
For instance: we don't allow people to work for less than minimum wage. We have things like OSHA which set minimum safe working requirements for dangerous jobs, etc.
You may claim "yes, that's why we want sex-work regulated".
Sex work already is regulated. Pornography is legal, stripping is legal, "cam" work is legal, burlesque is legal, etc. etc.
The classic example is: suppose a drug addict who has a moral opposition to selling their body for sex, but is being coerced into doing so by their drug addiction. We have protective regulations around that which strongly disincentive it.
Selling penetrative sex for money is where we as a society have drawn a line and said "everything up to this point is okay."
Just like we drawn a line for dangerous working conditions and said "everything up to this point is okay". We're not saying that there are no risks to dangerous physical work (sex work included), we're saying that anything beyond the line is intolerable.
--
Just to be clear: I'm not making some claim that strongly supports any side of this argument. I'm just annoyed by the claim that there is no discussion to be had here, and that the only reason that prostitution is illegal in most of the US is "Christians".
First off, that is an extremely broad moral hazard and one that applies to pretty much all types of employment and not just prostitution.
Secondly, making prostition legal allows an organiztion like OSHA to set (and more importantly, enforce) safe working requirements. This is precisely and example of a moral hazard that is limited/negated by legalizatin.
> I'm just annoyed by the claim that there is no discussion to be had here
I've yet to see anyone make argument for keeping prostitution that isn't either A) Factually incorrect or B) Based on christianity. I'd be happy to discuss such an arguement if you have one.
However, the real debate that we should be having is the best ways to legalize prostitution to make sure that the moral hazards are minimized.
The "Scandinavian Approach" (make buying sex illegal but don't penalize selling) is certainly better than what we have in the US as it makes the justice system available to prostitutes who no longer face jail time for reporting crime committed against them. However helping buyers not get caught is a selling point for sellers, so it still drives the activity into hiding. Hidden activity is harder to regulate and increases the probability that violence can be committed against the sellers.
That use of the Travel Act to combat prostitution has been used to get any site they wanted to shut down. In other words, since Congress isn't about to reign them in nor the courts prosecutors at the Federal level can do about what they please. This is not to say backpage was innocent, only in how non Federal crimes can become such by stretching intent
They are not immune from that and Section 230 doesn't make them immune to that.
What section 230 means is that "implementing any moderation or filtering of user content does not automatically make you an editor and thus liable for all content on your site".
Without section 230, Dang cannot do moderation on HN without HN becoming liable for EVERYTHING that is posted to the site. Facebook, Google and Twitter will be economically forced to stop filtering abhorrent content to avoid massive legal liabilities.
The missing discussion is that people need to stop jumping into the discussion without understanding the historical and legal context of section 230.
https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Teen-girl-young-woman-e...
FTA: "Just two hours earlier, in what police said was an unrelated incident, a 19-year-old woman was walking just three blocks away from the kidnapping when she was dragged into a car by a group of two men and two women."
The northeast mission remains a center of drive-by prostitution. Hard to read these stories without speculating this is an indication of what's to come thanks to SESTA/FOSTA.
Can't believe that Kamala Harris supported this. It's not helpful to say this is a reasonable law and that prostitution's illegality is the problem. In the world we live in it is and will remain so.
That makes this a bad and dangerous law.
And just a reminder this law was 100% unnecessary to prosecute Backpage.
This was purely puritanical bullshit designed to hurt sex workers in the US that are here legally. They just needed a "cause" to sell to rubes.
It would take out all of the danger and illegality as for example one doesnt go into shady corners or connections to buy cigarettes or alcohol like weed because its legalized and policed correctly.
Would I prefer a world where men didn't have to waste their health in mines and women theirs in prostitution? Sure, I'm all for a UBI. But it is hypocrisy to treat these professions and the health implications they have as any different.
Sexual intercourse is as much a necessity as is mining. More so, I'd say. Humans are not mining machines, they are reproduction machines. To deny this is to deny human nature. Also, sex in and in itself has nothing to do with respect or disrespect. It's simply a physical act.
All these things you'd have. With of without prostitution. These are issues of the human condition, not something that can be magicked away by prohibiting the act of sexual intercourse for economic benefits. It just doesn't work. There have been many moral and religious campaigns to make prostitution illegal. And still we have broken families, STDs, domestic violence, child abuse, etc.
As for the dehumanizing effect of sexual intercourse; you might be on to something. But sex is a strange thing that cannot really be understood by thinking very hard about it. So; some very independent women like to be degraded during sex, so do some men. This is just part of the spectrum. As long as everybody involved consents, I don't see the problem.
And yes, brokeness will be with us for all time. So, your solution is to just allow things to get worse? Sometimes you have to take a hard stand on things to help people not destroy themselves.
To imply that all social norms and taboos are moot in the face of individuality is to imply that the individual is the core atom of humanity and it clearly is not -- it is the family.
That doesn't make them absolute.
As for sex as entertainment; yes, sexual intercourse in all its wonderful varieties is entertainment. Just look at some of our closest cousins, the Bonobos. They entertain themselves all day long with sex. Well, almost.
I really don't get why you think that sex is something bad. I think it's wonderful and we should have much more of it. - it's just way better entertainment then war.
Are you saying that they don't need sex at all and should go without? Because that's a pretty puritanical viewpoint that hasn't been backed up by any sort of history.
Additionally "need" can be pretty subjective. People's sex drives are some thing they are born with. We don't "need" rare earth metals to have shiny electronics so why is it ok to have people forced into mining by it being their only choice economically?
My opinion is based largely on the fact that there are plenty of women who want to do this, or particularly enjoy it, as well as the unfortunate cases of people who feel they have no other choice. In either of those cases, punishing the people who are in this industry is wrong.
They are not protected by regulations, they don't receive pensions and they don't pay taxes.
There are a lot of jobs that might not be the best life choices. But that's no reason to make it illegal and force the people performing these jobs underground.
It sounds like you just have a problem with sex in general and protecting women is about as much a goal of yours as when politicians cry "think of the children"
But yes, I am sure people generally agree that the women who don't want to be sex workers should have other options (or be made aware of options).
And how far can society go when dictating what a person can or can not do? People are allowed to smoke and drink. People have sex without payments happening too.
As long as we force people to do unpleasant and potentially harmful jobs for a living, I don't see any reason to differentiate between oil-rig workers and prostitutes.
By making it legal, prostitutes enjoy legal protection, health and social benefits. What's not to like?
Prostitution is both unnecessary and destructive to all parties involved.
Clear difference between the two categories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_among_animals
I guess it's not coal mining...
There are no objective truths in all of the moralizing anti-prostitution comments you're making in this thread. All of the virtues you're playing up are nothing more than your personal beliefs. Your read on history is selective and has been called out repeatedly for emphasizing the things you want to see while ignoring the facts you don't.
Life is essentially suicide in that aspect. Sex workers have the option to use condoms. There are tests, and most STDs are not lethal.
Abuse is being enabled by making the business hide in shadows.
edit: to who i was replying to the reply button was gone.
Prohibition itself has never stopped anyone from doing anything stupid. All it ever does is empower scrupulous people to make money of it.
If you argue for changing the economic setup so that nobody has to do work they would rather not be doing -- I'm all for it. But don't make it sound as if prostitution was anything special in that regard.
And yes that same argument, our body is important to us, I'll repeat (for the last time) is important to all performance artists. Let's not project "I would be offended by this use of my body" to everyone in the world.
Prostitution destroys society. It breaks up families. It leads to fatherless children. It spreads STDs. It teaches men to treat women as sex objects. It denigrates sex in general to pleasure instead of its main purpose of creating the next generation.
Prostitution (might) spread STDs because there is no regulation and oversight, no health-check mandate for prostitutes (of either gender).
All those issues you cite don't really stem from prostitution and making/keeping prostitution illegal will not make them go away.
Even regulated, the number of STD exposures climbs exponentially with prostitution. That is just the unavoidable math of having massive numbers of sex partners.
Seriously; prostitution is a symptom, not the cause.
With regards to diseases; diseases spread with any physical contact between humans. I still don't think that it would be a good thing to stop having contact.
Making prostitution illegal will not make it go away. It has been with us for before we climbed out of the trees, it will be with us long after we've stopped reading words. Making it illegal will just rob the prostitutes of potential protection and safety.
It's not. There are plenty (female) hard-core 2nd-wave feminists that are all for legalization of prostitution, citing self-empowerment, economic empowerment and the acceptance of female sexuality.
You say -- to paraphrase -- 'the True Feminist only speaks what's good for women and only I decide what's good for women'. That's not an argument, it's a dogma.
This is not particular to feminism. If we can clearly see someone choosing a self destructive lifestyle (i.e. drugs), even if it is what they really want, our responsibility is to help them get out of it.