Just legalize it already! It's been proven time and time again across many countries around the world that legalizing and regulating prostitution creates a safer environment for the girls AND the customers.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
... 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.