Determining if two parties are actually "freely consenting" is notoriously difficult, given the way that sex trafficking rings operate - and as has been proven over and over again, determining if an individual is "freely consenting" is not at all a simple thing for law enforcement to figure out and making it legal does not make it easier.
So while I agree in spirit with "two consenting adults should be able to do what they want if they aren't hurting anyone else" - reducing prostitution to those terms is an overly simplistic way of looking at it and is ignoring mountains of evidence that legalizing it increases the rate of sex trafficking and sexual exploitation for those countries which made it legal already.
expanding access to labor rights, labor organizations, and the government prosecuting traffickers is a more productive use of resources than the rhetorical solution to the “mountains of evidence” you pointed out
> Determining if two parties are actually "freely consenting" is notoriously difficult
obsessing over that is odd, if you're not doing that in the rest of the employment market too.
yes, people that aren't sex workers behave wildly different regarding boundaries and discernment in who they engage with, while putting the onus on sex workers to prove why they are different, right now, is folly and ineffective uncalled for vicarious interest at best and discrimination at worst
a better use of energy to exercise any discomfort around possibly trafficked people is allowing sex workers access to the same labor avenues as the rest of the employment market allows them agency to better navigate everything you’re (ostensibly) worried about. even expanding what those avenues are.
Except counties that have legalized prostitution have tried this and failed. Again, there is evidence that legalizing prostitution increases the amount and scope of sex trafficking operations in said counties which have legalized. It isn't "Labor trafficking issues" - it is sex trafficking, and a very specific issue with legalizing prostitution.
> obsessing over that is odd, if you're not doing that in the rest of the employment market too.
Can you expand on why? Sex trafficking is a very specific form of labor exploitation which is tied up with prostitution - and it has been seen to demonstrably get worse after prostitution becomes legal. Why should this evidence be ignored or tied up with the broader umbrella of "labor exploitation"?
> a better use of energy to exercise any discomfort around possibly trafficked people is allowing sex workers access to the same labor avenues as the rest of the employment market allows them agency to better navigate everything you’re (ostensibly) worried about. even expanding what those avenues are.
I think advocates of legal prostitution like yourself like to say things about legalized prostitution that they wish were true, but reality tells a difference story. If it was better and easier for law enforcement and/or prostitutes to navigate sex trafficking when prostitution is legal, one would think we wouldn't see a marked increase in sex trafficking when prostitution becomes legal. What you keep doing here repeating "it's better for prostitutes to operate in a legal environment" is ignoring reality and sticking your head in the sand regarding the very real consequences for the 150$ billion a year sex trafficking industry which has very brutal and effective ways for suppressing/exploiting/manipulating their victims even in regions where prostitution is perfectly legal.
Again, I totally agree that two consenting adults who aren't hurting anyone should have legal recourse to do what they want, as long as that situation exists in a vacuum. If there are huge externalities involved, such as 150 billion a year sex trafficking industries that can capitalize on legalization and which no country in the world has figured out how to suppress after legalization - well, that should at least be considered in any effort to legalize.
I don't gauge efficacy of a public policy based on whether sex trafficking exists or not.
The other part I think is substantive to clarify is that there are far more similarities to all workers than there are differences. You don't need to rationalize to people why you are not being exploited, and it would be disingenuous if you tried to prove to everyone that you loved your job all the time. The reality is that sometimes it is fulfilling for you and other times it is a chore. If anything exploitative occurs there are power dynamics in play that compete with your willingness to address them. Labor rights issues that are completely valid to acknowledge and improve. The only thing being added is that sex workers should be equally included in that improvement.
Countries with more trafficking need to prosecute the traffickers and get better at that. I’m not willing to criminalize sex workers or make their life more difficult just because an area may be bad at finding traffickers. Criminalizing consumers is ineffective too and have been shown to be a primary confidant a sex worker confides in, unless the consumer cant report due to being criminalized, so I’m not willing to make their life difficult either. Any policy based on marginalizing sex work harms ability to access labor rights, if blanket statements like that bother you, I could be open to a currently unexplored combination of policies. I’m not open to pretending that a solution is a worker or consumer criminalization framework just because of a perception of less trafficking occurring, in comparison to a decriminalized or legalized framework.
Your approach would be to consider both in a vacuum. Let us legalize prostitution because according to you it is axiomatic that a legal framework will necessarily be better for participants of the prostitution industry, and we can consider sex trafficking as a wholly separate independent problem.
I fundamentally disagree because based on available evidence, legalization of prostitution exacerbates the already existing sex trafficking problems which have demonstrable negative results in countries which have legalized prostitution.
I also disagree with shoe horning sex trafficking into the existing umbrella of "labor exploitation" since sex trafficking is at a scale where it demands it's own consideration for solutions and ways to contain it's growing influence, and yes, one of those techniques is to outright outlaw prostitution to stymie the growth of this cancerous industry in the world.
Fundamentally, you are making a trade off here - you are saying worker rights for prostitution trump stopping the spread of sex trafficking. You could argue it is a fair trade, but there is also an argument that it isn't on balance a societal benefit to make that trade off. Saying "we need to target sex traffickers better" isn't an answer, because countries are already trying and failing to do that - what is the magic secret sauce we can invent as a policy to stop it when there isn't an example to follow? Saying "we need to prioritize worker rights" isn't convincing, because if overall exploitation increases you are increasing the scope of vulnerable people being exploited, and it isn't a good trade off for society.
basically you dont consider the experience of the non trafficked providers
their experience is not cancerous
and what are the “demonstrably negative results”? are you referring to just the trafficking?
and your solutions are false dilemmas, you consider my view an extreme in favor of your view at another extreme
you’re citing “evidence” as “failure” because the state has a poor implementation problem in the labor rights organizations, as if you were previously waiting for data instead of this all being window dressing for your view that all prostitution is inherently cancerous. I’m trying to avoid strawmanning here and this has been a good discussion, I will point out now that everything you wrote so far sounds like Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminism (SWERF) which is broadly discouraged because it silences other women. The hallmarks of it are a few core tenets such as not considering the consensual sex worker’s view and relies on women lacking agency, well not all women, just if they are sex workers. Allowing other people, ironically women, to speak over them as a rebuttal to an impossible standard where the sex worker exclusively must prove they like their job unlike any other laborer. and then discredit that person anyway.
challenging SWERF logic, the experience of non trafficked providers is valid, can be more prevalent, can disappear if nobody wants to offer that service without the government being involved in that at all, and their experience is marginalized and diminished by the criminalized framework you wish for them to exist in, where everything supporting your criminalization is based on criminalization such as the dangers of the environment, and the trafficking which is illegal in both extremes of legality. on the contrary, dealing with trafficking can be improved and those improvements will extend to all laborers. you’re latched in and doubling down on the state being incapable of policing trafficking because you found a study that matched your preexisting discomfort with prostitution existing at all and keep pushing the proposed policy into absurd territories.
Look, for an illustrative example we have immigrants working in fields right now, in the US, under bad coercive pretenses whether the immigrant is here legally or illegally. The coercive pretenses are already illegal and whatever exploitative aspect happens to be legal also needs to be addressed. The state’s inability or unwillingness to tackle that problem is a valid problem, the solution is to beef up the states task forces and attention to that problem. Thats the obvious answer in that field, nobody is seriously ever saying criminalize the agriculture industry, or criminalize contracting or employment because its proven to increase labor trafficking.
Yes, demand for sex for money (prostitution) increases people attempting to capitalize on sex for money (prostitution). Anybody coerced (sex trafficked) should have a way for help and whoever is doing the trafficking needs to be prosecuted and deterred.
The circumstances that support that are analogous to the circumstances around sex trafficking. Treating sex trafficking differently is solely based on a personal discomfort that has nothing to do with the government.
the idea that its lack of legal consequence encourages or endorses being a prostitute again plays into the logic that providers (overwhelmingly and synonymously women) lack agency in considering other choices. thats a community, parenting, and economic problem.
I do consider the experience of non-trafficked providers, but legalization has implications for both that group and other groups - it takes a holistic approach and recognition of all the effects of a policy change to make an informed decision - you cannot make a policy change in a vacuum only considering one side of the coin.
> their experience is not cancerous
To be clear, you are straw manning my views. I do not assume a lack of agency of participants of the prostitution industry. I do not view prostitution itself as a cancerous industry. The cancerous industry is sex trafficking, which as has been demonstrated, has grown in countries which have chosen to legalize prostitution.
> you continue to cite “evidence” as “failure” because the state has a poor implementation problem in the labor rights organizations, as if you were previously waiting for data instead of this all being window dressing for your view that all prostitution is inherently cancerous
Do you or do you not recognize the fact that countries which have made prostitution legal have growing sex trafficking issues? Actually I would be quite happy with data which shows that legalizing prostitution reduces sex trafficking, that would be a feather in the cap of pushes to legalize prostitution and would silence what in my opinion is the largest argument against legalization.
In reality, the countries which have legalized prostitution have seen growing sex trafficking problems. So while you want to imply that I am the one who is insincerely waiting for evidence, it is actually you who are not dealing with the pragmatic reality in the world that shows legalization of prostitution is related to an increase in the size and scope of sex trafficking. Again, these two things cannot be tackled independently - they are intimately and irrevocably related.
If legalizing prostitution increases the size of the vulnerable population being exploited, then on balance it is not a benefit for society.
> on the contrary, dealing with trafficking can be improved and those improvements will extend to all laborers. you’re latched in and doubling down on the state being incapable of policing trafficking because you found a study that matched your preexisting discomfort with prostitution existing at all and keep pushing that into absurd territories.
Again, you are making statements that you wish to be true, but are not borne out by the reality of the facts. If dealing with sex trafficking is easier when the industry is legalized, why is it that countries are facing increasing problems with sex trafficking after making it legal?
For the record, I do acknowledge that sex trafficking is both cancerous and increases in countries with decriminalized and legalized prostitution. (I would point out these are two distinct frameworks)
My view of this is that its like any other thing, lets take actual cancer. Without healthcare, people show up when there are emergencies that reveal they are in stage 4 and terminal. With broad healthcare and improved screening people are found in stage 2 and treated. The studies will show that there is an increase in stage 2 cancer and more resources go into prevention. Sick people from other markets without healthcare do medical tourism and gooses the statistics up even more.
The similarities here are numerous. The change was the expansion of healthcare, the solution is not rolling back the expansion of healthcare because countries with healthcare have spikes in stage 2 cancer, in this example.
Analogies compare dissimilar things with at least one common attribute.
If the bordering countries are operating under criminalization frameworks or economically lesser, then trafficking will be greater from those places. The solution isn't to rollback the legal status to criminalize everyone again. Or use those countries as an example in order to continue to criminalize everyone and make their life more difficult and dangerous.
Or putting it simple: I definitely do not want my daughter to become a prostitute.
Look at how much safer for instance buying and consuming marijuana became after legalization
How long have there been attempts to stamp out prostitution? Centuries? Millennia? At some point, and that point is passed, the retrogrades would do everyone a favour by working to providing alternatives and get better outcomes than trying to send in the police. Arresting these 3 septegenarians:
* Is a waste of taxpayer money.
* Will have no impact on the ability of prostitutes to sell their bodies.
* If it does have an impact, will probably make the lives of prostitutes even worse, somehow.
* Will save no failing marriages.
Something can simultaneously be horrible and legal. Sex work should be in that category. If human trafficing is a problem concentrate on that - but this article is (and I repeat myself) the US government at its most petty and ineffective.
Blanket prohibitions on anything, sex, drugs, etc do not curb or prevent abusive actions it infact masks it, hides it, and makes such abuse MORE PREVALENT,
if you want to reduce human trafficking, legalize Prostitution
I think we somewhat agree. But what I am going for is: we still want to be prosecuting the sale of drugs while decriminalizing drug use. Society doesn't benefit if heroin is readily available, but it does benefit if heroin users are able to get help. I don't know the analogous situation with sex work. Even taking part may be harming a third party.
We do not agree then, I should be able to walk in a CVS and buy Cocaine or any other drug (provided CVS wants to sell it)
It is no business of the government (or you) what I consume, be it a High Fat diet or cocaine or something else
No different than who I sleep with and the reasons why be it for a "relationship", for a dinner or for $XXX money exchange
The government should prevent person X from Abusing Person Y, so in the context of Drugs that would preventing someone selling Weed that was laced with something, or that was some other substance. in the context of Sex, just like any other work, that would be to ensure the seller is selling their labor voluntarily
I dont care if they are selling their labor for sex or to work in a meat packing plant, sex work is no different than factory work, I would want people prosecuted for operating Sweat Shops and I would want people prosecuted forcings someone into sex work
In the context here Sweatshops often obtain workers that have been tricked into starting work without informed consent, or when workers are kept at work through debt bondage or mental duress, or child labor. None of which have anything to do with Minimum wage, they could be paying them $20/hr and still be a sweatshop
I am not a big fan of current Minimum wages laws, and believe there is far better ways to accomplish the stated goals of those laws with out a blanket floor on the price of labor, ironically minimum wages also end up hurting the very people they purport to be "helping" very much like drug and sex laws.
there is no reason for sex work and sex trafficking to be conflated, as sex trafficking is labor trafficking. in both a decriminalized or legalized world, trafficking is still illegal.
everything else you wrote is a labor rights issue as well. those particular harms of prostitution are specifically because the government perpetuates it being more dangerous than it is.
you not wanting your daughter to become a prostitute is not a government problem.
in another comment you wrote you're worried about government endorsement: the government getting out of the way in a decriminalized framework, or providing consumer protection in a legalized framework, is not endorsement. if you want to reinforce a deterrent, that comes from your community.
The rest of those things are consequences of the economic system we live in, not the job it itself. I don't see people arguing for outlawing of electrician work because it draws in young people and is strongly correlated to physical health issues. The fact that people need to sell their bodies in order to survive is an established part of capitalism. Why then is the target of your banhammer specifically prostitution? Just because sex is icky?
it is a cognitive deficiency if you cannot perceive the common attribute, or you ask for clarification from the person that made the analogy
Isn't this primarily an argument for legalizing and regulating prostitution so that less money goes the the black market to create demand for trafficking?
So it's about you and your honor, not her and her life and financial choices.
This is patriarchy too.
And supports my thesis that people become parents because they want something in return, especially men , they want to be the patriarchs of a family that has a bunch of members in relevant and respected roles in society.
If one of the members defaults on the grand vision of the patriarch and pursues immediate financial gain abandoning the "relevant and respected" part then the patriarch becomes irate and resentful because his grand vision has been sabotaged.
The point is that the patriarch and young people have different preferences. Young people want stuff and experiences, so they are looking for ways to make money to buy such things, the quicker the better. Unlike the aforementioned patriarchs ,young people have not yet painted themselves in the corner so much that they are only satisfied with people kissing their asses in the local town council because they are a doctor or a lawyer.
Human trafficking is an orthogonal issue, but one that is facilitated by prostitution being illegal.
You might want to elaborate on how this harm occurs.
If snatch someone off the street, drag them into my condo, and force them to fix my toilet at gunpoint this is kidnapping and forced labor - something I'm going to guess has a much bigger penalty than breach of contract.
Rape is analogous to the latter, not the former.
https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/lang--en/ind...
As a society we acknowledge that sex crimes are worse compared to other crimes that are physically similar. "Rape is just assault" and "sexual assault is just assault" makes no sense even if it's technically true in some particular definitions you have, there is a reason we use a different word to describe crimes that include a sexual component, because we recognise sexual crimes as particularly heinous and degrading. Similarly, all labour is coerced but we recognise that coercing someone into filling out an Excel spreadsheet, while wrong, is not especially heinous in the way that coercing someone into sex is.
And keep in mind that prostitutes are not exclusively women, there are a lot of male prostitues.
It is no different in the sense that rape and assault (e.g. punching or kicking someone) are essentially similar physical acts. Nevertheless, we recognise that sex crimes are particularly heinous compared to other crimes. It isn't good or acceptable that people are threatened by others with starvation and homelessness if they cannot perform a given task and are therefore coerced into it; it is worse in a particular and special way if the thing they are forced into is sex.
>And keep in mind that prostitutes are not exclusively women, there are a lot of male prostitues.
I know, I have known some gay prostituted men during my time in the trade. The overwhelming majority of the sex trade is composed of prostituted women, even in places where it's highly legalised and regulated. It's a significantly more gendered industry than any other I can think of off the top of my head.
Correct and this is reflected by the fact that both are criminal acts. If the latter is particularly severe it might even carry a penalty even greater than rape. This example doesn't really do a good job making the case for why sex work harms participants or society as a whole, because unlike battery paying people who face starvation and homeless to do work is not only acceptable it's seen as totally normal. Save for people who have enough wealth live off for the rest of their lives, everyone is working to avoid homelessness and starvation.
And regarding your point that paid sex is not consent because they need money to afford necessities: the same can be said about pretty much any job. My plumber probably needs money to eat and pay rent, too. Paying someone who needs money to do a job is not something that society by and large consideration unethical.
For one, we are members of society and harm done to us en masse is harm done to society as a whole. For another, if you need some narrow conception of who gets impacted that excludes us, then generally prostituted woman have family or friends who are impacted by us being prostituted and our eventual death. For another, society misses out on the productive labour of a large number of women when instead of being able to pursue education or work to the extent we otherwise could, women are prostituted.
>And regarding your point that paid sex is not consent because they need money to afford necessities: the same can be said about pretty much any job. My plumber probably needs money to eat and pay rent, too. Paying someone who needs money to do a job is not something that society by and large consideration unethical.
Yes, and if you're unwilling to consider it unjust that people face starvation and homelessness for the crime of losing the unemployment lottery, we can argue about that, sure. But even someone who thinks that's fine for whatever reason should be able to see that similar coercion into sex acts is worse.
Also, how does participation in sex work impede the ability of women to pursue an education? How is someone doing sex work 20 hours a week any less able to get an education than someone working at Starbucks 20 hours a week? In fact, there are people who can afford education because of the profits from sex work so sex work also enables some people to obtain education.
And who says sex work is not productive? Sure, it doesn't produce tangible goods like manufacturing or mining. But the same criticism can be made of all entertainment industries. The fact that people are willing to pay for sex workers is undisputable evidence that theze services are in demand.
"Losing the employment lottery" as you put it, isn't an exception, it's the norm for the vast majority of people. The fact that people need to work to earn money to live isn't even remotely unique to sex workers. Nearly everyone is in this situation.
Nobody is coerced into sex, outside of sex trafficking which I don't think anyone in this comment section is advocating. If someone can make minimum wage in a retail or service job, but would rather have sex with people for vastly greater pay, why should society prevent that transaction?
I fail to see why sex work should be singled out from say factory work absent some religious based puritan narrative...
We regularly recognise sex crimes as especially heinous for well-understood reasons. Pleading ignorance is unconvincing. All work is coercive, but as a society we recognise that coercing someone into sex is especially heinous compared to coercing someone into filling out an Excel spreadsheet.
I guess this is the foundational issue then,because I do not agree with this premise
And that's OK.
Of course, you could make this point effectively just by explaining to the preceding commenter what an externality is, since the idea is fundamentally about the damage consenting counterparties can do to the surrounding community.
Think about the collective experience of humanity before them. If you were a prostitute and got pregnant, it wasn’t about you, it was about that child’s experience as a fatherless individual, being raised by a person that can hardly provide for herself. As well as, what a child raised in that environment, is more inclined to do to other people.
Now that has changed if only because the link between sex and children, in most minds, has been broken. In those where it hasn’t… that’s the natural area where restrictions on birth control and abortion come from.
The government in many avenues encourages and subsidizes fatherlessness in society in general, and the laws around prohibition were never contemplated, or even remotely idealized as an effort to combat the issue of fatherless homes.
That attitude towards prostitution closely correlates with those same societies considering women to be property. Anti-prostitution laws and the emancipation of women go hand-in-hand.
I remember influential church culture as more theist than feminist. Maybe I'm experiencing a Mandela Effect.
No, the people punished are usually the prostitutes.
Only takes a quick Google search to confirm
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_ancient_Rome