These are “victimless crimes” only under a highly individualistic mindset that doesn’t consider that bystanders and society as a whole can be harmed by conduct between consenting adults.
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
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.
And that's OK.