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Comment by shutupalready | Hacker News Reader

> Over last 10 years, the sex workers in this area have reduced.

Hardly anyone wants to ask if that is an overall benefit to society?

The sex ratio for India is 108 men per 100 women [1]. For those under 15, the ratio is 113:100, so the problem is set to get much worse in the near future.

If India (pop. 1.2 billion) were to have maximal monogamous relationships and no sex workers, you'd have 577 million happy couples, and 46 million men left over who have no chance of any sexual intimacy.

EDIT: Condoms, contraception, and safe sex are obviously good things. My comment is whether eliminating sex work should be the goal. If that's the goal, then please answer the following question: Should men who don't have or can't find a normal relationship be forever denied occasional intimacy?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio

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The ratio is actually far worse! A lot of 'adjustments' go on during census times. The net ratio is close to (<850 women) per (1000 men). You are right in pointing out that its going to get a way more worse very soon.

The main reason for that is dowry and extremely bad treatment meted to women in India. Most people prefer to not have girls at all given these scenarios. Imagine having to spend money on your daughters education, tending to physical safety and then only to find the boy's family asking for big money gifts during marriage. And not just that, in most common cases the demand for gifts just keep coming infinitely even after marriage. The demands are insane of course- Asking for large quantities of gold, real estate, or just plain hard cash, cars combined with a demand for lavishly marriage party are a common place here in India.

Some people have absolutely no shame and sense of self esteem and resolve themselves to this kind of begging to get money. This includes people from all over India, regardless of caste, religion, color, regional, linguistic belongings.

This whole thing promotes a culture for a madness to have male children.

I am assuming marriage among people of same gender especially men is going to be a common place in India only a couple of decades from now.

>> Should men who don't have or can't find a normal relationship

Such men should actively work towards a society that doesn't kill girls before birth and after wards. If they can't may be they should suffer and live in the society they built.

> The net ratio is close to (<850 women) per (1000 men)...Most people prefer to not have girls at all given these scenarios. Imagine having to spend money on your daughters education, tending to physical safety and then only to find the boy's family asking for big money gifts during marriage.

With a shortage of women, shouldn't the groom's parents be paying instead?

Having the ability to kill somebody before they were born is a recent medical advancement. Before that you had to simply accept what ever was born to you.

Dowry system has been going on India since ancient times. The system works like this. By and large Indian society still works in a system where your parents choose your spouse. So when a boy is of marriageable age, their parents go a matchmaker- and put forward their clauses. There are some typical things they look in a girl, The girl must be fair, beautiful, not taller than the boy, shy, and obedient. She must not be too intelligent, or bold or sometimes not working or well educated.

Apart from these behavior and cosmetic demands. They also put down financial clauses- Generally the demand is in gold, or real estate. Or a car, Or just hard cash. The demands for gifts never really ceases. Women are harassed, many women set themselves on fire unable to bear the torture and harassment. Dowry deaths are common and you will often hear of them in the news papers. In many cases women commit suicide, or worse there are cases where the mother in law burns the girl alive. As much as shocking to you all this may seem, it happens all the time here.

This has been happening since a long time. There are trends of these demands. If the boy is a doctor/Civil Servant the money demanded is highest, engineers/rich business men come next and so on... And this is so common, if you have to marry off your daughter you have to often pay up!

So you need to undo that much of cultural thing. I don't think it will go away anytime soon.

I guess the laws of supply and demand do not apply when ancient traditions are involved.

They do apply, just because there's fewer women than men doesn't mean they're on the supply side.

In traditional Indian culture daughters are seen as a deprecating asset that their parents want to get rid of.

Presumably the bribes dished out to get rid of them are less than their upkeep would cost if they weren't married off, with some added cost to account for the social stigma of having an unmarried single daughter.

Logically you would think this may help women but .. Let me explain. I come from a part of India which supposedly experienced bad sex ratio in 1920s-40s. I learnt from my parents and Grand Parents that the greedy parents of Women were 'selling' their daughters for higher money to older widowers. Also women were bought from other states. These were captured well in Telugu Drama 'KanyaSulkam' as an effort to get rid of evil. Apparently changes in sex-ratios don't result in correction of power balance.

> Imagine having to spend money on your daughters education, tending to physical safety and then only to find the boy's family asking for big money gifts during marriage. And not just that, in most common cases the demand for gifts just keep coming infinitely even after marriage.

Why? Why would the bride's family give these gifts? What basis is there for these demands?

Tradition and culture perhaps, but if the situation is so screwed up, then maybe it's time to abandon or fix those traditions. Spend money on education and teach her independence, and if she wants to marry out of love, she can do so without any dowry.

Its largely cultural, and unfortunately I can never give you a complete context behind these issues. Being a parent of a girl child is difficult in India. Right from birth you will face constant discrimination, every single part of the society will make all attempts to keep your child the weaker gender.

These days its still a lot better. A few decades back, the society would have big problems with as simple a thing like teaching a girl how to read/write. Then came the society's opposition towards women working. That's how backward these people are.

If only there were meat market options...

If there were, the suppliers might realize the coming supply shortage and "ramp up production".

That's a rather controversial comment you're making here.

I'd rather see a man deprived of sexual intimacy than a woman constrained to prostitution for lack of better opportunity.

The first fate seems largely less cruel than the latter.

> That's a rather controversial comment you're making here.

Yes, indeed it is. My comment is so politically incorrect that I dare not make it in real life. Yet I suspect that plenty of people (though probably not the majority) would agree, but can't speak out about it.

The question is what proportion of sex workers truly, voluntarily, entered that profession (i.e. had viable access to alternatives, and chose not to pursue it).

It's a lot less then 100%.

Is there a profession where answer is 100%?

There aren't that many professions where we ask you to trade an intimate act involving your own body.

Maybe the military, but you know, conscription is also kind of a big deal for that reason.

Any professional sport also comes to mind. Especially full contacts. But there the risk reward ratio seems to be greater.

"politically incorrect" is one way to describe your apparent belief that men are owed sex slaves, yes.

That's not controversial.

At least to me as an India, that's what is happening here all over the place.

There is one more theory going around. Soon same gender marriages among men are going to be common here.

Here is another theory argued by some sociologists, which is even worse: Lack of women is a volatile situation and ripe for crime, war and violence.

Both China and India have large gender imbalances -- and with a border conflict... :-(

"May you live in an interesting time" was a Chinese curse, I think?

There are already many villages in northern India where there are gangs of unmarried men simply sitting there without marriage. Most are uneducated, and have no skills to secure any employment.

Gender related crimes against women already very common in India. I believe they will intensify in the future.

Either way with <850F:1000M gender ratio, for India's population scale there will states full of unmarried men. I believe though crime will be a common place, it won't be possible for all men to indulge in crimes(Which will be a civil war situation at the scale we are talking about).

Either way a lot of men will have to marry men.

You say "have to marry men" like it's a choice to be attracted to the same sex.

IMO it will result in a lot of angry and depressed single men who resent society. If you put someone into a corner without many options they can become desperate and violent. This imbalance in India and China will become very dangerous in the coming years

> You say "have to marry men" like it's a choice to be attracted to the same sex.

Attraction is generally not a choice (there's probably some things you can do deliberately over time to shift it a little bit, but...). Marriage, OTOH, is a choice, and its a choice that historically is motivated by many things, with attraction quite often not being a main factor.

The real problem with "have to marry men" isn't that attraction isn't a choice (as marriage and attraction are not the same thing) but that marriage is not mandatory.

So, not having prostitution, will create opportunity?

I don't have facts and figures in front of me right now, but it is thought that the majority of sex workers in poor areas are either forced or coerced into it, up to and including human trafficking, and they start young, perhaps preteens, we aren't talking about high priced call girls here.

Having a well regulated but legal sex industry can be beneficial to society but in absence of such laws most women in this industry are forced into it. Most of the girls there are sold to pimps by their own close relatives. The Pimps then treat them as good as slaves.

The highest amount of recruitment comes from the children of these sex workers. NGOs in these areas mostly focus on health and well being of these children. Thus giving them far better options than working as sex workers.

I talked with several NGO people working in this area and they were clear "we are no here to persuade these woman to take another profession."

India needs to enforce the laws against selective abortion.

Your numbers ignore homosexuality, but I don't know if that'd make any difference.

We aren't talking about independent escorts here. Here's the link for one infamous redlight area.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonagachi

>5.17% of the 13,000 prostitutes in Sonagachi are estimated to be HIV positive

>According to some sources, prostitutes from Sonagachi who test HIV positive are not told about the results, and live with the disease without knowing about it "because the DMSC is worried that HIV positive women will be ostracized."[5] Some prostitutes in Sonagachi have stated that "the clients, at least three quarters of them" refuse to use condoms and "if we force them to use the condom, they will just go next door. There are so many women working here, and in the end, everyone is prepared to work without protection for fear of losing trade.”[5]

Weaning them off prostitution is a net positive.

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