No, the point is that your response to forced prostitution is to nitpick the messenger on whether it is worse than murder. That you found getting into a pissing match with the OP to be a better use of your time implies you don’t think this thing is important. Combined with the claim that it’s not worse than murder, you come across as belittling the topic.
Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way: Ugh. It’s too tragic for me to get worked up about it. It just makes me feel numb. It’s so messed up that I can’t process it. It may or may not be worse than murder, but I know I can process tragic death (although I’ve never known anyone and later found out they were murdered.) The only thing I can think to do is support the missions that are trying to stop it. I wish I could remember the names of the missionaries that came to church about this subject a while back. They were essentially buying these women out and putting them in special homes.
A news story can be factual yet sensationalized in its presentation. Content vs. style. E.g. New York Post, Nancy Grace, etc.
Unfortunately, yes this form of trafficking does happen, if perhaps not as much as sometimes feared, still more than was normally assumed (“oh, this is America, this does not happen here… maybe some druggies who made bad choices…”). Addressing it does run into a whole lot of issues of public perception and of effective utilization of resources of both the Law Enforcement/Criminal Justice side AND the Social Support side.
With the issue of prostitution, when you look at it closely it often looks like many people actually want not so much that the problem be solved, but merely that it go away from where it affects them. People will easily say “clean up the streets!” at the same time as “but don’t you dare spend my tax dollars to give aid to some ho’s!”.
The focus, IMO, should be in that ***if *the society has seen fit to discourage prostitution, then the strongest enforcement effort should be against the pimps. But many fine upstanding citizens just don’t want to see the girl at the street corner and don’t care what happened to get her there or what happens once she’s gone, as long as she’s gone.
I just used Google, entering this into the search window
site:straightdope.com sex trafficking (2010 OR 2011)
to locate some of the recent threads. But my Search skills are poor, and the above may well miss the interesting threads. Of course you can also find “blame the victim” messages in prostitution/rape threads that don’t have the word “trafficking.”
Thank you very much, BigT. You produced the sort of calm, clear explanation I would hope to be able to write.
(But at a minimum, I’d need first to count to 1000 and take dosages of Valium and Atenolol. :smack: )
Oh, please. What’s the point of these kinds of threads? What kind of responses was the OP looking for?
“Yes, I agree, I am very much against sex trafficking too!”
What is there to say? Why post a thread about this in the Pit? If you care about sex trafficking, then write a thoughtful argument that the government needs to do more. This OP is three sentences and a link to an article.
Why the fuck is this thread even in the Pit at all? I don’t see a pitting.
I’m not sure why you want us to do the work for you. You accuse people of denying statistics, and you accuse them of making jokes. You’ve been around the dope for at least a couple of years: can you show me a single topic that hasn’t been the subject of humour? We’ve had 9/11 jokes, we’ve had Bin Laden jokes, we’ve had rape jokes and dead baby jokes. What is so special about the topic that you are particularly interested in that you have to pit people who make jokes? Especially considering you are too lazy to link to any examples and expect others to do your work for you?
Was this one of the jokes you are talking about?
Because in a thread titled “Is the sex trafficking increase during the Super Bowl an urban myth?” I’m sure that a good many dopers would find that funny. Was that the joke that so offended you that you started this pit thread?
As for arguments about statistics: are you meaning this?
It is perfectly reasonable for people to question these statistics. They are just words in a newspaper article. They are out of context. We don’t know what “filter” ABC applied to the statistics before publishing. I sure trust the FBI, and if you could provide statistics that verify the accuracy of the these figures sourced by the FBI I would have no problem with them. However your link was to a sensationalized article written five years ago written by an uncredited author. Others tried to verify the statistics but couldn’t. Can you?
So you finish your thinly worded OP with this:
Are you talking about pimping, prostitution, or sex trafficking? Which police departments in particular do you not believe are putting a high enough priority on sex trafficking?
Who are you actually pitting here? Do you think that there is anyone here on the dope who thinks that illegal sex trafficking is good?
I don’t think that it does, actually. As I said, no evidence is given that countries with legalized prostitution are “magnets” for trafficking. What does that even mean? Is trafficking more prevalent in the Netherlands than the US? How about Turkey? Doesn’t it seem odd that the article only makes this vague, unsupported assertion?
As the article makes clear, what the pimps were doing was not distinguishable from human trafficking. There’s really no other way to describe it.
Banquet Bear: Really… as much as I may agree with the substance on the need to combat trafficking (and yes, clearly this was trafficking at its worst, as described in the article), septimus’ tone seems to come across as “I DARE anyone here to disagree in any way!!” at times.
The men who frequent the girls will rationalize and will never think beyond their own carnal desires. The posters in the previous threads are exactly the same as the johns in following quote:
The entire article is far more common than most people would like to believe. Even among the adult prostitutes, many started working in this sort of circumstance, and now because of addictions feel they have no other way to survive. Without these pimps turning out little teen girls, I doubt there would be even a miniscule fraction of women in that life as adults.
Before making prostitution legal, there needs to be laws to clean up the existing industry and help the girls and women in the sex trade.
Because so many girls, even those who are adults are willingly work pimp free as escorts, began this life as slaves - I think the pimps should be punished using the greatest extent of the law. Treat them like the slavers they are, seize assets, and throw them in jail for as long as the law can for every charge against them.
Secondly, get rid of the customer side. I think prosecution of the johns who use underage prostitutes should be as harsh as one would get for raping a child. Without harsh punishment for the johns there is no disincentive against purchasing a girl. And without clients, there would be less girls forced into that life.
Thirdly, treat the girls as victims, not criminals. Safe havens and therapy should be the first priority, not arresting the girls. Instead of shaming, arresting and punishing the women, the goal should be healing them and getting them on a path to a normal life. Addition treatment and PTSD treatment, and recovery from Stockholm syndrome along with bringing pride and self ownership back to these women should be the first priority. We need to create the resources for these girls to escape and recover.
Once the resources are in place to eliminate sex trafficking, then and only then could the sex trade be made legal.
…Calculon claim was that “The available data shows that countries that have liberal prostitution laws are magnets for human trafficking.”
Now: how exactly does the paragraph you quoted support that? Thats right, it absolutely doesn’t. Not even close. It talks about the bizarre situation in Sweden where it is legal for prostitutes to offer their services but illegal to purchase them. This is not even close to an example of “liberal prostitution laws” as it is illegal for half of the participants to participate!
From the article:
The decrease of prostitution by 50% has absolutely nothing to do with trafficking. And not everyone considers the purchase of sex to be a human rights abuse. It really is one of the more ridiculous sentences I believe I have ever read!
I’ve had a look through some of those “studies” before, and the claims made do not match up to what the studies actually says. How about you provide some evidence that legalized prostitution laws are directly related to international sex-slave drivers and organised crime?
Thanks for offering your interpretation: but I really want to hear from septimus, who really seems confused as to what they are pitting.
I can imagine situations in which I would judge a killing to be legally murder and yet mitigated by circumstances. I can imagine no such situation for rape by force, drug, duress, or intimidation.
I’m a “he”, not a “they.” The title of this thread is self-explanatory. The OP in its (brief) entirety doesn’t pit SDMB posters specifically, although it does mention (correctly) that jokes and denials were present in previous threads.
Two meta-comments:
(1) I start certain threads in BBQ Pit even though a different forum might seem appropriate, because the nature of some topics makes it seem advisable to allow posters full opportunity to express their anger.
(2) It appears that at least one participant in this thread had no interest in the topic, and nothing to contribute to the topic, but posted solely to express displeasure at my tone. I can understand that; I know my tone can be annoying; I even may have “anger management issues.”
I myself find the tones of some Dopers objectionable. But I don’t think I’ve ever entered a thread solely to point that out! I’m interested in the topics discussed in these forums, not in the personalities of Dopers.
…Which posters are you talking about? I’m not quite sure I understand this passive aggressive approach to pit threads. And I wish people would stop citing the article as if the statistics quoted in it mean anything because they appear to be cherry picked and out of context. I would love to see the original study that shows that “75 to 80 percent of prostitutes” don’t act of their own free will.
…and the “denials” were really requests for further information because the data in the cite seemed incredible and were poorly sourced, and the jokes, in context, were funny if you have a sense of humor.
Ummm, thats nice.
Are you talking about pimping, prostitution, or sex trafficking? Which police departments in particular do you not believe are putting a high enough priority on sex trafficking?
I’m glad it was nice. The line between pimping and trafficking is blurred.
I’m not an expert on law enforcement. As an ordinary citizen, I might say “malaria vaccine should be a higher priority” without giving specific research advice. Or say “Bush should have tried harder to nab Osama” without specifying whether Seal Team Six was a better option than Seal Team Five.
The data on the positive impact of anti-prostitution laws is there if you simply care to look for it. Unfortunately too many people rely on “Pretty Woman” as their guide to prostitution rather then actual studies in the area.
For instance, this 2003 study (PDF) comparing the experience of Melbourne Australia, Amsterdam (legal brothels), Ireland (regulation) and Sweden (criminalisation of buying sex) shows many of the failures of the legalisation route. What the study found was that legalising brothels increased both the number of street prostitutes (that were still illegal) and also brothels. Also, due to lack of resources to regualte the brothels many were still had no licences and were operating in illegal fashions. This of course leads to lots of abuse of the prostitutes themselves. The connection between prostitution and organised crime in these countries, if anything, seemed to be strengthened as criminals were still operating brothels through front people/organisations. The stigma against prostitutes also remains in countries with legalised prostitution, and so many prostitutes actively opposed registration. It is also very difficult for girls in prostitution to leave that lifestyle.
In comparison in Sweden the purchase of sex is criminalised while services are offered to the prostitutes themselves to leave prostitution. This has been effective in vastly reducing the amount of illegal street prostitution in Sweden compared to other European countries, as well as resulting in much better outcomes overall for the prostitutes themselves.
The study also notes that the laws regarding prostitution have a huge impact on human trafficking. The study mentions that while about 200-500 people anually were trafficked into Sweden per year, that is compared to about 17,000 per year into neighbouring Finland. Clearly in Sweden the reduced scale of the sex industry leads to fewer women being trafficked into prositution. It is also worth noting that in Amsterdam only about 1/3rd of the prostitutes there are Dutch nationals. The majority are from overseas, especially Eastern Block countries. While concrete numbers on the extent of human trafficking are hard to come by, in 2009 in the Netherlands, 909 people, the majority women forced into the sex industry, were reported as human trafficking victims. Obviously the actual number trafficked that go undetected will be much more than that. The amount of human trafficking in the Netherlands is a growing problem with more people every year being registered as victims.
The failure of the policy of legalisation can also be seen in the Netherlands experience. The Netherlands for so long was the international poster-boy for legalised prostitution. However in recent years the govenerment has been mving towards having less tolerance and slowly re-criminalising prostitution. Their experience shows that de-criminalisation does not bring the promised benefits, and in many metrics simply makes the problem worse. Legalisation has not really helped to protect the prostitutes themselves, nor has it deterred human traffickers. The approach that has been shown to work in Sweden is the criminalisation of buying sex, coupled with efforts to assist the prostitutes themselves to leave prostitution and giving them the tools to do so. That approach is now being implemented in other coutries because it has been shown to work, while even the Netherlands is loosing faith in it’s own approach of de-criminalisation.
Do you have any stats of your own that contradict this? How do you know that the number has been cherry picked out of context? Without any competing data I see no reason why I should take your word that the stats are unreliable.