How society should hand’t prostitution is one of the issues I’ve been highly inconsistent on, flip-flopping between having strong opinions either way, to more ambivalent positions in the middle. A super-short summary of my process (chronologically) over the last two decades:
It should be illegal because it is wrong to exploit people
It should be legal because the prohibition actually hurt the prostitutes
It should be illegal to consume, but not provide, since that would give the prostitute more power and enable persecution of the exploiters
It should be legal because regulation is more effective in minimizing harm, and at least consumtion may be ethically defensible
It should be illegal because even though regulation helps some, it also increases the black market and causes more suffering as a whole, and is an expression of a structural opression of women and homosexual men in our society.
As you can see my positions have been more oriented towards pragmatism and results. I nowadays believe that “ideology” and “morality” is often immoral, since it often ignores actual results and is intellectually lazy. For me, true moral and ideological integrity needs to be congruent with reality. For me it would be an “easy way out” to just say that it’s about personal freedom, for me personal freedom does not trump everytning else and I have a more holonistic view.
My personal knowledge and experience of prostitution is limited to being propositioned once (I think I was, but I am not 100% sure), having a female acquaintance who would sometimes act as an escort, and walking around the red light district in Amsterdam. Since the main value in sex for me is the validation (Yeah! This woman wants to have sex with me, I’m awesome) prostitution doesn’t appeal to me (it would be like paying someone to compliment me), but I’m not completely judgemental, I think there are huge differences in degrees of immorality depending on the context.
Right now I’m no longer at phase 5 as described above, but rather in a “Gee, I really don’t know. On one hand… but on the other hand”. Help me out here.
I really don’t understand why it is illegal at all for much the same reasons that I don’t understand why drugs are illegal. I think George Carlin summarized the contradiction best with his question of why is it illegal to sell something that is perfectly legal to give away? Sure, I think prostitution is immoral, but I don’t think morality is a good enough reason to make something illegal because I believe laws should reflect rights not morals.
Yes, prostitution involves a lot of exploitation, but I think the exploitation is mostly from pimps and not so much from their clients. Further, by being illegal, it gives the prostitutes no legal recourse when they are exploited.
I have heard about some countries where it is legal and there’s some reasonable regulation. One I remember requires that prostitutes be licensed and tested for STDs on a regular basis. These are laws roughly equivalent to any number of other professions, but now it lets these women get protection from exploitation and provides a level of protection from disease or bad business practice to both the prostitutes and the clients. In this way, if a particular prostitute provides poor service or a client ends up being violent or whatever, these things can be addressed.
The thing is, like with drugs, making it illegal isn’t going to make it go away and I think forcing it into the black market is the worst way to handle it. Sure, by making it legal it probably means more people who wouldn’t otherwise either go into the business or consider using it might, but it is purely a moral judgment about whether or not it is a bad thing. At the very least we can ensure that those who are doing it legally aren’t being forced into it and aren’t spreading diseases.
What on earth is immoral about prostitution (other than arbitrarily defined morality)? What is exploitive about it that’s any different from other jobs? These are nonsense arguments based on preconceived, and baseless notions that prostitution is wrong in the first place.
It should be legal because the potential for abuse is not a good reason to ban things which are otherwise beneficial to society. Otherwise we’d have banned commercial banking!
I held the position that it should be legal until I read a study about prostitution in countries (Germany and Holland) where it had been legalised, and it showed that even though a white market was created, the black market actually grew. So even though some prostitutes’ situation was improved, the massive growth of the total market ment that it had a negative impact on the total well being.
Since I arrived at the previous conclusion based on my belief that it would lower the total amount of suffering, I had to abandoned it when it turned out to not be the case.
Why feign ignorance? Most peoples view on moral is arbitrary and based on religious beliefs. Even secularists like myself have moral qualms about prostitution, because we view it in a social and economic context, not in a vacuum. Calling arguments nonsense etc is not convincing unless you actually show it. The argument that it’s not different from any other jobs is unsustainable, all jobs were not created equal.
This seems like a mix of one ideological argument (potential abuse not being a reason) and a pragmatical one (that it is beneficial to society). I am not sure what the “cost/benefit” analysis is in this case, but if it could be proven that it is positive I would be convinced since I’m a pragmatist. But what evidence is there?
Heavy investments in; regulations and enforcement, designated areas, (either of towns, or approved sites), complete employee health benefits, heavy health code enforcement, (testing, sites, etc.), mental health and addiction services covered 100%.
It’s not going anywhere, but we could reshape it so as to best protect the damaged souls who seek employment there. In time, you could shift the social stigma and then perhaps, it would cease to be refuge for the damaged, I believe.
Although most prostitutes work more-or-less voluntarily, a significant number of prostitutes work involuntarily in some countries, including the U.S.A. Enslaving a woman to work as a prostitute is a very heinous crime, yet criminalising prostitution makes it harder to prosecute slavery – potential witnesses could themselves be charged with a crime.
Much police activity against prostitutes and johns has nothing to do with their morality or lack thereof, but is at the request of neighbors, who don’t like looking at streetwalkers or neon brothel signs. That’s why discreet escort services are seldom prosecuted, except in special political circumstances like the Eliot Spitzer affair.
I think it should be legalized because I’ve never heard a single argument *against *it that didn’t apply to “respectable” jobs like construction (“it’s physically dangerous!”) minimum wage jobs (“it’s exploiting people who think they don’t have any other choice in jobs!”) bartending (“it encourages men to spend time and money away from their wives!”) and/or nursing (“it’s icky!”).
It’s crystal clear to me that the outlawing of prostitution has strong roots in misogyny and misandry both. It’s an attempt to keep poor women in the gutter and to force men into serial monogamy. It’s how wretched hausfraus find someone else to blame for their unhappy marriages, and rather than fixing their relationships, legally ban the ones their husbands preferred.
Sexual slavery should absolutely be illegal, just like all slavery. It’s no more okay to force a person to have sex than it is to force a person to build an office building. But it’s no less okay, either. It’s the “slavery” part of the equation that’s the problem, not the “sexual” part.
But prostitution? I’m in favor of legalizing it, and without even very many regulations. Background checks, STD tests, age checks…yeah, that’s pretty much it. Any more than that reeks of infantalizing grown people based on nothing more than their choice of profession. Would I like them to get health/mental health benefits? Sure would. But I’d also like to see the counter workers at GameStop and McDonald’s get the same. Not to mention nurses.
It’s late. I’m tired, and probably didn’t phrase all this with my usual grace and delicacy. But there it is.
There isn’t really evidence of an overall expansion of the industry in places where sex work is legalised. But there can be an expansion of the illegal sector relative to the legal sector, where the latter is regulated in a way that restricts entry to it.
Example A. In the Netherlands, it’s almost impossible for non-EU citizens to work in the legal sector, so if they want to take advantage of the lucrative market for sex work they have no option but the black market.
Example B. In Victoria, Australia, there is a licensing system for brothels, but it is so onerous that it is actually easier for brothels to operate illegally. So many do.
Example C. In a number of places, one sex worker can operate alone from a premise but two together become a brothel, which either makes them subject to brothel licensing (e.g. Queensland, Australia) or means they are committing an offence of brothel-keeping (e.g. Britain/Ireland). Some sex workers aren’t willing to take the safety risk of working alone, and so work illegally.
None of these are consequences of making prostitution legal per se - they are simply examples of bad practices in legalisation, which encourage the growth of an illegal industry.
I’ve written before here about why mandatory testing is a bad idea, but I’ve since found this wonderful page from the World Health Organization which explains it much more succinctly. (The part about sex workers starts around three-quarters of the page down.) All of the major health organisations working in this area are opposed to these requirements, for reasons stated on that page.
Prostitution is illegal because prostitutes and their customers make lousy neighbors. There are other ways to force prostitution off the streets and out of respectable neighborhoods; some of these are used in some countries, others have been tried and abandoned, but none have the simplicity and political effortlessness of “punish it when you see it, ignore it when you don’t.” Concerns about the rights of prostitutes as economic actors, their well-being as citizens, or their vulnerability as women are mostly modern arguments for tinkering with the age-old priority: keeping the taxpayers happy.
I’ve been pro-legalization (with regulations) since I watched the American Intelligence Squared’s “It’s Wrong to Pay for Sex” debate and sided with the team arguing against the proposition (which, ironically, officially lost). If creating a white market actually somehow increased the black market, I’d probably have to be against legalization though, since I’d think we’d be causing a social ill so intensive (systematic sexual discrimination/exploitation) that we’d have no choice but to ban. Just my two cents.
By the way, I just wanted to commend the OP on his question. He’s obviously done some homework on this issue, but isn’t ideologically inclined and is hesitant to come to a conclusion because of pragmatic concerns on both sides. In a world of increasingly polarized and ideological political discourse which some of us get caught up in, it’s nice to see thoughtful open-minded inquiry.
Some of this sounds like the same problem with legalizing only some parts of the recreational drug market, if sales and consumption are legal but manufacturing isn’t well even a child could see that you’re still going to have illegal activity.
The other side of the coin though is absurd if you think about it, it is impossible for illegal aliens to work in ANY industry period full stop. Should we make landscaping illegal since a large amount of workers are illegal aliens?
Also note that the market may be somewhat skewed while it is illegal in most countries/regions, legal in some.
You’ll get buyers and sellers travelling to such areas, beyond what the licensing authority can handle, or finds acceptable. It’s not that surprising to me that in some cases the black market may flourish.
But at least it’s an objection to legalizing prostitution that actually warrants further discussion and investigation.
Literally the only problem I have with prostitution is that it opens up a terrible disease vector. I don’t think blanket legalization of prostitution is good. I think not only the prostitutes, but also potential clients (which is the part people miss) should need to have a relatively recent clean bill of health for STDs*. There should also probably be a bill that limits certain sexual acts – nothing like sodomy or banning BDSM, but the REALLY heavy out there stuff like blood drinking.
Again, there’s nothing wrong with prostitution, but there needs to be tight control in the interest of public health. Of course, this is also a good argument in favor of legalizing prostitution – letting the law control it helps control public health.
Maybe allow like-with-like, e.g. prostitutes with HIV can solicit only to others with HIV and vice versa.
Well, the easiest method is the method we already use for strip joints: place and time restrictions. If you can only do prostitution in licensed brothels in certain town districts you’re set.
You’re working from the wrong perspective. I suppose you could argue the default position would be “make it illegal” because it’s already illegal, but it shouldn’t be. In the absence of evidence, the default should be for it to be legal.
I have been pro-legalization, mostly because of human trafficking and sex slavery, which I assumed would vanish with legalization and regulation. Does the data support the niotion that legalization wotsens the situation with respect to these factors? If it only increases the amount of consensual black markety activity but reduces the incidence of human trafficking and sex slavery, then it doesn’t bother me.
