The harm from prostitution comes not from prostitution intrinsically, but doing it wrong. If you grab a knife by the blade, it will hurt you. That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the knife, it means you’re using it wrong. In the same way, there’s no reason why people can’t offer their services for money in almost any other type of field but not with sex. Are carpenters hurt because carpentry is illegal and hiring a carpenter is exploiting them? Is it illegal because there’s a black market of carpentry that exploits poor carpenters and carpentry pimps harming carpenters?
Prostitution should be legal and widely available, as easy as going into a brothel and picking out one that you like.
Moreover, there should be a minimum wage for sex; that way ugly women won’t get ripped off. (I’d be ok with a discount for fatties, though; I mean, who wants to pay for that?
No. Opponents of legalisation often make this claim, mainly on the basis of a large increase in reported trafficking cases in the Netherlands, but there are so many other possible explanations for that increase (eg, the extraordinarily broad Dutch definition of “trafficking”, very loose reporting criteria, the crackdown on non-EU sex workers) that it simply can’t be attributed to legalisation alone. Also, the Dutch “increase” hasn’t been replicated in all other countries that have legalised or decriminalised prostitution.
OTOH, the data don’t support the notion that these factors “vanish” with legalisation, either. And why would they: trafficking is a problem in a lot of legal industries, such as domestic work, agriculture and manufacturing. Legalisation would have the advantage of allowing trafficked persons to come forward without risking arrest on prostitution charges, but it doesn’t encourage them to come forward if they still risk deportation or simply don’t have any alternative ways to earn income. The legal status of prostitution is pretty much irrelevant as far as these issues go.
The evidence, from countries which have legalized prostitution is that when legalized, human trafficking increases. Why this is so is speculative but the great odds are a mix of the following:
When legal, the stigma over seeing a prostitute is reduced and so demand grows while as supply does not, unless you import women from elsewhere.
When demand grows, that demand samples the new, legal type of prostitution and the old, illegal type of prostitution. (I will explain how illegal prostitution can be available when prostitution has been legalized after this.) In the end, the market favors illegally operating prostitutes. They are cheaper, offer more, and are more readily available.
Now besides illegal aliens - which produces illegal prostitution even where prostitution is legal - there’s also the matter that most prostitution can’t be converted to legal. Once you add up all of the prostitutes who are underage, have an STD, are effectively the slave of a pimp (who is unlikely to file for a small business license), etc. a majority of prostitutes cannot be converted. Likely, the only ones who can are the ones who work for high-cost escort services and fancy brothels - which are already, effectively, legal since the police look the other way and the girls are carefully chosen and well-looked after.
I haven’t researched the results of criminalizing the johns instead of the women, so I can’t offer an opinion between the two, but between legal or illegal, all legalization seems to do is to expand the number of people falling prey to the downsides of illegal prostitution.
I believe the viewpoint is too zoomed in like it is with most of these types of questions. If you look at the concept behind the question and take the particular actors out of it (you can see what is called a principle), then you can arrive at the proper conclusion without emotion or personal involvement swaying your judgement.
Does the government have any authority to make illegal an exchange in which all parties are voluntary participants and no one else is getting harmed?
The fact that someone does’t like it has no bearing. Are they being harmed because I hire someone to massage my back? I don’t think so. Are they being harmed because I hire someone to massage my front? I don’t think so.
Saw a funny on pinterest this morning…
I found your nose.
It was in my business.
As we say in the South, you don’t have a dog in that fight. Legalese…you don’t have standing, I think. It goes back to the lost concept, that without a victim, there can be no crime.
So, to the OP:
Prostitution should be illegal because 2 people having sex for money is different from 2 people having sex for free because it somehow hurts you how, exactly? It doesn’t. Exactly!
It should be illegal because it is wrong to exploit people
that’s an argument for making pimping illegal. Not prostitution. The clients do not exploit the prostitutes, it’s a mutual beneficial arrangement; the pimps often do however.
It should be legal because the prohibition actually hurt the prostitutes
yes, that’s one of the reasons it should be legal. But not the most important.
It should be illegal to consume, but not provide, since that would give the prostitute more power and enable persecution of the exploiters
in fact experience from countries having tried this model has shown that the exploiters – i.e., the pimps - become more common and gain more power as the women that were previously independent are now forced to resort to this mode of business. The women in turn are stripped of independence and power over their own existence.
It should be legal because regulation is more effective in minimizing harm, and at least consumtion may be ethically defensible
it should be legal because the state has no business dictating what people do with their bodies.
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.
whatever meta expressions prostitution is the cause of is irrelevant. You should not make laws that interfere intimately with the lives of individuals because of some perceived harm to the society as a whole. And how the heck did homosexual men come into the picture? Is that because of male prostitutes? What about lesbians seeking prostitutes? And, come to think of it, women seeking male prostitutes in certain African and Caribbean countries is one of the fastest growing prostitution industries.
I think it may be a little more complicated than that.
Well, you can give away a kidney, or bone marrow…but in the United States, it’s illegal to sell those things. The fear is the potential exploitation of the poor for their body parts. So that’s a cute line, but not really the answer.
from Whynot:
This is my complaint with prostitution, that and the part about not wanting it on my street in my neighborhood. I don’t mind if a consenting adult wants to perform sex acts for a fee. But I don’t want to enable pimps or slavers.
So how do we currently keep drinking off the streets? It’s legal for an adult to drink, just not legal to do it on the streets. Actually, the same is true about urination. I suspect that this is why call girls are ignored…their business isn’t in public view.
It’s the coercion that I think is a problem. Isn’t slavery already illegal? Farm work and housecleaning aren’t illegal, just owning slaves to do that work. Couldn’t the same restriction apply to prostitution?
I guess my personal feeling about it is that the exchange of sex for money isn’t a public problem, but it’s very difficult to design legislation that will solve the problems of exploitation, coercion, disease, and nasty stuff in the streets. As other posters have noted, banning the whole thing but selectively prosecuting seems to be the best anybody has come up with. Regulation would work for me if it served the intended purpose, but it often doesn’t help much.
What do you think about unionizing the prostitutes?
Nice try, but just because the government overstepped it’s bounds regarding what I may do with my body parts, because they have assumed some sort of ownership ideas doesn’t mean you can use it to justify them overstepping their bounds in other areas.
The pimps and slavers exist already, so that is a wash. Repealing the prohibition of alcohol got it out of the bathtub and into a proper distillery, and so it could be with prostitution.
Keep it off the streets? Do you think Henrietta the Harlot sidling up to a car is the best business model for pedalling poontang? Wow!
What coercion? If you are talking about someone forcing someone else to perform a job that they don’t want to, there are laws covering that and if prostitution were legal, people could ask law enforcement to enforce them. As you point out, coercion is already illegal.
This is a “problem” that the free market could definately solve. Competition. It’s what’s for dinner.
Er, I think you are under the impression that I am totally in favor of keeping prostitution illegal. I’m not. I think that, if all parties are consenting, it’s a victimless “crime” and therefore nobody’s business. I’m only pointing out that laws to date have not always had the hoped-for effects of protecting women from abuse and keeping sexual activities off the streets.
Re: the body parts…are you suggesting that selling organs should be made legal? You don’t think that might lead to unpleasant consequences, like creating a market for body parts from unwilling or desperate donors?
How is it a “wash”? The idea is that these are bad people committing real crimes, as opposed to a woman having sex for money, which I believe was the subject of the OP’s question. If some brilliant legislation allowed the whores to practice their trade but busted the violent pimps/slavers, I’d be very happy about that. I don’t know what kind of law would be effective, though.
Er, I must not have expressed myself well. I thought that was the WORST POSSIBLE business model. But I do see it. Nice neighborhood I work in.
Coercion certainly is illegal. I don’t know if legalization of prostitution per se would free the vice squad to focus on sex slavery, but I’d like to see it. I have heard of women freed from these situation who go right back because they don’t know what else to do, so maybe someone can come up with some social programs too.
You think so? I don’t. The black market IS a free market. And those problems seem to persist.
Most of your objections are because of countries ‘doing it wrong’. As noted above, looking at trafficking is almost impossible, because the definition (here in Holland at least) is ridiculous. To get the right papers you have to jump through a number of bureaucratic hoops; which is kind of hard for a 19 year old from Romania that speaks a few words of English. If this would be more simple, you quickly reduce the need for pimps (which are often also boyfriends). Not all pimps are slave holders.
I’m always surprised by the std statements. Why you would think that professional girls would contract more illnesses than drunk coeds is beyond me.
I’m talking about the assumption prostitutes (and clients) actually have these diseases. as far as I know, this is exceedingly rare…just as it is rare that men contract anything from being with a prostitute.
I’m not suggesting anything of the sort! I am STATING that my body belongs to me and what I do with it is for me to decide. If it doesn’t belong to me, then to whom?
If there are slavers now and there will be slavers then, then whether prostitution is legalized doesn’t matter as regards this. I think it would go down if you’re talking about prostitutes getting grabbed cause it would get the gin making out of the bathtub and into a proper business.
I’m saying legalizing it WOULD get it off the street. They can’t go into a brothel now because …yeah
FOUL…Throw the flag.
To compare the people who engage in black market activities with legitimate business owners is uhhh, hmmm, something unfair, don’t you think?
Let’s see when alcohol was prohibited, drinking stuff supplied on the black market might kill you. Repeal prohibition and you hardly ever hear of anyone dying from a glass of glenlivet.
So, yes I do think competition would do wonders with the sex trade.
Wouldn’t it be easier for Americans participating in this thread to examine the pros and cons of legalized prostitution in Nevada, rather than far-flung points around the globe?
From what I hear everything about prostitution in Nevada is related to the fact it is illegal elsewhere. If prostitution would be legalized, you get a very different situation. Many more brothels, different services, girls coming into the US to work, prices will drop dramatically, etc. That’s why it might be better to look at other prosperous countries that have legalized prostitution. For instance Germany and Australia.
Could, but doesn’t. Prostitution is legal in a large enough number of nations that there’s no reason to rely on imagination to guess what would happen if legalized.
Other than that it hasn’t worked out that way. Women who were boxed up in a crate, shipped out of Russia, into the Netherlands, and now live locked up in an apartment building by the mafia, aren’t staying in their situation out of fear of the law.
Occasionally, the police are able to track down and free women who are in a bad circumstance, but given as in places like the Netherlands, 50-60% of prostitutes are women who were trafficked into the country, the evidence is that for the mafia, the risk of getting caught is outweighed by the amount of money they’re making. They’re making enough money to bribe the local officials, they can intimidate a sufficient number of the women, and they can disappear from the clutches of the law easily enough that overall, it simply hasn’t impacted their business.
In the US, I believe that the average payscale for a legal prostitute is something like $200 an hour. A woman who was trafficked in from Russia might be anywhere from 1/4th to 1/6th that price. At that disparity of price difference, patrons seem to have been able to manifest a blindspot that allows them to convince themselves that the girl is there willingly and merrily, ignoring all the scary looking former Soviet Union men who see them in the door.
The statistics are that countries who consider prostitution illegal have no sex trafficking, and the countries who consider it legal have an impressive amount of sex trafficking. The pool of native prostitutes is a constant under either style. And in either style, the majority of native prostitutes practice prostitution illegally, and are mistreated by the clients and/or by their pimps. Legalization doesn’t affect the ones who can turn legal significantly, nor does it affect the ones who can’t. Ultimately, you’re better off to make it illegal because that cuts out the sex trafficking, even if it doesn’t help anyone else.
Mr Rat, I wonder what your sources are, but from your post it doesn’t seem very credible. First of all hardly any Russian girls in the paysex scene in Western Europe, mostly girls from Bulgaria and Romania. I’m not even going to start about your ‘crates’. There have been multiple attempts (at least 4 I know of) to find traffickers here in the Netherlands, which usually means they close a red light district and take all the girls to city hall for interviews with interpreters and support groups. Thusfar they have found nothing; the only claim they make is that the girls have similar stories (which supposedly is an indication for pimps being involved); not one girl has said she was there against her will, nor has any girl made use of the possibilities to leave the profession.
There are definitely bad stories related to prostitution and many ‘guys’ getting rich by doing nothing, but you’re making a caricature.
The fact that the mafia kidnaps people and stashes them in an apartment to be sex slaves has no bearing on whether Hanna should be allowed to open Her Little House of Hookers.
I didn’t imply that they stayed there out of fear of the law, I said they could now go to the law without fear of going to jail for prostitution.
You are aguing that 2 consenting adults should not be allowed to do what they want because the mafia are bad people or that in places like the Netherlands, Inspectors don’t check for papers or license or a whole host of things to make sure that the employees are there willingly. I disagree.
No offense to the Netherlands, I simply don’t know one way or the other and am responding to the “facts” as they are presented here.
Let’s take, for example, slavery. As a consenting adult, I should be able to sell myself into slavery. However, that has been illegalized because the history of slavery has shown that in a statistically significant number of cases, the slave’s owner exceeds his bounds and commits crimes, regardless of all good intentions.
Ultimately, while there shouldn’t be any issue with slavery, indentured servitude, payday loans, etc. that’s all spoken from a philosophical standpoint where people are wise, honest, and have full understanding of the future of their choices. It’s like Communism, where everything works out perfectly on paper, if only people were caring, unselfish beings. The real world doesn’t allow everything to go along all that nice.
Besides the Netherlands, there is also Australia, Germany, Greece, Turkey, New Zealand, etc. I was never able to find reliable statistics on NZ, but otherwise every country that I have looked at had the same results. Even in the US, Nevada, but no other state, has seen sex trafficking.
There’s no particular reason for me to have chosen the Netherlands as my example. My words wouldn’t have changed if I had chosen Australia or Greece or anywhere else.
