I would like to come to a conclusion on prostitution

Great Debates
41

I wonder what you consider to be ‘traficking’; the definitions differ in different countries. The Dutch definition is broad enough that it includes ‘recruiting or transporting someone for prostitution in another country’. If you give a girl a ride from Belgium to the Netherlands and she turns out to be a prostitute, you fall under the definition.

I will agree with you that many working girls are either recruited (often by a sister/friend) or driven to a place to another country where they can work; usually both.

42

If you were talking about one country, sure. However, this is every country with legalized prostitution.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/its-time-to-get-serious-about-sex-trafficking-in-australia-20111012-1lkzi.html
http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/rights-so-divine/2012/jul/3/legalized-prostitution-australia-attracts-traffick/

43

What? No…seriously…what?

Chicago, Illinois: 3 charged, including brother and sister, with sex-trafficking

Houston, Texas: Last of 8 Defendants Pleads Guilty for Involvement in Local Sex-Trafficking Ring

Minnesota: ‘John’ charged with sex trafficking under new Minnesota law

Titusville, Florida: Pair Accused In Child Sex Trafficking Case

Hammond, Indiana: Two Hammond Men Sentenced in Sex Trafficking and Prostitution Case

New York: Two Hammond Men Sentenced in Sex Trafficking and Prostitution Case

New Jersey: 8 Charged in NJ Sex Trafficking Ring

New Mexico: Feds, strippers to talk sex trafficking in NM

Pennsylvania: Philadelphia Man Charged with Sex Trafficking of Children

Iowa, Nebraska, Arkansas: Nebraska, Iowa Included In Nationwide Sex Trafficking Ring

My mouse clicky hand is sore, so that’s where I’ll stop.

So I repeat…what?!

44

it belongs to you unless you sell it to someone else. Then it belongs to them.

When you buy yourself a slave, you get to do whatever you want with her. That’s the whole point of having a slave!

45

Sage Rat makes a lot of false assertions, but I’d just like to single out this one.

I mean - wow. I read a lot of anti-sex work propaganda, and I’ve never seen anyone make this claim before. Where on earth does it come from?

46

The problem is that Nevada isn’t a particularly good model of legal prostitution, and most of the “cons” are not down to legalisation itself but the particular model that Nevada follows.

But, if you’re interested in getting a little more insight into it, here is the blog of a longtime Nevada brothel worker.

47

…you realize that your cites are a load of rubbish, don’t you?

Did you just type sex trafficing prostitution into google and paste the results? Why don’t you explain, one by one, how each of those cites backs up your assertions?

48

I was once on a train trip and sat next to an older cop. He was a senior member of the force. I forget what his title was. But he was very highly placed in the police force. Like a Lieutenant or something.

We were sharing a kind of small space together and we were the only two people in that section of the train and so we had about an hour in which we could talk without being interrupted and without anyone hearing what we had to say.

So, I asked him about prostitution and what was so bad about it. I told him it seemed to me that it was a victimless crime. No one got hurt. Both people got what they wanted out of the exchange.

So, what was the harm?

To this day, I still believe there is a kind of “cop thinking” and that all police agree to believe in the same things when they join the force. There is never any debate or dissenting opinions. If one cop believes one way about an issue, you can be certain that all cops will express that same opinion - whether or not they really do believe that opinion.

So, I’m pretty sure that what he told me was the “party line” or call it “cop speak”. In other words, it was what any cop would have to say about it to anyone.

He began by rambling about how prostitution attracts some bad elements - such as drug dealers, people with AIDS, robbers and burglars, etc. He then made some of the standard points that most any cop will make if you ask them about prostitution.

In the end, he really didn’t say anything that made any sense to me. But I listened to what he had to say and thanked him for his time.

There is some truth in that people who become desperate because they are addicted to drugs can either turn to prostitution or turn to “pimping” in order to make money.

People who are desperate can resort to all kinds of illegal activities that will harm others including theft, extortion, etc. But they can engage in any number of activities. Why single out prostitution?

But, I still have never gotten a good answer what is wrong with prostitution if it is done in a safe and healthy kind of way? If a brothel is sanctioned by the state and health laws are enforced and regulated, what is the harm? It seems pretty obvious that it just flourishes - regardless of the law. So, why put people in jail about it? It doesn’t seem to make any sense to me.

49

I’m really shocked that no one made the distinction between selling and renting. Big difference.

And as far as getting to do “whatever you want” … that is just ridiculous. Most working women have some definite boundaries which almost always include:

. You cannot harm her. You cannot beat her or use any kind of object to hit her or whip her or harm her in any way unless it is a minor kind or pain and you discuss it with her beforehand and she agrees to it.

. You cannot kiss her on the lips. I’ve never understood exactly why this is so. I think it is just some distinction so that she can pretend to herself and others that something belongs to her and is private and you cannot touch it. I guess it is important for working women to believe that something is just out of bounds. It is simply not true that “anything goes”.

. Basically, you cannot do anything to her or get her to do anything to you with which she is not comfortable. You must discuss anything out of the ordinary before hand and it will only happen if she agrees (and you are willing to pay extra for it).

. You cannot do anything that puts her in fear or makes her feel uncomfortable and she will have no problem in telling you if something makes her feel uncomfortable.

So, in summary, there are lots of things you cannot do to her and you cannot have her do to you. It is not at all like owning or renting someone. If you think that just because you pay her for 30 or 60 minutes of her time that means that “anything goes”, you are very much mistaken. Almost “nothing goes” if it is out of the ordinary unless or until you discuss it with her first and you are willing to pay for it. You either pay her or it doesn’t happen. Seems only fair to me.

She may be a prostitute. But she is a still a human being and I have found that if you treat her like a human being, you can ensure that you will have a much better experience instead of acting as if you own her or you have rented her and anything goes.

Most assuredly, anything does **not **go.

50

You can’t sell yourself into slavery, so it is BS. Selling oneself into slavery has not been illegalized. Enslaving others has, but that is not the point your trying to twist out of all recognition. Enslaving someone is to take a person against their will. So, by definition, you can’t be willing to sell yourself into slavery. You could be an indentured servant, but that is different and not at all the same.

So, besides this error, I can’t see what it has to do with your arguement that prostitution should be illegal because you opine the mafia are bad people?

51

So which is it?

52

Well, read my cites and read his and see which seems more compelling.

53

Oh good! You’re back! Care to address how there all these states are arresting and convicting people for sex trafficking when there’s no sex trafficking in any US state except Nevada?

54

…compelling? Here is one example from your cites:

Sage Rat’s cite.

[sarcasm] Not only was legalized prostitution supposed to stop sexual violence against woman: it was also supposed to cure cancer!!! [/sarcasm]

Your cites are nonsense and do not support the proposition you put forward. In other threads over the years your cites have been painstakingly deconstructed as being biased and with poor research methods and inconsistent methodologies. Your blog ignores the realities of the free market and blames the “explosive growth” of prostitution on trafficking.

I just finished reading your blog post. Wow. Your conclusions are truly screwed up and not supported by the evidence. You conclude that legalizing prostitution in the United States would result in an explosive growth of trafficking Mexican illegal woman and children prostitutes? Do you actually want to attempt to defend your opinions here or should we just point and laugh at your cites from a distance?

55

There’s a difference between single, random occurrences around the nation and regular, organized criminal business.

That said, I’m always perfectly willing to believe that I’m wrong, or any one particular set of data is wrong. There’s always new research to find every time you go out onto Google, and I haven’t done any new research on this in a few years. Mind, I find it suspicious that the majority of prostitutes in countries which legalize prostitution are trafficked in, but let’s see if we can confirm whether Nevada has a statistically significantly higher rate of sex trafficking.

insert an hour or so of Googling here

I don’t think I can prove things one way or another. At the time I wrote the blog which I linked to, the only reference to sex trafficking of foreigners which I could find was the one, which specified Nevada as the primary target. How or why they came to that conclusion, I do not know. From what data is available today, something like 67% of cases in the US are of natural-born Americans, and half of the remaining were women who probably immigrated freely of their own. The Federal government’s definition of Sex Trafficking seems to amount to little more than a grandiose word for “pimping” as best I can tell (it’s not clear). And then they keep reporting their statistics for labor trafficking and sex trafficking together and not by state.

So as far as the US goes from a true, overarching statistical basis, I have no idea.

56

Disprove them, before you laugh at them. If you can find better statistics from better sources, I’ll gladly update my blog. If those statistics disprove the thesis, I’ll entirely rewrite the blog in favor of prostitution. I have no preference in terms of pro- or con-. I currently come down on the side of con- because good cite (eg. the FBI) or bad cite (some random magazine article or an anti-prostitution website), I’ve never seen any significant disparities between the numbers they give.

WhyNot actually posted data, even if it was in the format of a plural of anecdotes. Historically, I’ve never seen anyone come up with anything but assertions against anything I’ve found. I’ve never seen anyone show data that the majority of prostitutes in X nation are actually legally and willingly there. Perhaps I missed those. I don’t always have time to follow threads through, but I’ve honestly not seen it yet.

57

…make your argument here: not on your blog. The cites that you actually posted in this thread make assertions and do not contain data. Look at this cite you provided, for example:

I read that and thought: WTF?

From the article:

I went to the source report, and it says this:

There are no statistics here in your cite. Every year the trafficking report comes out and posts the same old allegations but never backs it up. How many Maori or Pacific Islanders are trafficked domestically to engage in street prostitution? Where are these gang controlled trafficking rings? The report is vague nonsense and is routinely dismissed as such every time it comes out over here.

So if you actually have cites that you think back up your argument: then post them here and make your case.

58

What exactly does “legally” have to do with it? Working illegally in the sex industry, or being a sex worker illegally present in a country (which are often but not inevitably identical things) doesn’t mean that a person isn’t willingly in prostitution.

As for “willingly”, it’s difficult to show that a majority of sex workers are anything given the general impossibility of obtaining a random sample. But there are studies from many countries which show that even those in the categories most vulnerable to coercion often consider themselves to have a good deal more agency than you attribute to them. Here are a few examples:

[ul]
University of Otago (NZ) Department of Public Health, “The Impact of the Prostitution Reform Act on the Health and Safety of Sex Workers” (2007): only 4.6% of street workers say they are staying in the sex industry because they are made to work by someone else. Less than a third say they are there because they don’t know what else to do (30.1%), can’t get help to leave (17.8%) or don’t know how to leave (24.4%). The answers most commonly given are money (98.3%), pay household expenses (90%), flexible working hours (87.4%) and pay for social life/outgoing/luxuries (72.4%). [/ul]

[ul]International Labour Organization, “The Demand Side of Human Trafficking in Asia: Empirical Findings” (2006): The majority of sex workers surveyed in five countries stated that they could leave sex work if they wanted to. These majorities ranged from 52% in Pakistan to 96.4% in Nepal. [/ul]

[ul]Dr Nick Mai, London Metropolitan University, “Migrant Workers in the [British] Sex Industry” (2011): Only around 6% of migrant female sex workers felt they had been deceived or coerced into sex work.
[/ul]

These are just a few examples. Now perhaps you could provide some research (not sensationalistic newspaper articles) showing that the majority in a country are actually forced?

59

Her cites, please. Analysis of claims about the Dutch trafficking rate here.

60

This sums up my opinion on the issue pretty well.