Indeed it is generally known as rape. In the case of prostitution, it isn’t.
Which should have made it clear that I wasn’t talking about rape, since in the case of rape nothing prevents anyone from going the whips-and-chains-and-soldering-irons route in Amsterdam or any other place.
Yes, because I was never talking about rape.
I was never talking about rape, and I’m not sure why you brought it up in the first place.
Yes they are, when what you want is not ordinary BDSM but actual sadism. Someone who likes being treated like that will not satisfy a sadist.
I’ve never claimed that I can stop prostitution from existing, but Swedish prostitution laws have reduced prostitution. Since, partly because of the above, I consider prostitution to be a bad thing, I think reducing it is a good thing. That’s what I’m getting at.
Yes, but having sex with somebody who doesn’t want to have sex with you but will do so for money is not rape, at least not in the legal sense. Can we now please ban the word “rape” from this thread? I don’t know what it was doing in here in the first place.
Rape is non-consensual sex, not sex with someone you usually wouldn’t have sex with. I’ve had sex with a number of people I wasn’t attracted to, but it wasn’t rape because I decided to do it.
It is perfectly possible to rape a prostitute, by performing a sexual act on them to which they have not consented; when you pay for a prostitute you are not paying for carte blanche.
I brought it up since what you described as the problem with prostituition sounded a lot like rape to me, so I figured it was probably covered by rape laws.
And, if rape is in fact legal in Amsterdam when the victim is a prostitute (and I am very much unconvinced) then that is a very big problem; it is, however, a problem that is entirely unrelated to the legality of prostituition. There is nothing inherent about legal prostituition that requires legal rape of prostitutes.
Addendum re post 63: Unless, of course, you think that agreeing to having sex in exchange for money is the same as being raped, which is pretty bizarre. And patronizing.
If you say so. But if this “real” sadist is so unable or unwilling to make do with a willing partner, then their next course of action, if denied access to prostitutes, will surely be to simply rape someone. I’m not seeing the improvement.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. What do the prostitutes that leave the business give as their reason for leaving it? “Wow, now with the change of law, the reason I became a prostitute in the first place is magically gone! Thank you, riksdagen!”, maybe?
Actually, you think prostituition is bad because you believe the problems related to prostituition are inherent to prostituition rather than a product of the legal and social status of prostituition. Something I remain not at all convinced of.
An anecdote regarding men paying to have a “chat” with Amsterdam’s prostitutes:
My boyfriend was taken to Amsterdam for his 21st birthday (he’s a Londoner). During the course of the evening, much drink was drunk and space cakes were eaten. Reasoning that they had best make use of Amsterdam’s tourist attractions, my BF’s older brother and mates decide to chip in to hire him a prostitute.
Ignoring my BF’s protests, they bundle him into a little stall with a wad of cash. He finds himself sequestered with a middle-aged prostitute, who promptly begins to strip down. Now my BF being a massive fag and all, he was at something of a loss for words. Finding his tongue, he stammered out that she could put her clothes back on. He then sat on the bed, carefully explained that he didn’t want to have sex but that they could remain in the cubicle for the requisite 30 minutes.
So my dear beloved sat on a prostitute’s bed and chatted away for half an hour about… the euro.
When he emerged, his friends and brother cheered madly and demanded to know all the details. He truthfully told them he didn’t get his rocks off, but of course they didn’t believe him.
They did when he came out as a gay men, three weeks later. (Everyone was very accepting and happy for him, but some demanded their money back.)
If parenthood causes one’s capacity for reason to be replaced with knee-jerk emotional reactions, then I hope I never suffer such a fate.
I dunno, how would you feel about an after work conversation in which your SO described the pools of vomit and used tampons she cleaned out of the changing rooms at Nordstrom, or the bloody organs she cut up while performing surgery, and then offered to cook dinner? Plenty of jobs are gross; that doesn’t mean anything’s wrong with them.
I find the reason some people offer for the prohibition of prostitution to be utterly patronizing. ‘Will somebody think of the women?’ Well, what if a woman **wants **to do that. I agree that in the present circumstances and at this point in time our culture doesn’t exactly consider prostitution as ‘just another job’, but a woman should be free to do with her body what she pleases without government intervention. I am more concerned about protecting a woman, giving them enough chances in life that prostitution can actually be a choice, each and every time.
I can accept goverment intervention insofar as for these women having sex is their source of income, subject to taxes, but our morals should not be inflicted upon others. After all, apparently it is the quantity of men that we find objectionable, nobody is after all the women that marry a rich creep.
FTR, here prostitution is legal (Dom. Rep.), pimping is not.
My concern is that availability of prostitutes will inflame rather than retard those desires.
Of course not, and please keep the debate off this level. It should be pretty obvious that if the laws have reduced the number of prostitutes, it’s because they have reduced the number of customers.
I’ll grant you that the reason may lie elsewhere, and some observers ascribe at least some of the effect to a heroin drought.
Incorrect. What have I said that you have interpreted so?
My concern is that measures to reduce or eliminate prostituition will achieve nothing other than making the situation worse, and furthermore that such measures will make the real solution - changing the legal and social status of prostitution - that much more difficult.
It seems to me that any reduction among customers is going to be among the more casual customers - in other words, not the ones you’re concerned about.
Sorry if I made an erronous assumption. It just seemed a logical conclusion from the fact that you want to deal with the problems of prostitution by attacking prostituition itself. If you don’t think prostitution is the root of the problem, that seems like a pretty backwards way of going about it, sort of like a slightly less stupid version of trying to deal with AIDS by eliminating homosexuality.
MG:Well, what if a woman wants to do that. […] a woman should be free to do with her body what she pleases without government intervention.
Technically speaking, of course, she can anyway. In a country which doesn’t criminalize fornication, a woman (or a man) is at liberty to have sex with anyone she wants to, and they are at liberty to give her gifts in token of their appreciation. If she specifies the quid pro quo in advance, there’s nothing wrong with that.
What she’s not allowed to do is use the (partly government-supported) system of public commerce to help her have more sex and get more gifts. No public solicitation, no advertising, no formal employment or salary or benefits, no commercial transactions.
I’m not arguing against legalized prostitution, but I think it needs to be clear that what we’re talking about here is not a sexual freedom, but a commercial one. This isn’t about “doing whatever you like with your body”, this is about doing whatever you like with your money.
I’m quite opposed to any government regulation of adult consensual sex because I think it’s covered by a fundamental right to privacy. But I don’t think that argument holds when it comes to government regulation of commerce. Commerce is at least partly a public activity and the government has a legitimate claim to regulate it to some extent.
There may still be good arguments for legalizing prostitution, but appealing to a basic right of sexual freedom IMO isn’t one of them. The government does have a constitutionally permitted role in regulating commercial activity, and that regulatory role doesn’t automatically disappear just because the commercial activity in question has something to do with sex.
Well, and what inherent quality does prostitution possess that makes it different than any other activity in which a person peforms a job for money? Apart from the ‘moral’ aspect?
As I say, the only government involvement I am willing to accept is that of regulating the ‘commercial activity’ per se. Just as I would expect they tax models, maids, masseuses.
Well, and what inherent quality does prostitution possess that makes it different than any other activity in which a person peforms a job for money? Apart from the ‘moral’ aspect?
As I say, the only government involvement I am willing to accept is that of regulating the ‘commercial activity’ per se and guaranteeing that all participants do so in a safe, controlled (as much as possible) enviroment. Just as I would expect they tax models, maids, masseuses, and just as I expect they protect models, maids and masseuses.
MG: *As I say, the only government involvement I am willing to accept is that of regulating the ‘commercial activity’ per se and guaranteeing that all participants do so in a safe, controlled (as much as possible) enviroment. *
I see what you’re saying, but I don’t think such an absolutist position is ever going to get significant popular support. It’s pretty drastic to suggest that the government has to let you make a business out of any activity that’s not in itself prohibited.
I can think of a couple other examples that would probably get a lot of opposition:
Marriage. Yes, the government has to let you marry any single, unrelated adult of the opposite sex you want to (if you pass your blood tests and all). Now, suppose you have a potential customer base of such people who, for whatever weird reason, want to be legally married for a short time and are willing to pay big bucks for it. Is the government obligated to let you make a business out of marrying (and subsequently divorcing) them?
Organ donation. People are allowed to donate kidneys, etc., from their living bodies or from the corpses of loved ones to patients who need them. But (in the US, at least) you are not allowed to sell them. Is the government obligated to let you sell organs?
Sex, marriage, organ donation: all of these are activities that government permits or promotes in acertain way and to a certain extent, because of certain social purposes or private rights that are not commercial. I’m not convinced that the government is therefore required to permit all such activities to be commercialized.
And I am not saying they are. But the two examples that you have given don’t apply. In the case of marriage for money one has to see that there is no intent to defraud either the government or anybody else with this. With the kidney example, I think there is a ‘medical’ reason why this is not permitted, aside with the potential for abuse should purchasing organs become legal. As it is prostitution is already here, it has been and it will be, not exactly the case with ‘Wife R Us’ and ‘Organ Mart’.
I’ve been more than a bit confused about some of the praise being heaped on Sweden’s law. It is not an innovation, brilliant or otherwise - soliciting prostitutes for sex is illegal in a whole mess of places, including the US.
It claims there has been a great reduction in one type of crime - trafficking in women. That is most likely true, as basic economics would dictate - by increasing the potential cost of soliciting sex from a prostitute, you less demand. Less demand equals less prostitutes, both of the legal and the trafficked variety. The unanswered question is, what percentage of Swedish prostitutes were of the trafficked variety?
The second problem with the Swedish law is that you can’t regulate that which is illegal. Sweden now cannot impose rules regarding payment, behavior and/or hygiene on prostitution.
Besides all this is the utter absurdity of the concept of criminalizing prostitution. If a woman were to wander the streets offering sex to strange men, there’s nothing illegal about that. But if she gets compensated, its a crime? Makes no sense.
Sua: * If a woman were to wander the streets offering sex to strange men, there’s nothing illegal about that. But if she gets compensated, its a crime? Makes no sense.*
Sure it does. As I remarked to Mighty Girl, the individual’s right to privacy forbids the government to interfere in adults’ private consensual sexual activity. But the government does get a say in deciding what sort of activities people are allowed to carry on commercially.
Besides, in practical terms it makes all the difference in the world. There’s no need to discourage women wandering the streets offering sex to strange men for free because almost no women would be interested in doing that (sorry, guys). But if they can make money at it, then some of them will. So if the government wants to minimize random promiscuous street-wandering sex-offering, they don’t have to ban it outright; they just have to make it non-commercial.
You certainly don’t have to conclude that banning the commercial side of prostitution while refusing to regulate the sexual side is a good idea, but I don’t see how you can argue that it’s completely nonsensical or illogical.
Because it is most common sensical to see the transfer of money as a private act between the two parties. It just seems silly to say that if they “do it” its private. But if they negotiate a transfer of money first its public. What if, for instance they only negotiatied a transfer of goods? Food, Entertainment, or perhaps some dead flora?
I understand your point from other threads that monetary transactions are not protected by the constitution. But neither are private transactions, at least explicitely.
(Everyone was very accepting and happy for him, but some demanded their money back.)