Let me take a stab at summarizing and expanding on the OP’s argument:
It is a good thing, both for the people involved and for society in general, for most people to be in stable, reasonably healthy relationships.
Sex is one of the major motivating factors for people, especially men, to enter and stay in such relationships.
Prostitution (and porn) provides a way that men can assuage those sexual urges more quickly and easily, if ultimately less satisfyingly, than being in a relationship.
Thus, fewer men will be motivated to enter and stay in stable sexual relationships, to their own and society’s detriment.
And this means that there are fewer men available for those women (and gay men) who want to be in stable relationships, leading to greater competition with other such women and with prostitutes, and resulting in greater insecurity for the “winners” of such competition, and loneliness and unfulfillment for the losers—to their detriment.
I can see several points of weakness in this argument (for one, what about men who are unable or unwilling to find partners for a stable sexual relationship?), but it does intrigue me, and I think there may be something in it.
I also want to point out that, as with the case of drugs, decriminalization does not necessarily mean legalization; supporting the former does not necessarily mean advocating the latter.
elbows pointed out the situation, nothing will change in terms of practice. Sex as goods and services is available now in all sorts of ways. Keeping it illegal elevates the price and the associated societal costs but doesn’t diminish the practitioners any further, and probably less by not making them criminals.
Perfectly restated. Thank you for thoughtful clarification.
There could be consideration for men who are unable to find partners (I’m thinking of people with a disability, though the category of “sexual disability” might require some innovative thinking). For men who want sex and are unwilling to be in a relationship, I think the barriers here are low, and there’s no social benefit whatsoever by lowering these barriers.
So nobody thinks that the “porn effect” (women feeling higher sexual pressure due to male porn consumption) would not be even more intense with legal prostitution?
I do see now that I’ve conflated decriminalization and legalization somewhat. I think I’m 100% for decriminalization of all sex work. It would still make the sexual market more competitive. I hate to think of a young girl looking at all the effort and expense of college compared with the immediate, huge rewards of selling sex and making bad choices. But I’d be willing to make that tradeoff to protect the people who have no other choices (or preferences, whatever). Legalization - still not convinced.
I do not think that is necessarily a fair interpretation of the post. Selling sex may not be a bad choice per se, but it is currently very strongly correlated with decidedly bad choices such as addiction to illegal drugs. HMS Irruncible might very well simply be worried that a young person could be attracted by the prospect of easy money in an environment that is currently very sordid and get themselves in over their heads, so to speak.
Of course, said correlation is in fact not an argument against legalization, but an argument for it, in the sense that legalization and regulation of prostitution would ideally include regular drug and STD tests, which would serve to eradicate the current and unfortunate over-representation of sex workers among drug addicts.
People have to find partners (sexual and otherwise) that are a good fit. I honestly don’t think there are now, or would be in the future, many relationships where man is with a woman because a prostitute is too expensive or not available. Men may well be unhappy with sexual aspects of their relationship, but even without legal prostitution (or porn), that’s a problem that has to be dealt with. Any guy who says “fuck it, I’ll just hire a hooker tonight” instead of going on a date is probably not going to be the guy who would have sought a stable loving relationship anyway.
But this raises a checken/egg question. It’s common … lore? … that many women end up in prostitution to feed their drug habits. It may also be that women who turn to sex work for other reason (perhaps economic need) and are not happy with it may end up self-medicating and becoming addicted as a way of coping with their unhappiness.
I’m not sure I would call these “bad” choices. Some of them are more like “inevitable” given the consequences of other circumstances.
My sentiment could probably have been worded better, in the sense that I agree more or less entirely with you, and should not have used the expression “bad choice” when in reality what I meant was more akin to “unfortunate correlation”. Framing drug addiction as merely a “bad choice” is a gross and negligent oversimplification.
No, I think he’s sort of right and that legalized prostitution would result in liberalization of sexual mores overall (specifically, that people in general, probably especially straight women, would become more promiscuous to compete with the prostitutes). New Zealand has supposedly the most liberal laws around prostitution in the world, and they also have the highest average number of sexual partners per woman (16).
I don’t think liberalizing sexual mores, in general, would be a bad thing (I think a lot of our current sexual mores developed in an era without contraception and without a welfare state, so they are in some sense outdated), but I do think that the OP is right that people would become more sexually competitive in a society where prostitution was legal.
This (a) may not actually be as lopsided even nowadays as you assume, and (b) would probably change significantly based on social acceptance and consequent decrease in both social stigma and physical danger.
We’re already seeing the expansion of female sex tourism among women who can afford to travel to “exotic” locales, as well as more pronounced female interest in male strippers a la the Magic Mike movies and an increase in female patrons of male escorts. Whether you/they realize it or not, you probably know somebody who knows a woman who’s paid a man for sex. It’s becoming more socially acceptable all the time.
Sex work is a profession where you have no benefits, and age discrimination starts eroding your paycheck before you even turn 30. If someone foregoes their education in favor of that, yes, I’m very comfortable saying that’s a bad thing.
