I just wanted to note that there is a letter in the Reader with some objections to the column. And Cecil responded.
Thanks. Am I the only one who thought Cecil’s response was a little weak, to say the least? I agree with him, but he didn’t make much of an argument.
Indeed, I think Cecil let her off easy. The letter seemed filled with unsourced allegations and claims like “Most experts estimate the average age of entry into prostitution in the U.S. is somewhere between 11-13 years old … If you are purchasing sex in this country, the probability is high that you are purchasing it from a minor.” Cite that most experts estimate that? And how does the second part follow from the first? What if they then stay in prostitution for another 40 years, for instance – then the vast majority of their prostitution transactions would then be done as adults. Most of the rest of the letter seems to have similar problems with unsourced claims and whatnot.
Granted, you can’t really give detailed cites in a letter to the editor, but you could at least give a URL “for further information” or something, so people can see the source of your data.
I wonder how the employees at the legal brothels in Nevada feel about their jobs as prostitutes. If they generally hate it and are abused frequently but are trapped, that would lend support to the argument that legalization doesn’t help prostitutes very much. I think I have a book about them somewhere around here… if only I could find it.
Most prostitutes in places where prostitution is legal are still practicing prostitution illegally. Looking at the ones in the legal brothels isn’t a terribly meaningful thing to do.
You can search for posts by me in Great Debates in regards to “prostitution” for cites. The ultimate result is that in countries which legalised prostitution, the number of total prostitutes grew two to three times, with the vast majority of that being illegal workers–often 50-60% consisting of women who weren’t even legally in the country (usually from Russia in Europe, or Southeast Asia in the case of Australia) since demand grew faster than the local prostitution headcount could cover. So ultimately, from what evidence there is throughout the world (Australia, Austria, Netherlands, Germany, etc.) legalising prostitution doesn’t end up as a benefactor for most women since it increases the number of women being submitted to the terrible conditions of illegal prostitution while being able to maintain a clean facade that brings in new clients via a small minority of legally working women.
When the switch to legalized and regulated prostitution takes place, most of what happens is that the already running and successful, upscale brothels get licensed. The majority of prostitutes who are strung out, underage, illegal aliens, or being forced into it by predators of course don’t sign on at a brothel nor receive a license. And when customers suddenly feel like there isn’t the moral stigma to see a prostitute, they go to a nice brothel and find out that:
a) It’s expensive
b) They have to wear a condom
c) They are limited in how kinky they can get
d) That they enjoy the position of “power” over a woman who must do as they wish–but aren’t allowed to do much in this regard because of the big muscled dude in the lobby
And so they move on to illegal prostitutes, inflating demand for those. Ultimately, for most patrons of a prostitute (and yes you will find a cite for this if you look through my old posts – specifically a report by a study for the government of Sweden), they are less there for sex and more there for the thrill of the hunt and for the sake of dominating someone. The majority of patrons have a steady partner or partners. This of course ends up with the other half of most of the problems of the profession (rape, physical abuse, etc.) besides the thing that caused the woman to enter the position in the first place (age, being strung out, etc.)
While it should be any person’s right to do as they wish with their body, it’s disingenuous to ignore the data of what happens in the real world when legalised. In this one case, it doesn’t appear to be that prostitution is only illegal based on dated puritanical ideas of propriety.
Even assuming for the sake of the discussion that everything you said is accurate – how is the situation at all improved by keeping the practice illegal for everybody besides those inside a fancy licensed brothel? Doesn’t the illegality of it only add to the dangers the women face, and reduce the chances of them going to the police if something bad happens?
Also, I’m definitely going to need to find the cite for the whole “most patrons of a prostitute are there for the thrill of the hunt and the dominance, not the sex” thing. The fact that a man who patronizes prostitutes has a partner or partners already doesn’t mean he isn’t just after more sex than his partner or partners are willing to provide, after all.
When prostitution is illegal, there are fewer illegal prositutes. When prostitution is legal, there are more illegal prostitutes. Ergo, if you want fewer women working in an unregulated and known to be violently dangerous environment (i.e. illegal prostitutes), you are better off to have prostitution be illegal.
Cites below. But really the primary support for the idea that dominance is a large factor is that’s the only hypothesis which seems to explain the odd increase in illegal prostitution when prostitution is legalised.
http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/pdf/EkbergVAW.pdf
“Every eighth man older than 18 years in Sweden, or approximately
13% of men ages 18 years and older, have, at least once,
bought a person for prostitution purposes within Sweden or in
other countries (Månsson, 2001; National Institute of Public
Health, 2000). These men represent all ages and all income
classes. The majority are, or have been, married or cohabiting, and
they often have children. Men who have or have had many sexual
partners are the most common buyers of prostituted persons,
effectively dispelling the myth that the buyer is a lonely, sexually
unattractive man with no other option for his sexual outlet than to
buy prostituted women.” (bolding added)
http://justsalvos.com/userfiles/file/Bestpractisesdonnahughes.pdf
"Approximately 50 percent of the men interviewed said they had purchased sex acts from
foreign prostitutes. About a third of the men surveyed believed that foreign women were
‘cheaper and more malleable than local women.’
[…]
The study found that men, who knowingly purchased sex from trafficked women, did not
perceive consent as an issue for women in prostitution. They viewed all women and girls in
prostitution as objects or commodities over which they had temporary powers of possession
after they paid their money.23 Some men indicated that purchasing sex from someone forced
into prostitution gave them the advantage of being able to control them. Two Indian men
thought they might receive better treatment from women forced into prostitution because the
women would be ‘isolated and unhappy’ and might turn to them for support and care. Other
men said they did not want to have sex with someone forced into prostitution because it was
‘a sexual turn-off.’ Even though some men said they did not like the idea of purchasing sex
from a woman who was not fully consenting, they admitted that they may have done so
because they were drunk or could not afford the more expensive prostitutes they imagined
were more likely to be consenting. The researchers pointed out that the men have stereotypes,
of what they think a victim looks like that are based on race, skin color, ethnicity, and cost of
the sex act.
[…]
Women and children in prostitution are subjected to high rates of violence and abuse from
the men who pay them for sex acts. In some men’s minds, the act of paying money entitles
them to do whatever they want to a woman or child. In one study, two-thirds of women
(foreign and U.S. citizens) in prostitution, some of whom were trafficked, said that once a
man paid money she was expected to comply with everything the purchaser wanted. If they
complained or resisted, the men would reprimand or punish them.31 Women are rarely
protected from violent men, even when they are indoors in a brothel. One woman said, “The
only time they protect anyone is to protect the customers. For instance they only put in the
surveillance camera after a customer was killed.”32
Research findings from the last 25 years have consistently documented the high incidence of
battery and sexual assault against women in prostitution by the men who buy them. “Certain
customers commit some of society’s most vile crimes through their abuse of prostitutes.”33
In the early 1980s, a study of 200 women and girls in street prostitution, most of whom were
minors (70% were under 21, almost 60% were 16 or under, and numbers were 10 and 11
years old), in the San Francisco area found that 70 percent of them had been raped or
sexually assaulted by a man an average of 31 times, and 65 percent of them had been
physically abused or beaten by men an average of 4 times. According to the women and girls
perceptions of why men beat or raped them: 40 percent said the men “got off on it, enjoyed
it, and thought it was part of sex;” 32 percent said it was because the men couldn’t or didn’t
want to pay the money promised; and 16 percent said it was because the men hated
prostitutes or hated women in general. Forty-six percent said the beatings were arbitrary –
“no specific reason, just crazy, that’s how they are” – and eight percent said they did not
know the reason. More than 75 percent of the victims said there was nothing they could do
about the men’s abuse.34"
http://economics.uchicago.edu/pdf/Prostitution%205.pdf
“The third panel of Table 2 shows transaction-level summary statistics. There are
five categories of sex acts: manual stimulation, oral sex, vaginal sex, anal sex, and
other.18 Oral sex is most common (46 percent of all tricks), followed by vaginal sex (17
percent), manual stimulation (15 percent), and anal sex (9 percent). Over half the
customers are black, although the exception is for the prostitutes who work with pimps.
Condoms are used in only about 20 percent of the overall sex acts. As noted later, even
for vaginal and anal sex condom use is only 25 percent.” (bolding added)
But that’s not making prostitution legal, that’s making some particular types of prostitution legal. Leaving all the rest of prostitution illegal seems to only make it harder for those engaging in illegal prostitution.
There’s no country (that I know of) which has legalised but not regulated prostitution. So I’m going to guess it’s unlikely to occur in our lifetimes and thus not terribly worth considering. Possibly it would be better than the licensed prostitution system, but it’s unlikely since:
a) Women who are being strung out and pimped still probably can’t go to the police. They could go right now and complain about being abused by their pimp or simply get on a bus and move somewhere else. Legality is not the primary thing keeping the women shackled to their situation. So what minority might have more impetus to report to the police misbehavior is still going to be offset by the total increase of prostitutes who won’t report.
b) When 40-60% of the women are illegal aliens, they have no right to report to the police regardless of the legality of prostitution itself.
That’s a theory based on what should be expected from our observations of the licensed prostitution model, since like I said, no country has done anything otherwise and hence there is no data on any other strategy. But I don’t see any particular reason to think it would go otherwise.
I will note that when Sweden illegalised prostitution, the number of prostitutes halved in a year or so, and sex trafficking into the country stopped completely.