Your response to the woman hyping the usual fear-based agenda of the criminalizers with misleading statements about teen prostitutes, trafficking, and so on, couldn’t have been better:
“No doubt many street prostitutes are abused by pimps and johns; similarly, many wives are abused by their husbands. It doesn’t follow that marriage ought to be a crime.”
Bless you Cecil for getting it right and standing up for the rights of sex workers and our clients! Some day we will have equal rights, and the bigotry against us will be as socially frowned on as racism, homophobia, and other forms of bigotry are now generally understood to be by educated and well-meaning people.
Welcome to the Straight Dope starchild.
It is customary to provide a link to the column you are commenting on. Here is the column in question.
I hope you will hang around and enjoy your time here.
This may not be the place to get into it, but it seems that there is an intrinsic difference between prejudice based on genetic make-up and the ramifications in social hierarchy based on what one does to pay the bills.
I’m not saying that sex workers deserve to be treated like lawyers, but there is a difference between skin color (for example) and choice of occupation.
And it’s also against some standards to bash someone for a sexual choice they make (such as gay, bi, or straight) while others feel that the sexual persuasion is not a “choice” but a predisposition.
Perhaps someone who ended up as a sex worker gets something out of it that they don’t get out of other lines of work. Who’s to say it’s a “choice” they made, as opposed to some place they ended up? Just a thought.
Also, why all these thoughts on women being prostitutes. What about male prostitutes? If we’ll allow women to charge money for access to their bodies, then I want to earn some money too. If we make it legal, it should be legal for both genders, not just women.
It’s a very good point that I’ve often wondered. Is Archie Bunker that way because he was born that way? Or because he chose to be that way at some point in life, and just stuck with it?
Sometimes you make up your mind and you’re very firm in some belief … other times you’re just genetically predisposed. Is that the dividing line? I dunno.
Not that I can talk about, unless laws change soon <looks around suspiciously>
The question was, “Who’s committing the crime…” I think that was addressed.
I don’t think anyone doubts that there are some nasty aspects to the sx trade, regardless of what the exact numbers are.
It might be interesting to look at what is considered prostitution.
I worked with a woman who was a professional Domme. She never had sex with her clients, but she considered herself a sex worker.
I’ve also heard borderline apocryphal stories from men claiming that they thought they were dating women up until they had sex and then were asked for money.
Obviously, my claims are purely anecdotal. I do agree with Rachael though:
