I think prostitution should be legal everywhere, and specifically in the US. In the US alot of things that are (supposedly) immoral are legal. As I saw one prostitute say tv, you can still be a slut. You just can’t get “paid” for it.
Some background and terminology. “Decriminalization”: simply removing the criminal penalties associated with prostitution. “Legalization”: Carefully regulating prostitution activity (implies more than merely decriminalizing it).
Prostitution laws around the world. Notice esp. the chart at the beginning of the article (here’s a closer look). In green countries, prostitution is legal and well-regulated. In red countries, it is strictly illegal. But (interestingly) in blue nations, it is in the gray area, kind of like pornography is in the US. In these countries, there are no laws against prositution per se. Buy allied activity like pimping, keeping a brothel or wandering the streets as a prostitute are illegal. Put another way, like pornography in the US (involving consenting adults of course), it is technically illegal. But you can easily find it available if you look;).
Also, some people (like St. Augustine) say, allowing things like prostitution give men a way to vent their sexual energies and frustrations. Making it strictly illegal leads in fact to greater harm (and often defiance of the law anyways).
Well, I think it should be legal. What do the rest of you think:)?
My view on prostitution is essentially the same as my view on pornography, that women should not have to rely on it in order to survive. If they could subsist (in other words, have their medical costs, rent and food covered) without prostitution or performing in pornography but choose to do so anyway, that should be their choice. Discussing informed choice when their rent, food or medical bills are contingent on their having sex with another individual is not really plausible.
Orwell said that when such concepts were attempted in Catalonia, prostitution essentially died out overnight. Something the Churches couldn’t accomplish in centuries.
By this standard, virtually every job on the planet is immoral since a significant chunk of people would happily sit home, smoking pot and eating cheetos, if their living expenses were covered. It’s only our puritanical lineage that sees sexuality as somehow more dirty/degrading than, say, working as a cashier at McDonalds. There’s nothing more inherently objectionable about a woman trading the use of her vagina for money and a construction worker doing the same with his biceps.
So, yes, legalize it, regulate it, make it safe and as disease-free as humanly possible. Problem solved.
Ontario, CANADA has recently passed a law making brothels legal, Which is a form of prostitution but they assure people are of age, Disease free, safe from physical and emotional harm, and with a steady dependable legal income.
which means those who are still working the streets will most likely be the underage peoples, or those who are not safe. Which I would then be more than happy with law enforcement working more on keeping them off the streets and getting the care they need.
Plus, it makes it taxable for the government so they can then use the money from that to help clean up the streets.
Then a correlate of the move to destigmatise sex should be declassifying rape as a separate crime from battery. As a culture, we have a special plea for sex that will not be erased until rape is treated as no different from other forms of offences against the person.
Really? So if your daughter wanted to make a few bucks between semesters selling her ass you wouldn’t see it as being any different from working as a sales clerk in the mall? You would be okay with your wife making the same decision?
If Finnagain and the people around him stem from the same puritanical lineage, then he wouldn’t.
So? We are social animals, we have plenty of ridiculous rituals and mores embedded in our psyches. The fact that they exist doesn’t mean they are rational or even positive.
Are you purposefully trading in fallacy, or did you not notice?
Of course there is a difference. There is a difference between any two things which are not identical. This is basic ontology. As for your non sequitor about marriage and careers, again, is the fallacy intentional or accidental? Among the things I wouldn’t like my spouse to do include enlisting in the military, taking a job several states over, becoming a preacher, and so on. None of those are reasons to make those careers illegal,
Moreover, in additional to being paternalistic, the anti-prostitution position effective infantalizes women and violates the idea of women being autonomous adults. Women can’t be trusted to enter into contracts of their own free will, they need to be protected and watched over, lest they make ‘wrong decisions’. What’s that? You’d rather provide sex for money than sit in an office cubicle 9-5? Don’t worry, we’ll protect you from your ability to make choices. Or a woman has a right to control her own body and her own sexuality, unless of course she chooses to use her body and sexuality in exchange for being given some greenish rectangles of paper, in which case we need to protect her for her own good. Or, of course, women have to be protected from ‘unpleasant’ tasks. It’s okay honey, men can have their grey matter pounded to jelly playing football, or work in sewage plants, or any number of unpleasant fields, but we’ll make sure that you don’t have to do something that we find icky, lest your feminine virtues be sullied.
There is no cogent reason why prostitution, regulated and protected by the state, safe, clean, disease and violence free, should be treated as being fundamentally different than any other job choice.
…why would you object if your daughter chose to be a prostitute? What is inherently wrong having sex in exchange for money?
As for your wife: it really depends on what you agreed to when you got married, wouldn’t it? If your marriage vows stated that you are supposed to have sex with each other for the rest of their lives, then yes, I’m sure if she decided out of the blue to become a prostitute it might be time to see a marriage counselor. But that has nothing to do with prostitution and everything to do with the state of your marriage.
As for you “making no attempt to argue that prostitution should be illegal”, welcome to the thread, titled “Should prostitution be legal”. I suspect that the topic under debate may be hidden somewhere within that verbiage.
Objections don’t have to be puritanical. One big difference between sex and work is that you’re not going to find many people today giving away fast food or construction for free. Maybe the taboo on prostitution arose out of fear that if it was completely socially acceptable to put a price on sex, every non-initiating partner would start charging for it (because why not?), so it is in the best interests of people currently receiving free sex to suppress a paid sex economy from becoming the norm.
For me, the argument is as simple as this: it’s legal to have sex with a stranger. It’s legal to give a stranger a hundred bucks. But if you have sex with a stranger and then give them a hundred bucks (and get caught) you’re both going to jail. How can anyone find this logical or reasonable?
This is an appeal to ridicule and you know that those “greenish rectangles” have more significance than you’re insinuating. You essentially stated upthread that it’d be immoral to let women have access to food, shelter and medicine regardless of how many of those rectangles they had. I don’t dispute that arguments from “wage slavery” make the assumption that pretty much no-one gives explicit consent for a substantial portion of their daily activities, yet there is still a case for treating prostitution and pornography differently from other forms of wage labour (since a lack of consent for sex is viewed as more shocking than a lack of consent for cleaning things or serving things for instance).
Should you be allowed to sell your own kidney? To me that’s essentially the same question. It’s your body, you can do with it what you will.
The problem is the person that would sell their kidney is in a bad way and the buyer is taking advantage of that, is that much different than purchasing something at foreclosure auction? I don’t know, but drawing the line at the physical person seems like a reasonable position.
Before I agree that all these improvements in the situations of women who work as prostitutes will occur, I have a question: In those places where prostitution is legal or decriminalized, are there still women engaging in “black market” prostitution?
“Theory and practice are the same in theory, but different in practice.”
Sure, prostitution should be legal. Most everything should be legal. But I have been all over the world and have never seen a place where legal prostitution was managed well.
The problem is the number of women will to do the work is well below the number demanded by the market. As a result, prostitution often (Always?) leads to women being forced into the trade.
In the present (US) system, the police suppress all prostitution and so all human trafficking too. If legalized, the police do not have much reason to look at who is doing what willingly or by force. If prostitution is permitted, exploitation of the workers always follows.
