I could try, but first of all I should warn you. The following may or may not make sense, as I am currently in a depressive phase.
Basically, prostitution sucks. Yes, there are some who love it. Good for them. But very few people in it honestly want to stay. They stay because they don’t know what else to do and the money’s good. Very often, they have a drug habit to feed.
They tend to start hating men in general because they only meet the kind of man who’ll go to a prostitute, and very few of those treat the prostitutes kindly. They see someone to use and do it. If that’s all you ever see, your worldview becomes skewed.
Prostitutes frequently become robbed, raped, beaten and battered. They rarely go to the police, partly because they’re rarely taken seriously, and partly because they often start to buy into their clients’ view of them: they’re whores to be used and abused.
This is one of the many issues where I’m despairing to ever find a close-to-useful solution, and I just can’t be bothered to mull it over anymore than I had. Feel free to ignore everything I’ve written; I know it’s not backed up by cites and I know that it’s not an argument for illegalization, but rather an explanation of why prostitution sucks the big one.
Originally posted by Revtim:
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IMO it’s ridiculous to make it illegal to sell something that is perfectly legal to give away for free.
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Precisely because ‘fornication’ is now no longer such a moral abomination anymore; therefore the state should no longer enforce any ban on prostitution on the one hand, and on the other look after the safety and hygiene and sanitation and working wage of women who have to earn a living with their sex assets.
Doctors and nurses and health care givers use their hands and fingers to provide healing and solace to people who need healing, and they get paid handsomely for their service.
Women who serve the sex needs of men should also be allowed to charge accordingly for an analogous service, namely, giving comfort, solace, and pleasure to their clients.
Reduction in STD transmission, due to regular testing/treatment.
Decrease in related crime. Drugs maybe/maybe not. Pimp “wars”.
Increase in safety/security for the workers.
Isolation of activity. (Restriction of brothels to particular areas.)
In countries where it is legal, it seems to work OK. The Netherlands, Singapore.
Priceguy What were the problems in Sweden?
I would guess:
a) they don’t want to pay the taxes.
b) failed the physical and were’t allowed to work legally.
c) poor management by the state.
d) any/all of the above.
But even though there would be problems, I think it’s better than the alternative.
Are, you mean? Well, before, the police knew where the prostitutes were, could cruise around there and generally make their presence felt in case the clients got violent. Now prostitution has gone underground and the police can do nothing. Big sums of cash are pumped into anti-prostitution police work that has so far accomplished precisely zilch (seriously, how do you prove prostitution?). If a prostitute ever wants another client, she can’t go the police if robbed, raped or beaten, even if she wanted to. The more underground the business goes, the seedier it gets and the less rights the prostitutes have, in reality.
Legalization of prostitution should also include the ban against pimps.
Then the provision of the law for the minimum charge of every service.
Also criminalization for any and all mistreatments of prostitutes in words and in deeds.
Finally, prostitutes earning below a stated amount yearly are exempted from paying income tax.
I am sure that if our legislators have their heart and mind in the right places, they will make laws most humane to prostitutes and also good for the financial contributions they will make to the state.
For that purpose, legislators should be genuine humanists, not hypocrites.
The continued existence of “drug-addicted streetwalkers” in Nevada despite legalized prostitution there is simple economics.
Artificial Shortage of Legal Prostitutes - Nevada allows only brothel prostitution, counties have the option of barring brothel prostitution and must license legal brothels, and Nevada law bars any brothels from within 50-75 miles of Las Vegas (can’t remember which distance at the moment), the biggest market for prostitution services. If prostitution is illegal in the biggest market, of course there are going to be illegal prostitutes.
Given all these restrictions, there just aren’t enough legal prostitutes to handle demand for prostitution services. Illegal prostitutes take of the slack. (insert your own dirty joke here).
Competition on cost - Illegal prostitutes, being outside the licensing and tax systems, can afford to charge less.
There is another reason for the streetwalkers in Nevada. The main tourist attraction in the state is Las Vegas. However! Prostitution, of any kind, brothel or otherwise, is NOT legal in Las Vegas. Brothel prostitution is only legal in a handful of counties in Nevada. The Brothel-bound prostitutes can not get to the tourists. The streetwalkers can.
Hmm, on review, that conflicted with much of Sua’s point. I can only plead a momentary lapse in reading comprehension. It seemed to me he was arguing quantity(“shortage of legal prostitutes”) where I was arguing geography(locked out of the tourist areas). Both are correct, and he noted both, but the geography is the major reason. If brothels were allowed closer to Vegas/in Vegas then we’d likely see a rise in the number of legal prostitutes to meet the demand streetwalkers are currently satisfying. You’ll never completely rub out streetwalking, but Nevada’s problems are a consequence of the unique way it has implemented legalized prostitution, not a side effect of legal prostitution in general.
It wasn’t a strawman so much as a rhetorical proposition - one, I might add, that you’ve answered reasonably effectively, at least in point 1.
Your point 2, however, deserves more scrutiny.
I agree with this - but it’s not quite an argument in favor of legalization, since it suggests that many of the social ills that now plague prostitution would not be solved by legalization.
No social ills are ever solved by legalization. The best we can hope for is to provide a safer channel via legal regulations for people to express whatever underlying motive was causing them to violate the law previously. It isn’t about ending ALL abuses of prostitutes, or removing ALL streetwalkers. It’s about reducing the incentives to go outside the law by providing a legal framework they can work with and maybe even having a few carrots of our own to entice people to use the legal option instead of the illegal one. If a Jon can feel safer going to a prostitute who he knows has been recently tested for STDs and practices safe sex as a matter of course then they will be less likely to patronize one of the streetwalkers. Less patrons, less streetwalkers. Less streetwalkers, less pimps. Cost will always remain an issue, but the gulf can be narrowed.
In Australia we even have adds for brothels in the local papers, I’m talking “North Shore Times” here. At least I think that’s what it is. Some say “NO SEX” so I assume those that don’t are “YES SEX” places.
I can’t say I’ve ever been to one, but I was quite shocked that there is a place five minutes walk from my high school, and one minutes walk from the station that I got off at every school day since I was twelve years old. Another brothel that got media attention was some place that opened and several local stars appeared there: it was almost a red carpet thing. Now I’m all for legalisation, but I think it’s a little scary that people are so comfortable with it. I dunno. Perhaps it’s not so bad, it just wierds me out.
Does that mean houses of ill repute can’t have managers?
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We don’t have laws that provide minimums for plumbers, carpenters, or other independent contracters. Why should prostitutes be any different? Who sets the minimum and what should the minimum be? 10 dollars?
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So far as I know it is already illegal to phsyically abuse a prostitute. Should it also be illegal to refer to them as “whores?” Can we pass a law making it illegal to mistreat lawyers with words? No more lawyer jokes I guess.
Increasing the supply of legal prostitution will increase competition amongst legal prostitutes, thus driving down the cost of legal prostitution. This will narrow the price differential significantly.
As the price differential declines, cost becomes less important. A consumer will consider two other factors - risk and quality. The risk factor is arrest or fine when frequenting an illegal prostitute. The quality factor is that legal prostitutes are regulated both by the state - for health, criminal record, etc. - and by the brothel owner - who will hire and retain prostitutes who please the consumer and fire those who don’t. As the price differential declines, more and more consumers will pay the (lessened) extra amount to gain quality and avoid risk.
That is not to say that illegal prostitution and the attendant social ills will disappear. Some consumers will continue to consider cost the only relevant factor, and some prostitutes will not satisfy the requirements of either the state or the brothel owner, and will continue to hook illegally. But they will, most likely, diminish to the point where they become unimportant. There are still moonshiners in West Virginia, but they aren’t causing gunfights and bombings in our streets anymore.
Further, the legalization of prostitution will eliminate the social ills caused by criminalization. The criminalization of prostitution is a prohibition. As our experience with alcohol prohibition has taught us, it is the criminalization of a vice that causes the greatest ills, not the vice itself. Legalization will diminish the role of pimps, because a legal prostitute can turn to the state for protection. It will diminish the damage to the prostitutes and to their ability to leave the profession, because they won’t have criminal records. And it will save money by reducing the burden on the criminal justice and prison systems.
Legalization will cause new social ills, no doubt. Damage to families and marriages will increase, for example. But on balance, legalization will be overwhelmingly a social good.
My remaining discomfort is founded upon a religiously-based moral objection… and I acknowledge, regretfully, that this is not a proper basis for criminal law in the United States.
The only other comment I’d have is that the increase in tax revenue from tis new source should be devoted, more or less in its entirety, to outreach programs that seek to provide vocational skills (er… non-blowjob vocational skills) for those in the profession.
and i have saw that some of the posters claim that this topic has been posted before. i did a search for it beofre i posted, but i didnt find anything… so i decided to start the post. If someone does find the link to the previous pos, i would be quite interested.
I can’t see how this could be different if prostitution is illegal. Not only they would be robbed, beaten, etc…in the same way, but also they couldn’t even go to the police or they could be prosecuted. This argument makes no sense.
A second thought : except if you’re assuming that there will be no more prostitution (hence no prostitute beaten, robbed, etc…) if this activity is illegal. But of course, this is not going to happen. Even when the sentence for prositution is death, there are still prositutes.
