It’s not as though you’ve put forward anything better. Regardless of whether your blog is written by a hooker or not, it’s still just a blog.
I don’t have stats to back it up, but I bet if you made drugs and prostitution legal, most women’s prisons would be damn near empty. Men’s prisons, not so much.
It’s an awful cite.
Her blog is full of cites to stats and various well-researched debunkings. Some of the links are to her on blog posts, but they generally have links to other sources, like Augustin’s debunking of the Coe study. If she were a Doper, she’s be considered a topnotch Doper. But she has a bigger theater to work in, she’s involved in an information war about prostitution.
A little background: there’s a kind of ideological war going on between sex-positive folks including prostitutes and their allies, libertarians, and equity feminists, who face sex-negative folks consisting of gender feminists allied with moral conservatives, many of whom run NGOs and are making out like bandits on the whole sex trafficking myth. The NGOs are getting millions in government grants based on phonied up stats and reports that make the problem appear enormous. The general public has no idea this is going on, or that most of the stuff that they see in the mainstream media is based on what are, basically, a pack of lies.
I used to buy into the sex-trafficking myth myself, until I got into a debate here on the Dope about the Ashton Kutcher/Demi Moore anti-trafficking campaign and found out how bogus those numbers produced by the anti-trafficking folks are. So I can understand people buying into the sex trafficking mythology from mainstream media, where they are pervasive, endlessly repeated, and mostly unchallenged. I don’t think you’re my enemy, just uninformed, as I once was.
Which one? Whose?
The issue is whether the relationships will be legally recognized. In practical terms you can be in a polyamorous relationship with as many consenting adults as you like, and (at least since Lawrence) you could be with a person of whatever sex you wanted. But you couldn’t get the legal benefits associated with marriage.
Yours. Seriously, if the facts are on your side you should be able to find something better.
What are you referring to, the Augustin debunking?
Citing The Honest Courtesan at all.
Well, if you have nothing more specific, can’t help you.
I’m not sure what else you want me to tell you. Using short sentences: it’s a bad source for cites. You should get cites from somewhere better. Almost anything else would be better.
I actually found that study worth a read, if only because someone I know is cited a few time s in it, and they are pretty open about the low quality of the data. Very reliable it is not. The theoretical explanations are an interesting read, and seem to follow ‘common sense’. They also acknowledge that previous studies on the subject are fairly inconclusive and it is interesting that the types of women in prostitution seem to consist of either ‘domestic women’ or ‘trafficked women’. The possibility of women choosing to move to a country with legalized prostitution is not taken under consideration (for obvious reasons). A mistake that is made a few times by the writers, is that on numerous occasions they refer to women ‘forced’ into prostitution, while this is not in line with the definition of ‘trafficking’ used in their source of the data for the dependent variable.
This data (from the UNODC) is based on a fairly problematic aggregation of information provided by hundreds of organizations, which is then used to put the countries in one of five crude categories; let us at least say there are some potential issues at comparing different regions and countries with each other on this basis. The actual results are significant dummy variables (mostly at 90% confidence level) and there are many control variables that have larger (or similarly sized) effects at higher significance levels.
One interesting point here is also that the UNODC provides data on ‘trafficking’ in general; not ‘trafficking’ in the category ‘sexual exploitation’ exclusively. As the authors claim themselves, the results should not be taken to convey any kind of ‘truth’ about legalization of prostitution and human trafficking.
If one reads the latest (2012) UNODC report critically, it will again become apparent, that amidst the outcry against ‘trafficking’, little to no mention is being made about whether ‘victims’ are doing the different kinds of work voluntary or not… it is unbelievable that this does not come up when the report tries to determine why there are so few convictions.
In addition to the interesting information about the data, it is interesting - at critical reading - that whenever they write about trafficking unrelated to sex work, the term ‘forced’ is used… while discussions of ‘sexual exploitation’ do not warrant this addition (for instance 3 times between page 34-36). Page 30 also gives an idea what kind of ‘services’ are considered ‘trafficking’. I would also advice you to take a look at page 81, that describes very well how the definition of ‘trafficking’ works. When a person is in a ‘vulnerable position’ - which is later expanded on and includes being unemployed or poor - and ends up working as a (voluntary) sex worker; it makes anyone that arranged transport or housing liable for trafficking charges.
I know that in real life many of these ‘intermediaries’ are scum and ask exploitive fees, but that doesn’t make it ‘forced prostitution’. It would at least be a step in the right direction to acknowledge the differences in this regard. Also, however unimaginable it may seem, many women are ok in ‘paying’ half of their earnings, if they are still left with 5000 euros a month. To quote a particularly cute and sweet Romanian girl as I gave her 200 euros after a very fun extended encouter: “That’s what my mom makes in a month.”
Re lowered drinking age: 21 is a bit arbitrary, but human brain development suggests it might be a good idea to keep it where it’s at. Frontal lobes (“what happens next…?”) aren’t anywhere near fully developed, so putting the decision to use a substance that further impairs that part of the brain which is already barely up to the task of appropriate decision-making is a recipe for disaster. I’d submit the impaired ability to effectively play “what happens next?” is precisely what makes young people better soldiers. Anyway, if you want to lower the drinking age, that’s almost certainly your biggest hurdle.
I think polygamy is the next easiest social restriction to lift. Couple modifications to the tax code, get an Obamacare finger into group health plans to allow for multiple spouses (spice?) and hey presto! no collateral issues. And legal assisted suicide options, at least for the sick & elderly. Who knows but geriatric blood sport might be the biggest sporting event since the Super Bowl.
Polygamy, assisted suicide and prostitution. We are going to hell in a hand basket, but for those with cash, it will be legal.
Indeed, it was lower in the past. After the passage of the 18-year old vote, 29 states lowered the legal drinking age. Almost immediately there was a spike in alcohol-related accidents.(warning: PDF). In 1978 Michigan raised the drinking age back to 21, followed by other states. Other studies showed an almost immediate reduction in accidents.(another PDF), and Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act in 1984.
It’s true data show teenage drinking is remarkably resistant to raising the minimum drinking age (or lowering it, for that matter.) However, it’s pretty clear that a lower legal drinking age puts more drunken teenagers behind the wheel.
As someone who worked for a lower voting age back then, nothing disappointed me more than realizing that American teenagers a) can’t hold their liquor and b) are stupid enough to get behind the wheel after drinking. I haven’t seen anything in the last 30 years that makes me believe anything is different now.
Re: As someone who worked for a lower voting age back then, nothing disappointed me more than realizing that American teenagers a) can’t hold their liquor and b) are stupid enough to get behind the wheel after drinking.
I realize that’s a problem. But I’d prefer to deal with it by targeting drinking and driving, rather than 18-21 year olds drinking. If we wanted to crack down on drinking and driving, for example, we could lower the legal limit to 0.05. (The foreign countries which have lower drinking ages than we do, also tend to have a lower legal limit for driving. At least the ones in Europe do). In general, I think we infantilize young adults too much, and having a drinking age of 21 certainly contributes to that.
Re: And legal assisted suicide options, at least for the sick & elderly.
Euthanasia is separate from these other personal-freedom issues, at least for me, for the same reasons abortion is, because it involves the taking of (innocent) human life.
Just saying it doesn’t make it true. As a matter of plain fact, McNeill doesn’t give any backing at all for most of her claims. I can’t find any link to any peer-reviewed research on her blog. On one occasion where I actually chased a claim that you quoted through her maze of links to herself, I found her linking to a short Norweigan newspaper editorial, and she clearly lied about what it said. McNeill claimed that the editorial said that the number of prostitutes in Norway had increased since Norway re-criminalized prostitution. In reality, the editorial said that the number had decreased. McNeill is a liar; there’s can’t be any reasonable doubt about that.
Throw in the fact that she’s constantly calling everyone else “retards”, “Nazis”, and so forth, and the obscene photos, and it’s easy to see why nearly everyone agrees with Marley that her blog is a joke.
First, to state the obvious, those against prostitution are the ones with a positive attitude towards sex and those in favor of prostitution are the ones with a negative attitude towards sex.
Second, regarding “prostitutes and their allies”, the great majority of prostitutes desire to escape from prostitution (cite) and their allies are attempting to help them to do so. That study also documents that even in a country like Germany where it’s legal, the norm for prostitutes still involves rape, assault, threats of violence, exploitation of poor women, and/or a past history of child abuse. Given that fact, it’s no surprise that prostitutes want to leave prostitution, and that their allies want to help them do so.
Third, you are using the age-old tactic of simply dismissing out-of-hand everyone who disagrees with you, and implying that they’re motivated by money. You have no basis for either. Your implied belief that anyone who opposes prostitution is driven by some “sex-negative” bias is absurd on its face and doesn’t stand up to scrutiny for a minute. As I mentioned right at the start of this, several countries including France, Sweden, and Norway, tried legalizing prostitution. Then they took a look at the results, realized that they’d made a mistake, and criminalized the buying (but not the selling) of sex. Are the entire nations of France, Sweden, and Norway “sex-negative”? Haven’t you often pointed to those countries as examples that the USA should emulate?
Except no life is taken. One is willingly, eagerly, surrendered.
I don’t think that studies need to be shown to prove that. It goes without saying that if you have X number of more people drinking (and while there is underage drinking, the illegality of a product will reduce its use) there will be more drinking related accidents (from driving and otherwise) and the youngest and least mature of that legal group will be over-represented in those accident statistics.
However, there’s nothing magical about age 21. As others have said, it’s a random number that comes from centuries ago. If you raised the drinking age to 40, for example, I would expect another huge drop in accident rates and those 40-43 year olds who just started legal drinking would have more car crashes that 60 year olds.
Likewise if freeway speed limits were 10 miles per hour, accident rates would also decline, but nobody suggests such a thing. Freedom comes with a price, and I think that the safety aspect just begs the question of what is a fair age to set the limit. It just so happens that 18 to 21 year olds are an easy group to pick on because most of them don’t vote and they will be able to drink soon enough.
jtgain while there’s certainly nothing magical about 21, you do continue maturing up until about 30, so certainly 21 year olds are going to be more mature than 18 year olds. Likewise, 28 year olds are more mature than 25 year olds.
That having been said, I think the 21 drinking age is still unfair to those 18-20 year olds who want to drink responsibly, and there are much better ways to deal with drunk driving in any case.
Most likely euthanasia (5 - 10 years), lowering the age of consent to 14 or younger (some in Europe have been big on this issue since the 1960s, like Sarte was) (Europe in 3 - 8 years, America shortly thereafter), polygamy (effectively legal now, in most communities, given the number of men who maintain a harem of baby’s mamas), zoophilia (one could argue that it’s cruel to animals, but so is killing and eating them, so this is likely to fall by the wayside in the next 25 years or so. Far more common a crime than people think), human-animal chimeras for scientific research (10 - 15 years), legalized cloning (under political pressure to permit birth by same-sex couples) (4 - 8 years).