Actually, when I picture the “shady elements” behind trafficking and prostitution, I imagine thugs from Asia and Eastern Europe. But then everything I know comes from TV and movies.
If procuring and pandering are allowed there will be other illegal activity associated with prostitution. I am in favor of legalization that would prevent those problems through regulation, or decriminalization limits the activity to private agreement. I don’t believe sex workers will be protected in an unregulated environment because they aren’t now in the unregulated activity outside the law.
…we were talking about weed.
Here in California legalized weed has crushed communities formerly making a profit from illegal sales:
It makes me wonder if legalization of prostitution would have similar effects on people in that industry. I guess it depends on the details of the legalization.
Aside from the financial aspects, I suspect any legalization efforts in the US would be met with a massive wall of self-righteous outrage from our prudish faux-religious population. It wont matter that legalization will make things safer and better for women in the industry - the Victorian moralizing will be non-stop. Hell, we can’t even have a sensible conversation here about medication for pre-teens that prevents the HPV virus, because it has to do with SEX!!!
…pandering is illegal under our decriminalised framework. “Procuring”, as commonly defined, is legal, but subject to both the relevant statutes, and every other law in the land. If you think it would result in “other illegal activity associated with sex work”, some specifics would be nice.
Decriminalisation doesn’t mean unregulated. It means “consenting adults who buy or sell sex are not committing a crime.”
Are the communities behind trafficking and prostitution remotely similar to those that used to profit from illegal weed? I’d have hard time caring about people who currently traffic in other people.
(And yes, I know I introduced the whole weed/prostitution parallel! 
)
As cannabis decriminalization has been and continues to be – but more and more states have been able to overcome it.
Just about every state already tolerates strip joints where you can licitly engage in almost everything except actual sex. Is the line really so bright?
…I’m sorry, but what does this even mean?
Sex work and trafficking are not the same thing. Trafficking is illegal here under our framework. It was illegal before the framework. You can’t conflate the two. Sex trafficking is bad. But it is nowhere near as common as many would have you think.
And the reason why race is important in a discussion about legal weed is the “war on drugs” wasn’t really a “war on drugs” at all. It disproportionately targeted Black people. Weed hasn’t changed. It isn’t suddenly less harmful than it was twenty years ago. But its being made legal now because white people have turned it into a billion-dollar industry. That doesn’t mean they have stopped disproportionately locking up Black people for weed crimes.
There are blatant double standard at play here. And if the only motivations for making sex work legal is for the profit of private enterprise and for the state, then this won’t be good news for sex workers. I could imagine a scenario where things would be even worse for them under this framework, especially if it involved mandatory health checks and registration.
Or at least go for a vacation. I would adore a visit, it is a beautiful country.
You’re right, I’m probably over-conflating these ideas. When I imagine the social benefits of legalizing or decriminalizing prostitution, one chief benefit would be ending the incentive for trafficking people to perform that work. But traffickers are of course far from the only “shady characters” who currently profit off illicit sex work.
All true, but this is supposed to be a thread about prostitution! (Stupid OP.)
Hopefully it’s not the only motivation, but moving the needle on social change in the US usually involves the profit of private enterprise.
I have to back up and clarify what I mean using the same vocabulary you are. I’m looking at your cites to see if they address the matters that concern me.
Also, I have no objection to the the exchange of sex for other goods and services. It’s happening all the time already and the current laws need to change. Certainly there should be no possibility of a crime when consenting adults exchange sex for other goods and services in a private transaction.
…it really isn’t as simple as this. Our reforms didn’t stop trafficking. The incentive still exists. The incentive will always exist. The intent of the reforms was to create a legal framework so that sex workers could do their job more safely with dignity. It didn’t target sex trafficking.
If you are going to reform sex work, then the goals of the reform are important. The problem with the Nordic model is that it criminalises the purchase of sex, because the intent of the law is to reduce the amount of sex work and the amount of sex workers. It was created under the pretence that “all sex work is abuse.”
So under the Nordic model, much of it is still underground because half of the transaction is illegal.
And I think you will find the same thing happening if you design sex worker legislation around trying to prevent crimes that are not sex work. They would become unnecessarily burdensome, and the industry will remain underground.
Sex trafficking is already illegal. If making sex work legal reduces sex trafficking, then thats a great outcome. But the voices of sex workers need to be at the centre of this discussion. And I feel like you are treating them in the abstract, as if they don’t really matter.
The model that you are suggesting here, one that mimics what has happened with weed and prioritises “generating serious revenue for the states”, won’t get rid of the “shady characters”. It gentrifies them, and gives them the full backing of the state and the police forces. This would be a bad thing.
But this wouldn’t be “moving the needle on social change.”
You talk about “establishing registration and fees.”
In Germany, they changed the law in 2016 to make registration of sex workers mandatory. An estimated 90% of sex workers don’t register. Because they see it as “discriminatory, stigmatizing and has increased risks.” I imagine the numbers would be similar in the states. Probably worse.
You see it as a “cash cow for the states.” I see it as a means for rich people to get richer, who will treat sex workers with the same level of respect they treat all low paid workers. And because the government is involved, they would have a vested interest in “stamping out” the underground trade of sex work.
So nothing really would change. Except the “shady elements” get to use the police to do their enforcement.
And states like Florida would jump at the chance to mandate weekly or monthly health tests of vulnerable women.
Any proposed changes to sex worker laws that do not prioritise the voices, the protection and the basic human rights of sex workers run the risk of making things orders of magnitude worse for them. Just listen to them. They aren’t aliens. They aren’t an abstract concept. They aren’t instant cash generators. They are people and they deserve the same rights and protections as every other worker.
That’s because legalization has increased supply much greater than the expected increased demand, thus significantly driving the price down. Increased competition and low barrier to entry in this market has benefitted the consumer much more than the suppliers there.
Legal cannabis still is not an industry I would invest in until it was legal nationwide. Without the ability to transport across state lines, you are limited to inefficient supply chains and inadequate growing regions that a national network would benefit from.
I disagree. Sex workers can benefit from working in a secure location where they’re in control (that isn’t where they live). Clients don’t have to worry about the logistics of hosting.
Yes.
However done there would be losers and winners.
It would seem likely to lower average industry wages. This is bad for existing non-trafficked non-exploited sex workers.
On the plus size, if after tax prostitution wages go down, it makes the business less attractive to pimps.
I am against legalization unless there is a reasonable plan to do it in a way that reduces exploitation.
Also, advertising should be banned. This is not an activity we want to encourage more of our daughters to enter.
…fortunately, almost every human rights organizations also do not favour legalization, so you are in line with them.
What they do favour, is decriminalization. And there is substantial evidence that it “reduces exploitation.” You can read the data by exploring the links I posted up thread. And you can look to the real world experience of countries that have decriminalized as well.
Because its about autonomy. Decriminalization takes the power from the “pimps” and puts it in the hands of the sex worker. The sex worker has control. And the government and the police back them up. And autonomy is important because…
This isn’t your decision to make. We are talking about adults making adult decisions. You are entitled to your opinion about what your daughter should or shouldn’t do. But that shouldn’t be the basis of the law.
Drew Carey: [in “Scenes from a Hat”] “Bad parental motivational speeches.”
Ryan Stiles: A teacher? A teacher? Honey, prostitutes make TWICE that money!
Never seen a Blaxploitation movie, or a cop show, or heard a pimp rap song? Because while popular media pushes the foreign trafficker angle, they also push the Black pimp narrative.
In actual stats - ~60% of US human trafficking suspects are African-American*, and by far most suspects are US nationals.
- How much is because of disparate racially-biased policing, as it is with drug offenses, I don’t know.
Well,
In one country where I lived, the storefront of my own building had a brothel. So I personally know they existed. 100% legal and you had better believe everybody was paying taxes. As for wanting it, I did not care or give it much thought (beyond general thoughts about how sex workers must be exploited like many other workers), nor did I ever notice any problems (like people drunk or otherwise loitering about).
ETA as for discreet, there was no signage or so much as a drinks menu posted outside. Red curtains blocked the window so people inside were not visible from the street. This was not a “bad” neighbourhood. I figure they must advertise somewhere, but it was not via pimps standing in front.
@Banquet_Bear , could you please list explicitly what is and isn’t legal in the NZ and “Nordic” models?
An interesting comment because many countries have a far more mature approach to human sexuality than we do here in the United States. For example, there are nations in Europe that have unisex bathrooms, and that’s a concept that horrifies many people in this country.
We seem to have a “madonna-whore” complex towards human sexuality on a societal level. On one hand our society splashes sex all over TV and movie screens because we desire a sexual partner whose sexuality is flaunted and wanton in nature but, on the other hand, we want our wives/daughters/sons/etc to be pure and virginal in nature. It’s a bipolar approach to human sexuality.