Remember, it only takes one court case. Lawrence v. Texas gets us much of the way toward legalization, with its discussion of the liberty interest in private sexual autonomy.
is herpes testing that easy and accurate, and do they currently test for that Particular STD in Nevada brothels?
No, it really isn’t. It creates almost the exact same dangers for sex workers that criminalising them directly does. And where it’s been implemented - Norway and Sweden* - it usually still involves criminalising the sex worker in other ways, such as using public order offences to move them off the streets or hitting them with brothel-keeping charges for working together indoors. It also usually involves the use of non-criminal measures against them, because state bodies see themselves as mandated to do whatever they can do to oppose prostitution and that inevitably means targeting sex workers themselves.
- It’s officially the law in Iceland, too, but there seems to be little implementation of it.
Thers are significant doubts whether the new laws are compliant, actually.
Australia has different laws in the different states. It’s legalised in Victoria, Queensland, and the Northern Territory; decriminalised in New South Wales and the ACT; criminalised in South Australia; and in Tasmania and Western Australia it’s only legal for solo operators.
In New Zealand, it’s (mostly) decriminalised.
Decriminalisation along the lines of the NZ/NSW models (which are different and neither is perfect) is regarded as best practice by various UN agencies, the World Health Organization and virtually all sex worker organisations.
I was just explaining the position of people who support this criminalization, I didn’t mean I supported it myself.
However, I doubt many prostitutes enjoy what they’re doing, with money being a bonus. I’ve read about some who do, but it seems to me that they’re women who are very selective about their customers, a bit akin to having multiple “sugar daddies”.
I believe that they typically enjoy the money, with sex being the unfortunately necessary mean to get it. Not different from most people who have a job.
Mentioning “sugar daddies” reminds me that the law that was intented in France also targeted them, by criminalizing the procurement of material advantages in exchange for sex (particularly lodging). They stopped short of criminalizing marriage with a gold digger, but I couldn’t help but think that it was close.
I can’t speak for the rest of Australia, but in Queensland, legalising prostitution ultimately came as an side-outcome from a judicial inquiry, called the Fitzgerald Inquiry. The main thrust of the inquiry was high level Police Corruption (including the police commissioner of the time.), and one of the drivers of the money were illegal brothels. Prostitution being illegal at the time. As a result prostitution was legalised and is regulated by an independent body Prostitution Licensing Authority (PLA).
Seriously? I’m not sure what goes through some people’s minds sometimes (specifically, the French feminists at issue), not why ‘marriage to a gold digger’, is even the kind of thing you would remotely want to outlaw.
It seems to me that ‘sugar babies’, etc. are categorically differnet than prostitutes, because you’re not paying for individual sex acts, you’re paying for an entire relationship and everything that goes with it. Sugar baby relationships are of course not illegal in America, and as far as I know no serious person argues that they are or should be. Also, if a woman is selective about the people she sleeps with in exchange for material gain, and only sleeps with a few of them, then one of the main arguments against prostitution (that prostitutes serve as nodes in disease transmission networks) is no longer operative.
No, it was irony. I meant that when you begin to go after “sugar daddies”, you’re coming close to criminalizing relationships that are usually considered acceptable.
You’re paying for a relationship plus sex. If you take as granted that paying for sexual favours is exploiting women, there’s no much difference in nature with prostitution.
Also, the support was more general than just radical feminists. A significant part of the left was supporting the text (along with the moral conservatives, of course). A lot of publicity was made about it, it was voted by the lower chamber, dates were already given for its implementation, then the senate rejected it for unknown reason even though it wasn’t expected to (and besides in France the lower chamber has the last word, so it wasn’t really a problem anyway), and then it completely dissapeared from the radar without any explanation. I’m still puzled as to why.
Also, the supporters of the text many times asserted that the existence of prostitution wasn’t something unavoidable, contrarily to what people say. That it could be eradicated. Which makes me think they’re completely deluded (and make clear their real intent).
Finally, not all feminists oppose prostitution, as already mentioned by someone. For instance, so-called “sex positive” feminists have no issue with the principle of it. In fact it’s quite telling that those who oppose it vocally the most are the radical feminists who have other issues like for instance with BDSM practitioners or even with transexuals, hence who are generally happy to tell you what you should do in your bedroom, or even what your gender should be.
I’m assuming you don’t mean this literally, but even so, “slept with” doesn’t seem the most appropriate euphemism for prostitution.
I mean, it depends on what exactly you find objectionable about prostitution. If it’s the money aspect, the exchange of sexual favours for material gain, then sure, sugar babies aren’t all that different (nor are people who marry for money). If it’s the promiscuity aspect, though, then it’s entirely different: sugar babies and trophy wives may (or may not) be having a sexual relationship with a man largely for material reasons, but they’re not doing it with dozens of men per week. From a disease-transmission perspective, for example, the sugar baby and the trophy wife are very different from a prostitute who sees large number of clients.
If Law and Order: SVU is to be believed, there’s absolutely no legal issue with sugar babys, because the courts have interpreted prostitution laws narrowly to forbid explicit exchange of sexual acts for money, not to forbid having an entire sexual and emotional relationship that includes financial support.
I have a good friend who does the ‘sugar baby’ thing, actually. She likes sex, and especially likes rich men, so everyone seems to be happy. She sees her situation as very different from a prostitute, and is (interestingly) of mixed feelings about whether prostitution should be legal.
Why not ask a prostitute? Maggie McNeil, a former prostitute and librarian, has a blog called The Honest Courtesan where she advocates for legalizing prostitution along the New Zealand model. (She despises the Nordic model for the reasons some have already cited in this thread.)
Being an ex-librarian, she’s got a very keen eye for detail and has done a great job of excoriating the claims of anti-prostitution groups, particularly the NGOs that have long made hay by conflating human trafficking with prostitution.
Some of McNeill’s points:
The Swedish model victimizes women and the people who advocate and run it in Sweden are an amazing bunch of lunatics.
NGOs that make millions from government grantshave played fast and loose with the facts, conflating sex trafficking with prostitution intentionally and wildly exaggerating the number of underage victims of sex trafficking.
In countries where prostitution is illegal, cops routinely rape and abuse prostitutues. (See previous cite). ROUTINELY. “Vice squad” means cops engage in vice.
Most people identified as pimps by authorities are basically male associates of the prostitute: husbands, lovers, family members, people who work for the prostitutes, etc. See previous cite. Women who are pimped are rare.
Frankly, the amount of lying and disinformation being spread about prostitutes is amazing, and McNeill digs right into it. The reason we need to make prostitution legal is to end our cultural insanity on the topic, if nothing else. Plus, we get pot legalized and prostitution legalized, our women’s prisons will empty considerably, and that will be a good thing.
Here in the Dominican Republic “mongering” is against the law. Meaning any third person making money off the prostitute transaction. I agree with that as long as it is enforced logically. But when they started picking on taxi drivers who delivered men to the girls it got out of line.
How so? If she has something that people will pay for and she is willing to sell it, how is she a victim? You sound like a preacher type.
As Maggie McNeil points out, that’s the way it tends to work: male associates of any sort get identified as “pimps.”
For the second time, I was explaining the motivation behind such laws. It’s not my position.
I’m not sure why premarital sex is not considered taboo but prostitution is. If two people meet in a bar and fuck that isn’t shamed, just so long as cash doesn’t exchange hands. If a woman is attracted to a mans wealth and has sex that isn’t shamed either.
But this is a center right country so I don’t know if things will change anytime soon.
Actually, there are a lot of people (typically associated with certain brands of liberal feminism, I think) who would happily shame women who are attracted to rich men. I don’t know what they think marriage should be based on (a mutual love of Arrested Development and bungee gumping, I suppose), but economics is supposed to play no role. And of course there are lots of people who would shame folks (especially women) who sleep with people they meet in a bar. I’d try not to do either, myself.
In the interest of playing devil’s advocate, I can think of two good reasons one might want prostitution to be illegal.
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Lots of people believe you should only have sex with people you seriously care about and are in a relationship with. In principle, I’d agree (mildly) with that, and I’d consider sex with people you just met to be wrong, though only mildly so. That being said, not everything that’s immoral should be illegal. I certainly don’t want to outlaw two people meeting at a bar or a party and having sex, and I don’t want to outlaw certain forms (highly regulated, with lots of protections for the woman) of prostitution either. The second is no more or less moral than the first. After all, Christianity says that idolatry is immoral too, but that doesn’t mean we should go around arresting my Hindu relatives for keeping idols.
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Prostitutes have the potential to be major hubs of STD transmission. Unlike the purely moral considerations, this might actually be a legitimate public policy goal. However, I think the reality is that banning prostitution just forces it underground and makes it even more of a STD risk- it makes it more difficult for prostitutes to be tested, demand use of condoms, etc… When Rhode Island accidentally legalized prostitution between 2003 and 2009, the state actually saw a drop in gonorrhea rates.
Actually, there *have *been calls in France to explicitly ban “sugar daddies”: US ‘sugar babies’ website causes stir in France
And Maggie McNeill like most sex worker rights advocates supports decriminalisation, not legalisation.
Not surprised. Here a sentence in the article linked to that shows that prostitution (or in this case whatever looks like it) is perceived inherently as abuse :
[QUOTE=Mme Mailfert]
The site hides violence against women in beautiful wrapping paper,” said Anne-Cecile Mailfert, a spokeswoman for feminist group Osez le Feminisme
[/QUOTE]