Got to disagree with Cecil on his closing – I certainly don’t think ICK when discussing the arcane and insanely oppressive legislation on prostitution in this country. People’s bodies are their own bodies – that’s not negotiable. So long as a crime remains victimless, it should be every citizen’s moral DUTY to defend those rights; whether reproductive choice, drug use, or even prositution. People got to make a living, people got to have a little enjoyment, people sometimes get lonely. Seems like a pretty obvious solution to me.
As I posted in the other prostitution thread, the “ick” factor doesn’t come from someone consensually selling sexual services (try saying that five times fast). It arises from public solicitation (“streetwalking”). Large numbers of boorish, often drunk, men drive slowly down the street, yelling vulgarities out the window at hookers – or at women who aren’t hookers but who have the misfortune of having to wait for a bus or walk to their car in that street. Most of the men soliciting hookers are either a “bad element” or they are usually-polite citizens out on a tear and unconcerned about their behavior – “johns” soliciting hookers in public tend to harass passersby, get into fights, break bottles, and otherwise disturb the peace way more than the average person does. All of this drives away merchants’ foot traffic (no double entendre intended) and discourages people, especially women, from living in the neighborhood. Note that (at least in my opinion), the public nuisance – the “ick” factor – comes from the customers and not the prostitutes or from prostitution itself.
Sorry, but I give a big ICK to the act of prostitution.
I agree with you about the nuisance factor of public solicitation – that’s the part can really affect a neighborhood and diminish the quality of life for its residents. That’s the part that I, as a concerned citizen, would want police to combat. I don’t care much one way or another about the legality of prostitution.
That said, the ACT of prostitution – of a woman repeatedly having sex with strangers – creeps me out. I can’t imagine how desperate a woman must be to decide that is the best way to make a living. I’m not coming at this from a moral perspective but from a purely psychological one. The idea simply grosses me out.
You say that your ICK reaction is psychological; could it indeed be because all your life people told you that prostitution was dirty and evil and that the law told you it was dirty and illegal? That no one would ever admit to you that disease rates (often cited as the main reason for criminalization) are lower in countries with legalized prostitution? Why law enforcement officials usually resort to red herring issues when pressed on their tactics toward prostitutes while violent offenders are walking free?
That said, does your ICK reaction lead you to believe that criminalization is appropriate? I personally can’t imagine sitting in church every Sunday, being a vegetarian, or watching ABC’s TGIF Friday night lineup; but hey – apparently lots of folks go for these things. (Well, not the TGIF one.) The thing is, a bunch of puritans around the turn of the century, basing legal opinions largely on Biblical scripture and their own mores, have inflicted on us the most convoluted, arcane, and draconian legal system imaginable. And THAT is what grosses ME out.
I feel pretty much the same way that Clark does. I have no moral problem with prostitution. Control disease and exploitation by legalizing, say I. It’s simply the thought that someone would commercialize something that I feel is rightfully very personal. I feel the same way about department store sales at Christmas time, actually. “Ick” isn’t a very articulate way to describe it, I’ll admit, but it does some things up.
I mean, how would we feel about somebody trapped in a starving city (say, Leningrad, early 1940s) who bought fresh corpses from their families, and butchered and sold them for stew? I don’t have a moral problem with it; dead people don’t mind getting made into soup, and saving the city from starvation is more important than saving the family’s feelings. It’s just that it makes me queasy to think of a human’s body being turned into pure merchandize.
If you ask me how I feel about, say, fashion modelling, I’d say I’m uneasy about it as well. Not as intensely uneasy, since the model’s body is substantially unaffected by the photo shoot, but uneasy nonetheless.
I’m not defending how I feel; I wish I could accept the cruder parts of the world more stoically. An entomologist can watch a spider inject its digestive juices into a fly to liquidate the fly’s internal organs without getting squeamish. I ain’t no entomologist.
I found an interesting statistic on prostitution, at least in the United States. About 20 years ago the FBI culled some figures on forcible rape in Nevada and in all the states that border it–Arizona, California, Idaho, Oregon, and Utah. They found that the incidence of forcible rape is four times higher in NV than in any of the states bordering it. I got this item from Tom Burnam’s Dictionary of Misinformation, and he follows this item with an important point: Prostitution is not a “cure for rape”; forcible rape is a crime of violence, not passion. I wonder if the semi-official sanction given prostitution in the United Kingdom has any effect on forcible-rape statistics there.
I’m with the “ick” contingent. One of my friends has a house near on street frequented by prostitutes. It used to be, and should be a “nice” neighborhood (not that “not nice” neighborhoods deserve ickyness) but anyway…
The gutters of the streets are always littered with used condoms. Sometimes the lawns of the resident’s houses. If that does not qualify for “ick”, I don’t know what does.
I also agree with Clark on this one - a BIG ick. For the reasons he stated - a woman having sex with many partners, repeatedly, to make a living. My personal reaction - ICK.
Dougie_Monty raises a good point. Rape isn’t caused by “men needing sex”, it’s caused by something else. Don’t know what it is, but prostitution doesn’t affect it.
On the other hand, prostitutes are sometimes the victims of sexual violence, and it’s hard or impossible to protect them when the profession is illegal. “So officer, I was turning tricks when this guy with a knife…”
It’s worse than that, Boris. I should have added that, while prostitution is legal in NV, it is not legal in any state that NV borders. The Teeming Millions may draw their own conclusions.
It may not have anything to do with legalized prostitution, dougie_monty. It may have more to do with gambling: Guy loses his shirt at the table, goes to his hotel room and takes it out on his Significant Other. Free booze to gamblers is probably also a factor. Also, how about the really bad “johns” who take the women up to their rooms and simply take what they want without paying for it? If that isn’t forcible rape, then what is it?
yosemitebabe: If the ladies had a place they could take their customers and conduct their business off the street, there wouldn’t be used condoms littering the gutters. And we wouldn’t have to LOOK at them doing it. Unless we paid for it…
Jab1 raises an interesting idea, that has long been the problem with legislation in my area (Nashville TN) – the lengths to which these ladies are forced to go to conduct business by the legislation in question.
Law enforcement officials here point out the crime and drug use around “adult” establishments and prostitution-heavy areas, without admitting that onerous zoning restrictions have generally forced these businesses into low-income, already undesirable neighborhoods in the first place.
But mostly the problem, I think, still comes back to ICK – it’s okay for others on this board to say ICK. Fine. It’s still (mostly) a free country, and everybody’s got an opinion. But when politicians get an ICK reaction, all too often they carry that out with legislation – rather than just avoid the issue, they’d rather suppress it since it’s DISTASTEFUL TO THEIR OWN PERSONAL MORALITY/IDEOLOGY – hence laws criminalizing prostitution, marijuana, gambling, alcohol on Sundays, homosexuality…
Clarification: prostition is legal in Nevada on a county-option basis. The last time I checked, only 6 of the state’s 14 counties have legalized prostitution. Clark County hasn’t – this is were Las Vegas, by far Nevada’s largest city (and metropolitan area) is. And Las Vegas does have a problem with crime in general, though the city tries to make the casino areas as safe as possible.
I’d like to see a county-by-county breakdown of Nevada’s rape statistics, with an indication of which counties have legal prostitution and which haven’t, before concluding that rape is a direct result of legalized prostitution.
I have to disagree with you to some extent, John Rush: I was in the Las Vegas area in June 1991 (some old yard customers of mine moved from California, and I went along to help them move in in Henderson, NV). Consulting a volume of Yellow Pages in the motel, I noted that Prostitution was not listed as a category; but the euphemism “Adult Entertainment” was; the printed ads in the Yellow Pages seemed sleazy enough that they may have been advertising the vicinity’s bawdy houses.
(On my honor, I swear that I have never patronized a house of prostitution, in Nevada or anywhere else.)
Yes, there is plenty of advertising for prostitution in Las Vegas, but since it’s not legal, they use euphemisms like “adult entertainment”, “strippers”, and “escort services”. A few ads promote bus services to brothels in Pahrump, about 60 miles west in Nye County, “where prostitutiion is legal”. (BTW, my most recent visit there was this past September.)
Prostitution exists in Las Vegas (and elsewhere), whether or not it’s legal. Criminalizing it just attracts the criminal element.
As for the ICK factor, prostitutes won’t kiss their customers because they feel it’s too personal. It’s probably best not to kiss a prostitute, anyway: you don’t know where she’s been.
Anyway, when Nevada legalized prostitution, they carefully made sure it would be in counties whose populations were below 250,000 IIRC, which carefully leaves out Reno, but not Sparks, where the Mustang Ranch was in business; it leaves out Carson City, the capitol, but not the neighboring county, less than four miles away; and it leaves out Las Vegas, but not Pahrump or Amargosa. In other words, it keeps it out of the sight of the families who visit these cities, but it’s close enough for a guy to visit if he really wants to.
I have to wonder what would happen to a county whose population has crossed the 250,000 limit?
Weirdest place where I was propositioned by a hooker: One block south of the main entrance to Disneyland. I turned her down. I was broke. And it just didn’t feel right there in sight of Mickey and Donald and Goofy…
I think the reason prostitution is legal in only some counties of Nevada, is that the population must be under a certain amount. 250,000 comes to mind.
In Rio de Janeiro, prostitutes are readily available. While I don’t think it is legal, the laws are not enforced. They have massage parlors which are basically brothels. Very clean and respectable. They have a dance floor, restaurant/bar area, saunas, professional masseuses and the girls appearance is similar to what you may see in a nice night club in Los Angeles.
Boris, your comment broke me up. 