It’s mostly because we don’t like prostitutes, and we REALLY don’t like pimps. It’s hard to convince people to legalize prostitution when it’s so associated with negative things like drugs, abuse, theft, infidelity, violence, disease, etc.
Of course, it’s mostly because it’s illegal that all those other negative things are associated with it, but changing all that inertia is difficult.
I’d say that men have mixed feeling about prostitution: We want them there when we want/need them, but we don’t want our daughters to consider it as a prospective career.
Legalizing prostitution gives it an implied endorsement by the state (I think decriminalization would be more appropriate). If it were legal, with no stigma attached, women could find themselves in a situation where they’d be contractually obligated to work in the sex industry. I don’t think anyone would consider that progress.
Sex workers can and do refuse clients and services. It’s a myth that the buyer only has to show up and wave a wad of cash and bang, the woman’s body is his to do what he wants with. That can happen in situations of complete control (where the person isn’t really a “sex worker” at all, but a slave), but it isn’t the typical scenario. Even drug-using street workers have things that they simply won’t do, and exercise their own judgment as to whether or not to accept a particular client.
Of course, if you have fewer clients, it’s more difficult to refuse the demands of the people who do approach you - which is one reason why the “end demand” strategies currently being promoted in many places are harmful to sex workers.
The New Zealand legislation which decriminalised prostitution actually specifies that sex workers have an absolute right to refuse any service, or any client, at any time. In a study carried out by the Christchurch School of Medicine a few years after implementation of the law, nearly two-thirds of sex workers (across the street, managed indoor and independent indoor sectors) said that they felt more able to refuse clients since decriminalisation than they were before it.
That’s a myth.
This would be an interesting situation: What if a racist white prostitute refused to have sex with a black customer only because he was black? Can/should she legally do so?
Isn’t murder the first crime?
Who cares?
Also, ‘legit’ prostitutes may lie about any number of things and you’d be none the wiser if you were dumb enough to believe it. HIV is rising in Clark County (eg Vegas) and the police keep a listed of busted prostitutes with HIV.
Point is, hookers can and will lie. They’re out to get paid and not always especially concerned with customer service. Well, servicing, but eh…
Actually, there have been no concrete studies that back up your claim in North America in the last 30 years, though male4male prostitutes certainly do carry a higher risk.
I don’t want to protect their rights or give them a 401(k). It’s illegal.
Prostitution probably brings in some tourism in Vegas (even though it’s illegal there) and police have vowed to crack down on various occasions.
Decriminalizing the sex trade in Vegas isn’t going to take away the pimps and streetwalkers. It’s going to create a black market with lower prices for sex because the “legit” brothels will charge higher rates and have more restrictions.
Also…so many of these sex workers are kids or start as kids. Does that in any way bother you?
[quote=“CitizenPained, post:46, topic:609275”]
Isn’t murder the first crime?
Who cares?
Also, ‘legit’ prostitutes may lie about any number of things and you’d be none the wiser if you were dumb enough to believe it. HIV is rising in Clark County (eg Vegas) and the police keep a lis-X5AS3p4zJ4fg"]busted prostitutes with HIV.
What bothers me is how one cannot see that putting people on the fringes of the law causes more problems then working with them to establish some order and control.
I read from your other posts that you had a recent personal experience with your boyfriend cheating on you “with a prostitute”, and your fears about the consequences of your having had unprotected sex with him.
You are certain that the root cause is the prostitute, because he told you that (even though he has lied about everything else-according to you). He was honest enough to blame a prostitute, not just a lady he may have met, or maybe someone else you both know. And I am sad for your having to go through this.
But I believe that it is more convenient for you, and many others to scapegoat a prostitute for a sad personal situation. 90% will agree that she must be the root evil, and emotions will run high…and how will this solve anything, and has the anger against their trade ever ended the practice of prostitution?
GAS, thanks for starting the thread, it’s been an interesting read. And for the record, I don’t think that people only want to ban prostitution because it is an eye sore on the corner. However, I can certainly see why they wouldn’t want hookers hanging around the towns streets.
The truth - gotta love it 
Assuming we are discussing an area where it is legal, why do you consider prostitution less than honest work?
What is the difference between the honesty of prostitution and other labor jobs such as a carpenter, laborer, or auto mechanic?
Also if too many women choose prostitution the law of supply and demand should kick in. Other industries will have to pay more to attract talent and the pay of prostitutes will fall until a new equilibrium is reached.
What do you mean when you say “It’s going to create a black market…”. Are you trying to say there is not already a black market for the sex trade in Vegas? Do you think that black market will get bigger, or smaller if prostitution was made legal? You can’t honestly be arguing that legalizing prostitution will increase rates of illegal prostitution, right?
I’ve seen online forums where NZ sex workers ponder this issue so I guess it hasn’t been legally clarified. It’s an interesting question, but bear in mind that equality legislation frequently makes exceptions for particularly personal situations (eg landlords can’t discriminate in renting out a whole premise, but tenants can discriminate in subletting a room) so it’s not outside the realms of possibility that such discrimination would be allowed in this case.
I don’t recall singling out North America, but here is a review of literature from the 1980s-early 1990s which backs up the claim, at least in relation to FSWs.
I find this comment hard to square with your earlier statement, “There’s something about sexual exploitation that’s just wrong to us.” How do you stop exploitation without protecting people’s rights?
If you have a black market and “legit” and “non-legit” brothels then you don’t have decriminalisation, you have legalisation. The terms are not equivalent.
First of all, the percentage who are kids or start as kids is usually exaggerated; the studies that claim to show an average start rate of around 14 are based on surveys of young people in the sex trade which by definition exclude those who began in adulthood.
That said, even if we had an accurate figure it would probably still be too high. But the reasons it is too high have to do with things like unstable home environments and lack of support systems for troubled teens. You can’t address these things by criminalising prostitution generally. If anything that only makes things worse, since penalising people for selling sex tends to put them into a vicious cycle where it’s harder for them to escape the trade.
Prostitution is subject to the laws of supply and demand, but it is also self-limiting to an extent because it’s work that a lot of people simply will not do even if it is legal and well-paying (just as many will not work in the branches of sex industry that *are *legal, such as porn and stripping). The research in New Zealand has found no overall increase in the number of sex workers since decriminalisation. I was actually discussing the pay issue only last week with someone from the NZ Prostitutes Collective and according to them, anyway, prices have remained more or less stable.
Off course…every prostitute is totally free (and should be) to decide which clients to take on, and which to refuse. Whether that is based on diisabillity, size, eye-color, nationality or race. If you are too picky, you just won’t make any money.
As JTagain said, there is a difference between the bartalk about prostitution and reality. I often get the idea people think prostitutes are 100% proffesional and will provide the same ‘service’ to each client (like a carpenter or lawyer); there are not many girls who manage to do this. We’re talking about young girls, that can be grumpy, moody, have a bad day, be manipulative, etc. There’s plenty of girls that get all mushy when a 24 year old with a six pack walks into a club, and be sure that this kid is going to get more for his money than the 50 year old with a beergut that came before him (if he has to pay at all that is).
The same is true in Germany, but in nominal prices…no inflation correction over the last decades. Also there are plenty of venues where the girls get very little (as low as 10 euro a fuck, or even less).
Before I begin, let me just say that I’m all in favor of legalizing prostitution and requiring licensure and safety precautions in the industry, including frequent health monitoring. But there are a few things I’m still unsure of, the biggest being the “We refuse service…” issue.
Hmm… I see your point (although I have no idea if discrimination against a protected class is legal in the US in such a situation, but let’s pretend for a moment it is), but I’m not sure I’d agree. Having a subletter is a constant, prolonged and long term situation. Working as a prostitute for a particular john is, what, a few hours in most cases? I’m not sure they should be viewed the same way.
I think (much as I’m loathe, for historical reasons, to draw this parallel) that it would be more realistic to compare prostitution to nursing. I have to handle penises in my line of work. I have to perform some pretty intimate and invasive procedures on men’s bodies. I am *not *legally allowed to discriminate in my choice of patients based on race. Now, as a home health care nurse, I really do get to pick and choose my clients to a very large degree. If I don’t “feel safe” when I get to a clients’ home, I can leave, call the office, and refuse the client. But I can’t “not feel safe” repeatedly for only Black clients, or the office (and the accrediting agency and Medicare) are going to smell a very illegal discriminatory rat.
The difference between me and a prostitute, of course, is that I don’t invite my clients to touch *my *body, and I don’t touch their bodies in a *sexual *way. I may handle a penis to place a catheter or to clean it, but I don’t attempt to bring my client to orgasm.
And so it’s pretty quickly revealed that, as much as we talk about exploitation and disease and those poor girls without a choice of professions (bullocks, they have just as much choice of profession as anyone else - you wanna tell me a hamburger flipper is doing his job because he just luuuuuurves hamburger flipping so much? Of course not, he’s “trapped” in a dead end job just as handily as any whore)…criminalization of prostitution is about Sex is Bad Outside of Marriage. Pure and simple, it’s because sex is viewed a different than any other activity one can do with one’s body. Because the vagina is such a powerful, magical organ, far stronger than the feeble mental capacity of its owner, that we have to have special rules about its use.
It’s not about anything other than (Abrahamic) religious attitudes about sex, when you get right down to it.
ETA: But, much like the politicians who don’t want to be the first to “promote” prostitution by submitting a bill to legalize it…I can only say that here, in the relative anonymity of a message board. I’m sure not going to be the person to publicly say that not only should prostitution be made legal, but prostitutes should be legally compelled to take any client and to only turn down clients for non-protected class reasons. 'Cause yeah, that feels horrific even to me. Logically, it may make sense, but I’ve also been raised in this Sex is Special culture, and that feels much too much like rape to even contemplate outside of a thought exercise.
i’m kind of shocked at how puritanical a lot of these answers are.
i’m hearing a lot of people more or less say “i have a personal aversion to hooking so it should be illegal.”
I live in oklahoma where tattoos were illegal until just a few years back. all my life i heard a lot of the same exact arguments against it as hooking: if we make it legal, anyone can and will do it (like joe schmo in his mom’s basement–which ironically was exactly where you’d go to get a tat prior to legalization). it’ll spread diseases rampantly and diminish morality. and so on.
well. needless to say, none of that’s true. now it’s just a well-regulated and safe economy that has enabled a lot of my artist friends to have a new career.
what about gambling…? we’re surrounded by states that have outlawed gambling, but we legalized it a while back (we also just got the lottery–something that was a morally averted as well). now we have casinos practically everywhere and big ass giant ones on the borders to accommodate adjacent states where it’s illegal.
let me tell you about the fight the christian right put up over gambling. good grief. but here we are, doing more or less just fine–unless you want to count the boom to the economy of casino towns or the abundance of big-name performers who now come due to accommodating venues. count those things and we’re doing way better than before.
i dont see how a hooker would be in much worse of a position than a stripper. and morally, the line in the sand is pretty arbitrary. compare it to pornography. all the same appeal and availability…so if your daughter won’t go into porn now because of moral objection then i doubt she’d go into hooking if it were legal.
all this talk about how hookers would have no rights of refusal and everything else is just ludicrous. go to a strip club and listen to all the rules that vary from club to club. you can’t touch me, i can touch you but i don’t have to, etc etc. there are big burly men to give you the toss when you encroach on or break a rule.
i would imagine a brothel would have bouncers just the same. as well as they’d have their own hard-line rules of conduct.
the std thing doesn’t jibe either. most college girls go through a sexin’ it up phase and make a lot of alcohol-based idiotic decisions. i imagine someone who is a sex professional would be just that–professional about their decisions. i can build a case the likelihood for stds could go DOWN. and ideally, i could imagine running a brothel something akin to plasma donation: you do an intake screening well before any sexual transactions occur, they draw blood, you’re tested and put into a database and in a week or two you can come back as a client. such systems work for so many other weird industries…so why not for prostitution? also, the concept would have to be that over-all more people would be having more sex–more unprotected sex–if prost became legal. i don’t think the rates would really go up, and i say that based on the idea that just because it’s legal doesn’t mean bob’s wife is going to be any more easy going about him participating in that stuff. so if bob is the kind of guy who would get a hooker in spite of familial objections, he probably already is, regardless of legality.
and anyway, moralistically, how is it any better to pay someone for companionship than sex? it’s MUCH more sad to hire a girlfriend to talk to you (something that’s legal and an upstart industry) or just an escort because you’re too socially awkward to get a date. that’s depressing–at least AS depressing as paying for sex.
and what about dowlries…? not long ago, it was a common thing to basically profit or even be bribed into marriage. in some places that’s totally still a thing. morally, is that not wicked as well…? is buying love? because we’re free to buy love. i’m sorry, we’re free to buy the facsimile of love.
i need to stress i have a STRONG personal aversion to this. i’ve never nor would ever go to a strip club, and i just met a girl that i had a major crush on and started pitching woo, courting her like crazy until i found out how openly sexual she is. it just sucked all the special out (PLEASE forgive that pun) and my crush died. i don’t want people to be having meaningless sex, but they do–and we’re not going to legislate making them. because like i said, tons of people are having free, meaningless and unsafe sex all the time.
I have to agree with this.
I’d like to know if any of you know any prostitutes or would like to talk to one? Wouldn’t you like to know from one of the girls what it’s really like? You’re all full of opinions, but not one of you has the experience to make any statements. Sorry.
it depends on what you mean by ‘knowing prostitutes’, but I speak to prostitutes often enough. From most of the responses (especially those today) it is pretty clear that most of the posters in this thread have little experience with the proffesion.
Here I am. Ask me anything.