Paying for sex, should it be illegal?

[Belz...]

God's a prude.

God's a mentally-challenged, mass-murdering narcissist.

 

[BenBurch]

Just as with other sorts of activities; the illegality of the practice promotes the involvement of organized crime, human trafficking, sex slavery, and all the ills that go with the "trade".
Were commercial sex a simple business proposition as it is in some areas, we might assume that many of these ills could be greatly limited or removed.

Commercial sex has been around a very long time, in all cultures, legal or not. So far as anyone knows, no amount of regulation has ever had the slightest effect.

Regulation has this effect; Making life more difficult for the sex worker.

 

[Belz...]

If men could get pregnant, imagine how different abortion laws would be! We'd have drive-thru clinics

Amen.

 

[Belz...]

And yet there's a whole section of feminism that is totally against prostitution and want it all banned for the good of women. One very outspoken feminist in the UK Kate Smurthwaite was recently forced to stop her talk at a university because some feminists there didn't think she was the right kind of feminist for being against prostitution.

Are those the same types of feminists who always paint women as victims ? If so, I don't think they are feminists.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

Taking one website as representative of anything is rather silly. Not only are there many and sub-population focused (i.e. gay, trans, etc.), but only a certain segment of the sex working population will list on them. In a study on the effect of NZ decriminalisation (the overall numbers didn't change, but there was a change from managed to private operations):

The majority of sex workers (87 per cent) in the five locations of the study
were female (see Table 4) and the managed sector consisted almost entirely of
female workers. In Christchurch, Nelson and Hawkes Bay there were no male
or transgender managed workers and there were very few in Auckland and
Wellington. The majority of transgender workers were street-based with a few
working privately. Male sex workers worked predominantly in the private sector,
with some on the street.

Linky (PDF).

There certainly are gender related concerns, as reported in this study (PDF), and male worker populations have distinct concerns as well, but just because male workers are a minority does not mean that criminalising them based off of female-based assumptions can be shrugged off with "meh, there are so few".

 

[Arcade22]

Based on the fact that all evidence we can see does not fit with these figures would imply therefore that there must be a problem with the methodology. I have not see the studies in question, but I know enough about how atrocious social studies like this often are to already know the sorts of reasons that could have lead to the results.

What "evidence" are you referring to? The only thing I've seen you link to is one website and then rhetorically asking us to go look for the "evidence" ourselves. If that's the best you can do your "evidence" is completely worthless.

For the record here's a English translation of the Swedish agencies report regarding youths and internet, including their self-reported experience of prostitution: http://www.mucf.se/sites/default/files/publikationer_uploads/see-me.pdf

The relevant part is on page 12 and I'll quote verbatim:

In the youth survey focused on young people aged between 16 and 25 years, 1.7 percent stated that they had ever accepted some form of payment for sex. This survey includes a broader sample of older young people who have thus had more time to make their debut and thus to have had such experiences. This survey found no difference in the extent to which male and female respondents had provided sex in return for payment. By contrast, there are substantial differences in the extent to which male and female respondents report having themselves paid for sex, with the older male respondents being the group who had done so to the greatest extent. The proportion of older male respondents (20-25 years of age) who had provided payment in return for sex was found to be 3.8 percent, as compared with 1.1 percent among the younger male respondents (16-19 years of age). Among the younger female respondents, only around a tenth of one percent report experience of having given some form of payment in return for sex. The most common form of payment among both males and females is money. Other types of payment included food and lodging, alcohol, cigarettes and drugs, and also such items as clothing and jewellery.

I suppose you can direct me to a similar website for gay men that shows more traffic? I didn't think so.

Well most gay/bi/transexuals that sell sex in Sweden do it from https://www.qruiser.com/ which is by far the largest dating/sex/relationship/etc website aimed at such people in the Nordic countries. Although it goes against the ToS to actually do so in practice there's no shortage of guys willing to have sex for money, although they don't exactly openly state "oral sex is 750 SEK" and so on.

If a stole a few pick and mix sweets when I was 10 that may still have been theft, but that doesn't mean there is any legitimate reason to include me in statistics that include armed robbers.

No but it would make it reasonable to include you among shoplifters and thieves in general.

Oh good so you do understand that there is line to draw somewhere. Now if you would just start trying to make reality fit those figures you quoted you'd realise the discrepancy between the two must lead us to conclude the method used to collate those figures are must not be drawing enough dividing lines either.

Here's an idea: show some actual data and statistics instead of just demanding that we give you the benefit of the doubt.

There is prostitution and then there's "prostitution".

Then maybe you should have said that from start instead of assuming everyone here is psychic.

If we included everything you're talking about we'd have to include every girl who wanted her boyfriend to buy her dinner and have a car before she would go out with him. We'd have to include all the gold diggers marrying old rich men, we'd have include porn stars. But that isn't helpful when we are talking about a specific form of prostitution.

In this thread i have only ever mentioned prostitution in general, whether or not it's "professional career escorts".

Do you want to get an accurate helpful understanding of society or not?

Yes, hence why I'm not demanding that we only discuss "professional escorts" or street prostitutes.

 

[Butter!]

How so? He is claiming that AdultWork is somehow irrelevant because it is a UK website and so doesnt cover the entire world. They have their own websites and sources. I am not familiar with them all, but I do know they do not have different outcomes that are the opposite to what Im talking about. The only countries where boys might face more prostitution is those like the Bacha Bazi boys in Afghanistan. It has for a very long time been a predominately women's industry because female sexuality has always been in higher demand and therefore economically worth more. Any women pretty much no matter what she looks like or how old she is can make a lot of money with sex work, a man has to be a very good looking or be very "skilled" to be able to get anywhere which will still be with men as paying customers.



Sure, but if one side is going to include statistics with trafficked street walkers along with safe and careful independent escorts, and someone else is going to include figures that include anytime someone did some sexual favour for some form of payment to show more men are prostitutes than women are, then we're always going to have a skewed picture. That will affect the policies and could mean it stays illegal. We're dealing with ideological biases here, not people that want to get a true picture. That is why we have such ridiculous statistics and arguments like Mudcat's everywhere.

Fair enough.

 

[Mark6]

Are people like Kate and Mudcat enforcing the patriarchal values to want to keep women "subservient to men, whose bodies and sexuality are owned by men"?

Short answer: Yes they are.

Even though Kate and Mudcat would never admit it -- or believe it.

 

[ponderingturtle]

And yet there's a whole section of feminism that is totally against prostitution and want it all banned for the good of women. One very outspoken feminist in the UK Kate Smurthwaite was recently forced to stop her talk at a university because some feminists there didn't think she was the right kind of feminist for being against prostitution. Just look at Mudcat in this thread who has literally said that if a woman gets paid for sex she is being raped. Are people like Kate and Mudcat enforcing the patriarchal values to want to keep women "subservient to men, whose bodies and sexuality are owned by men"? Perhaps there is another reason why people would be against prostitution.

There are a lot of sex negative feminists. Of course a lot of feminists are not terribly interested in choice for the women involved, it is about getting women to make the choices they feel women should make instead of the choices that the women themselves feel is right.

You see a lot of feminists who don't support homemakers and such even if the women choose that for example.

 

[luchog]

And yet there's a whole section of feminism that is totally against prostitution and want it all banned for the good of women. One very outspoken feminist in the UK Kate Smurthwaite was recently forced to stop her talk at a university because some feminists there didn't think she was the right kind of feminist for being against prostitution. Just look at Mudcat in this thread who has literally said that if a woman gets paid for sex she is being raped. Are people like Kate and Mudcat enforcing the patriarchal values to want to keep women "subservient to men, whose bodies and sexuality are owned by men"? Perhaps there is another reason why people would be against prostitution.

What you are describing is the phenomenon of "strange bedfellows" or "meeting on the other end of the circle"; that is, people who are otherwise diametrically opposed philosophically, yet find an issue where they are in profound agreement, though for dramatically different reasons.

What you will find, however, is that the anti-prostitution feminists (who are generally lumped in with the "sex negative" anti-porn, etc., feminists) are not a monolithic bloc, and have a number of different reasons for opposing its legalization. You'll also find that, at least in the US, they are a very small minority compared to the raft of opposition based on religious or religio-cultural grounds, which are tied into concepts of purity and women as property, whose sexuality exists for the benefit of men, and therefore must be preserved for the men who will eventually own them. Even among the less and non-religious, these factors persist, having become ingrained in American culture. From what I've seen, they're also strongly present in British culture as well. They certainly underlie marriage traditions in both countries.

Ultimately, people like Mudcat are coming from that patriarchial religio-cultural tradition, which denies agency to women. Claiming that a consenting adult engaging in an exchanges of services for monetary compensation is inherently a victim of rape is exactly that. It denies that women are capable of maintaining full control of their own sexuality, or making informed decisions regarding the disposition of their own bodies. It relegates women to the status of children at best, and livestock at worst; and is effectively preserving the patriarchial values.

The anti-prostitution feminism has multiple justifications for opposing legalization; but the most common is effectively a mirror-image of the aforementioned religio-cultural justification. Effectively, it declares that prostitution is a tool of the patriarchy to oppress and subjugate women, and is an expression of men's control over women's bodies; rather than women's control over their own bodies. It insists that women are incapable of full agency, because the culture in which they exist denies it to them. It opposes legalization on those grounds, and presumes that absent that patriarchy, prostitution would not exist. It is not quite as infantilizing as the religio-cultural tradition; but still partakes of the same belief, albeit with a different justification.

 

[Belz...]

You'll also find that, at least in the US, they are a very small minority compared to the raft of opposition based on religious or religio-cultural grounds, which are tied into concepts of purity and women as property, whose sexuality exists for the benefit of men, and therefore must be preserved for the men who will eventually own them.

Unknowingly, of course. Few people in the US see women as property.

 

[Information Analyst]

Incorrect, but not inaccurate.

Let's say that tomorrow prostitution becomes legalized in America, for example. How do you compel a moderately educated woman born in an industrialized first world nation where she has rights to rent out her body to have sex with men she doesn't know? I'd imagine most women born here wouldn't do it for any price, let alone for the prices that Johns are willing to pay.

You could say the same thing about the porn industry.

The supply most certainly does not met the demand since I recall a recent-ish poll stating that a majority of men would be willing to pay for sex if it were legal to do so. Where do they get the women and most importantly how?

Well, clearly you don't need a practitioner:client ratio of 1:1.

 

[Information Analyst]

I suppose that an interesting (though obviously simplistic) question could usefully be posed: what proportion of 18-30 year-old women who are financially secure and who do not have substance abuse issues choose to become prostitutes? And/or what proportion of current female sex workers fall into that category?

Talk about begging the question. You could replace "become prostitutes" with "work at McDonald" and it makes as much sense. If you put all possible jobs on a scale, I would think that there are a lot that would rank a lot lower than prostitution.

 

[luchog]

Unknowingly, of course. Few people in the US see women as property.

I see you ignored the "worst case" qualification for that.

But in any case, I would strongly disagree. It will rarely be expressed in those specific terms; but go into any of a half-million churches in this country, especially in the bible belt, and bring up the issue of female subservience to men. Go into any number of homes in Middle America, and see how many men believe that they have or should have some measure of control over the sexuality of their spouses, significant others, or female offspring (some on this very board have expressed such attitudes regarding their daughters). Whether that's treating women like children with limited agency, or property with none, there's a spectrum between no control and absolute control, and I'm willing to bet that a sizable percentage of Americans, male and female, fall in the "some control" part of the spectrum.

The existence of bizarre practices like "purity balls" and "purity pledges" are a pretty fair indication of just how widespread and pervasive these views are.

You only have to look back about fifty years, well within the lifespan of much of the population of this forum, to see just how widespread the portrayal of male ownership and control of female sexuality was in popular culture. And despite all the advances that have been made since then, this is still a pervasive attitude. Much of the touted "misogyny" seen in debates over things like "rape culture" and gamergate is an expression of the still-entrenched belief that female sexuality exists primarily to serve male interests.

 

[Dr. Keith]

If men could get pregnant, imagine how different abortion laws would be! We'd have drive-thru clinics

My mom always said that if men could get pregnant then birth control would be free and abortion a sacrament.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

My mom always said that if men could get pregnant then birth control would be free and abortion a sacrament.

Did your mom say why the ERA didn't pass? Women outnumber men in the US.

 

[Information Analyst]

You're required to have sex with people you don't know and potentially contract STDs or deal with unwanted pregnancies in a job you can't really talk about with others because of the social stigma that comes with it.

Name one other job like that.

What makes you think condom use is always optional?

 

[sadhatter]

The weird thing is, personally I'd never use a prostitute. I find both ends of the equation sad. Where i live there are multiple wink and nudge establishments that friends of mine would frequent after a night of drinking. But I'd never partake.

On the flip side other than on a personnel level i don't find anything wrong with it besides the crap that comes with it being illegal.

But even if i were full on against it, i wouldn't feel i had a right to tell people what they can and cannot do with their own body. And further i don't understand the point of view of those that do. Its not my business, plain and simple.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

What makes you think condom use is always optional?

Even 100% use is not 100% safe.

 

[Dr. Keith]

Did your mom say why the ERA didn't pass? Women outnumber men in the US.

No. Is that at all relevant to the counterfactual she was commenting on? Were men getting pregnant then?