SophieHirschfeld
Scholar
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2008
- Messages
- 104
In one of my favorite author's 50-years-from-now world sex workers are trained, licensed, taxed, examined, and rated for various types of work from the casual pick-up to the fetish specialist to the high-end escort, educated and sophisticated enough to accompany clients to professional and social affairs.
In Japan, they have a modern kind of concubine that is temporary (generally a few years), young, pretty and educated which are sometimes trained. The possession of such a concubine is often considered to be an element of higher status. The girls are there to be 'spoiled,' purpetuate the spoiled-child image that japan seems so fond of in porn, and they often continue with their education as they live on the wealth of their employer.
Sex workers provide a service that is in high demand. They should be protected and supported in every way, especially in health care and safety.
Completely agreed.
Sex workers who do the work to support a drug/alcohol habit have other, more serious, issues at hand, and again should be supported to resolve those issues before making the choice to stay "in the business" or explore other employment options.
I would think they should be treated as an individual in any other job with a drug problem.
Legislation of morality seldom works to anyone's advantage but it often provides massive opportunities for violent, criminal people to run the business (drugs, prostitution, protection, and the like).
The basic question of why is prostitution illegal is probably along the same lines of why sodomy was illegal up until quite recently: no one bothered changing or challenging the laws.
There is risk in rebellion - people in the past haven't been willing to take such risks.
Probably because most parents do not want their children to think being or using a prostitute is a desirable lifestyle choice, and as such, having a brothel close to a school would breed familiarity and lower inhibitions.
Familiarity isn't necessarily bad with the right kind of education and, in this case, lower inhibitions may not be as well. In reality, when you're dealing with something like sexuality, an innate drive, what your education does is more along the lines of giving someone a healthy or unhealthy attitude about specific things. For example, if you're teaching about masturbation, you might make a kid feel guilty for it (as the mormons tend to do) or you might make them feel comfortable and give them information on how to do it safely. In the case of having a brothel around - the parents would have the opportunity to perhaps instill more hatred (though, I would hope not), or they might have a chance to discuss risks, social issues, and positive attitudes towards people in the sex industry.
Laws are there to uphold subjective morals. For example, there are laws to prosecute those who inflict cruelty on animals. As for objective morals, the closest one to being objective I can think of is ‘treat others as you’d like them to treat you’. How many clients would like to be treated as they treat prostitutes?
I would have to disagree on what you consider laws to be for and what you consider to be objectively moral. I consider laws to be there to protect people. Subjective morals tend to not be driven by such things. Instead, they often end up doing the opposite when enforced.
I don't think of do unto others as an objective moral - in fact, I tend to think that's generally a dumb idea. for example, perhaps someone you know likes to be hugged while another peer dislikes touch. Hugging one would be more approrpiate than hugging the other - so if they interacted, the moral decision might be to not hug so that nobody's rights are violated and neither are made to feel uncomfortable. It would be immoral for the person who likes hugging to demand a hug if they knew of the discomfort that their hugging caused. One thing that I run into with clients is that sometimes I have clients that are into BDSM. I'm not into being the submissive in an interaction, but if a person wants to be the submissive and have me dominate, I'm totally ok with that as long as it doesn't involve particular requests. In fact, this became such an issue on the site I work on that it inspired four blog posts by me under "consent, control and the sex industry."
Not at all. What I think may happen is legalising prostitution would stimulate the market to grow. There would be high-quality regulated brothels, which would provide good services for both the women and their clients. Then there would be a (possibly much larger) unregulated sex-worker industry, which would not be much better than the ones we have now as far as working conditions and safety are concerned.
I disagree. While legalisation will cause the market to grow (because the sex industry has yet to meet demand), it is unlikely to cause the illegal aspect to grow and is likely to make the illegal side shrink. There are things that can be done, though, to make the illegal aspect of the industry still safer. I think it would be reasonable to no longer put illegal workers in jail, for example, and to offer programs and options to help those in the industry. I think that, much like the charges you would give to a person violating other business laws, that a fine for specific violations like health code violations, are not unwarranted and might be very useful.
I think legalising and regulating prostitution may be a good idea, but I expect it would not provide the degree of improvement many people who support the idea think it would.
I think we have sufficient evidence from other places that have legalised it to support what people have claimed about how it helps.
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" high turnover rate."
Some of the gals around here leave the business by dying.. terminated with extreme prejudice.
One of the gals I spend time with talks about chokings, and beatings and stabbings, and jumping out of moving cars... and seldom has any cash for things like... food! And she's been doing it since high school, with no serious thought of trying anything less hazardous.
With prostitution being illegal, there's not many options for a girl who gets beaten up - you don't get protection when you're committing a crime. Legalization will help in that area at least. Also, a few anecdotes is not reflective of the whole. I know plenty of people in the business and have seen people come and go very quickly. Hell, I've seen girls that didn't last the first half hour. Those anecdotes, though, are not very valuable so I asked some of my employers and a madam that I found through one of them about what the turnover for their businesses are. Unfortunately, though, that high turnover also seems to result in some bitterness towards the industry - I haven't found a good way to measure how much, but I hope to find something that can get me that kind of information soonish.
One of the problems is that legal prostitutes have trouble getting health care because of their profession. And being in such a high risk profession it's understandable for insurance companies.
Actually, in places where it is legal and regulated the health risks are lower, not higher. Frequent health checks and good quality control (by keeping the girls in-house, etc.) helps reduce health risks. Because of that, it might actually be unwise for an insurance company to discriminate against them.
I never said they were. All I´m saying is that they have specific legislation, and that shows that abuses of that kind are somehow special, otherwise we could just use the general, non-specific harassment or kidnapping laws to prosecute these types of crimes.
So, since people treat alcohol differently than other drugs, is alcohol special? People treating things differently doesn't mean that there's a rational reason to do so or that doing so is practical.
But not all types of slavery all equally wrong, are they? That was my point.
You're making an assumption that since not all forms of slavery are equally damaging that they are also not all equally wrong and that sexual slavery is osmehow the most wrong or among the worst types of wrong. That's a pretty big leap to make. ALSO, you're assuming that prostitution is some form of slavery even though you've yet to support that assertion.
The reference to societal views was one of two two different angles in which I was trying to show that there is a difference between sexual and other types of abuse. The other was an appeal to individual morality, with the example of the rape of the daughter I have repeated several times.
Prostitution is neither abuse nor rape. Your examples don't apply.
I know we are taking about prostitution and not rape, but my argument relies on the fact that for most people abuses of the sexual kind (rape, harassment, whatever...) are distinct form other kinds of abuses. In that sense sex work is not like any other work. Just like cleaning glass windows on a skyscraper is not the same job as cleaning glasses on floor level. One might never have an fall, one might not have fear of heights and do the job happily. But it´s not the same job.
NO - the reason why rape and other sexual abuses are treated differently are because of the damage that we know they cause. NOT because they are sexual but because of things like the extremely high instance, for example, of Borderline Personality Disorder that is linked to childhood sexual abuse or the extreme forms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that is caused by rape. Those same things are NOT linked to prostitution. Thus, your comparison is invalid.
Combine this point with the fact that the market economy sometimes produces abusive cicumstances and inequalities (of course this is what liberalists will never admit since for them the market economy is the ultimate force of good), and you can have a an argument for the illegalisation of prostitution for protectionist reasons.
1) I could totally tear apart your assertions regarding 'liberalists' (it is funny how you turned it to an evil '-ist' word, kinda like the anti-communism propaganda films of the 50s that targetted 'isms') however, this is not the proper thread for it. Your fallacy, though, is in giving an improper summary or definition of the concept you're mentioning.
2) EVERY industry can produce a circumstance where corruption exists, regardless of if it is in a free-market economy or not.
I see this parallel to the spirit of work safety laws. Let´s take industrial presses for example, a very common type of machine. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_press) Not so long ago workers used to work in these machines with no protections, sticking their hands in the thing and missing a limb every so often. Nowadays one is not even ALLOWED near one of these machines unless the machine has a number of protections that make it almost impossible to have an accident (detectors, covers etc.).
Even if a worker says that he´s so confident about the job that he can, and wants to work in an unprotected press, he´s not allowed to.
In a similar spirit, if sex work is deemed too "risky" or demeaning by society, an outright ban (or very strict regulations and controls) might be enacted. And the fact that some sex workers don´t think the work is dangerous or demeaning does not invalidate this, just like in the case of the press worker.
Which is why most people who are for the legalization of prostitution are saying that there should be regulations. It can be legal and have laws put in place to make it safer. (cue cellular one commercial: Do you hear me now?)
However I understand your argument, that ultimately everyone has a choice and that some (or many) sex workers do it voluntarily and see it as "any other job", So they have a right to do that kind of work, since they are not hurting anybody, not even themselves. It is a strong argument and I´m even inclined to say you´re right.
Thank you.
But for the reasons given, I don´t think it is like any other job (it changes severely once coercion is brought into the picture, something impossible to avoid completely, just like accidents are impossible to avoid completely in industrial jobs), and the "choice" is not always so freely made. (It would only be so in a country with a good social security...)
Any job changes severely once coercion is brought into the picture and most industries have corrupted parts.
So legalisation should come together with a very strict set of regulations and controls to make it hard for abuses to happen.
I'm not going to argue against regulation - I'm all for regulations to keep them safe.
Yes.
I don't think that every form of slavery is equally wrong, necessarily. They are all wrong, but due to the differences in the damage caused by, say, forced labor to an individual in nazi germany as compared to a domestic worker immigrant like you might encounter in Texas and other southern states. Or, for a more accessible example, I would say that if you've ever watched the movie 'schindler's list' - the treatment of schindler's slaves was certainly better than the treatment of the rest of the slaves/prisoners shown.
The flaw in Abooga's argument is that he assumes that what he's arguing against is worse than other forms. However, I can think of many examples where other forms of slavery were worse than forms of sexual slavery that I've heard of due to the damage caused to the individual. Abooga's claims rely on several unsupported assertions.
jonnyclueless,
Interviews are not really representative of the whole - I think it would be better to see some indurance regulation documents from various agencies in order to get a better idea of the validity of your claims.
I'll address more of this thread later, perhaps.