Letters to the Editor
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Prostitutes as Illegal Workers...
To pick up on the interesting analogy bought by others calling for throwing the book at pimps and johns and letting the actual prostitutes walk - compared to the armies of illegals working in restaurants and landscaping and so on....
OK - johns and pimps back out of the life because they don't want the jail time / fines. Demand is not so much reduced as repressed, but the end result is the same. But what about the workers? Excluding children, the coerced and trafficked (these are already very serious crimes and offenses and prosecutable in their own right) - the remainder can be assumed to be willing adults.
One can assume that if they had any other skill set or resources they would not have considered prostituion in the first place, right? Well now even hooking is closed to them because of the lack of employers. What do they do now?
It keeps coming back to the fact that once you excluded the obviously exploited you're denying adults the right to make money in a manner that is acceptable to them. It may disgust us and we're all loaded with tons of theories and facts and conjecture showing just how screwed up , desperate and damaged you have to be even consider being a prostitute - ut they're adults and the choice is theirs.
Yes, even the choice to be degraded by another richer and more powerful person for a given amount of time for a mutually accepted amount of money.
If someone wants to fuck me and not give a shit about me and my past and my feelings or maybe he just wants to a shit on me and call me vile names - if I'm over 18 and both parties agree to a fee and whatever ground rules we fix - why shouldn't I get the money?
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The problem with the illegal labor comparison
While there are some similarities between prostitution and other types of illegal labor common in America, there are important differences. Primarily, the work itself is illegal. Landscaping is legal, even if the landscapers are not.
If we legalize prostitution, then the work becomes legal, and we can begin to address the question of the worker. However, if the work is legal, then we can't prosecute the customer for purchasing it. This represents a new paradigm, at least. Do I also face charges for eating at a restaraunt that employs illegal busboys? More to the point, do we arrest drug users and let the dealers go free?
At the same time, the legalization of prostitution will create a thriving black market. In the black market, you can expect the protections afforded to the prostitutes to be subject to countermeasures by employers (ie, intensified threats and intimidation). This is already standard operating procedure for organized crime, whose victims face no recriminations for going to the police.
Moreover, many prostitutes are in business for themselves. For instance, it's remarkably easy for a stripper to select a clientele from among her regulars to service discreetly after hours. I would imagine the vast majority of prostitutes has freelanced at one time or another. How would these cases be treated?
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Excluding....
the children, the coerced, and the trafficked.....
RammyH, as per my earlier post, you do realize that you have just listed the great majority of all prostitutes?
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Yes, Tina....
excluding those obviously coerced or trafficked or minors.
Assuming/granting that they are indeed the vast majority of prostitutes - the question is for that small minority that are not - why ban their work choice - as crappy as it is?
Again I'm not sure it's fair or wise to limit what this small portion of the population wants to do for money because many people find the job deeply degrading and disturbing.
Coal mining is dirty and wildly dangerous - children cannot work at it and we won't allow people to be forced to coal mine against their will - but coal mining in itself is not illegal.
And no - I am not stating that coal miners are whore or are damaged in any way - just that its an unpleasant and dangerous job that most people would rather not have to do to survive. Although I'm sure there are genreations of coal miners who take crazy pride in the family tradition.
As per my usual luck, this thread will close before anyone has a chance to adress my questions. Alas.
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The more equality women achieve generally, the less porn will flourish--in theory at least. Erotica is something different; even women like erotica
Erotica is what you like, porn is what you don't like. The terms have no other meaning. More female equality will not equal less porn at least on the demand side, it will equal more because fewer men will have what it takes to impress women. There is more INTERNET porn in repressive countries because this is the only way they can get it. Just like there is more pay-per-view porn in Utah than New York. But there is not less interest in porn in new york, there are just more different ways to see it so there isn't the same pent up demand for pay per view in a hotel. By the way the market is not saturated(sorry, well not really) even in liberal areas. In fact lots of men still have to hide it from their wives and girlfriends. Look at the explosion of ipod porn, when another level of privacy became available (since unlike a desktop computer no one else sees your i-pod). Sorry tina MEN LIKE SEX and UNLIKE WOMEN they don't ONLY LIKE IT UNDER VERY SPECIFIC CONDITIONS. The question is whether women can succeed in forcing men to conform to what women want, it's hard to say, some evidence suggests that in certain areas they might be able to, in others maybe not.
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Re: RammyH
See if this analogy works for you. We set speed limits rather than letting people settle on a speed they're comfortable traveling.
That means that Dale Jr, Jeff Gordon, et al. can't legally drive as fast on a highway as they do on a racetrack, despite pretty solid evidence that they're capable of it. But it also prevents the mess that would occur in a trial and error process.
I think an underlying argument that has resonance, although difficult or even impossible to prove, is that the ban on prostitution promotes freedom moreso than its legalization, based on the assumption that the number of senators, lawyers, doctors or CEOs who succeeded in life thanks to prostitution pale in comparison to its casualties.