And I know you usually are fair and insightful.

I'm rolling my eyes at Glenn and the other Salon posters who are so certain that prostitution is all about empowerment and consent.

-- Mizmoon

We all think that access to education and higher paying jobs doing more meaningful work is the ideal. Unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world. We are working on it.

You must read the knowing words of Tina! The helpless victims of the frequenters of prostitutes, the male-coerced sex slaves, are not to be punished! May Tina’s knowing mercy shine down upon them and guide them in all things! It is to be as in the Great Land of Swee-den! Where the helpless victims are rescued and guided to a better life while the oppressors are ground into misogynist dust!

stop playing nice.

show us all what you're made of.

what with putting 'piece' of the action in boldface and all (heh, heh, heh, 'piece' of the action, get it? get a 'piece' of them? he he he)

But the Social Services [in the Netherlands] will assign you that job and you had better do it. Why shouldn't they also assign jobs by sending girls to work for brothel owners? Why not? The brothel owners complain of a lack of native Dutch girls in the trade.

And in the U.S. a devout Baptist woman on unemployment cannot be compelled to accept a job as a liquor store clerk. But since we ended beverage-alcohol prohibition, it has become infinitely safer to traffic in booze. (Contract disputes among alcohol purveyors are now enforced in court, not with machine guns.)

The same can and should be done for male or females on unemployment who hold moral/religious objections to sex work. And, if it is legal to perform sex work, sex workers then can go to the cops if anyone tries to coerce or does hurt them.

Surely you're not that stupid? Where do you get off even suggesting Mr. Greenwald would advocate compelling someone into sex work? What you're doing is called bringing up a straw man. That's all you have, because you are not rational, and you're not able to rationally advocate your position because your position simply isn't rational.

Why do YOU have the right to decide what other people can do with their lives? If you think it's OK to decide what other people can do, then understand that the reverse is true, they can decide what YOU can do, like tell you to jump off a cliff (no I'm not advocating either proposition, neither of you have the right to tell each other what to do, and I'm explaining that because you are so tendentious that anyone responding to you almost needs to think of every nonsensical response you can come up with, and you can come up with plenty, apparently).

If you're so concerned with their lives, offer to help them, not put them behind bars. But if they tell you to stick it, that's their right and your obligation.

<<If you think that prostitution should be legal, then do you think that women should be compelled to go into sex work when placed there by state unemployment agencies, as per the case of the Netherlands that I gave earlier? Women are compelled to take other jobs when their unemployment runs out. Why shouldn't they be placed in brothels if sex work is fully normalized? Shouldn't brothel owners submit their openings to the Social Services, and use the government offices to interview recruits? Shouldn't those recruits the brothel owners select be required to show up at work and perform, just as they are for say, cleaning or filing jobs?>>

--Ron Robertson

Maybe the problem is that the "liberal" socialist government to which you refer finds it necessary to compel people onto the employment rolls to begin with? Maybe if they just let people who have no interest in employment be, y'know, unemployed, and just stopped handing them money for it, there would not be a problem? Maybe then you wouldn't have to ask a question like "what kinds of work can we compel people to perform in order to justify our compassionate, progressive social welfare policies"?

I support prosecution of pimps and johns but not prostitutes.

* * *

The unwillingness of the thread to accept that, and the deliberate misrepresentation of the position, is the weak link in all the "arguments". Trying to smear me by saying I am out to persecute prostitutes, loaded up with righeous indignation and waving a Bible, is the only ball you've got in the cannon, it seems.

Now that you don't have that, what do you intend to do?

Tina, I hate to burst your bubble, but your arguments are really not that compelling or difficult to contend with. Ease up on the righteous indignation and premature declarations of victory a bit and maybe people will take you more seriously.

In response to your argument, I ask you, how is the freedom to engage in a certain activity with another person not infringed by threatening the necessary other person with arrest and prosecution?

The broader point is not necessarily about punishing prostitutes themselves (although that is how it is most commonly structured in the U.S.), but about depriving either participant of the free choice to engage in the activity. This infringement of choice affects both, even if only one is punished, and the message and effect is that government automatically knows better than either person what they should do with their bodies and lives.

She comes from a poor, abusive background. There is a reason why many sex workers have this in common - because prostitution is not a choice that most "healthy" people would make. Usually poverty, past abuse, or drug addiction are a big part of the equation. To deny that and pretend that the standard is "the happy hooker" is denying reality.

I do not disagree with this, however these issues are not related to the debate about how to minimize the harm of a behavior, or vice if you prefer, that will never be stopped by prohibition or invoking the criminal sanction. There are exceptions to every rule. Heidi Fleiss, Ms. Biddle Barrows, Xaviera Hollander do not fit the profile yet they engaged in this activity. There must be others.

To Glenn she sez: Of course male sex workers can be demeaned and abused, and usually are by the time they resort to sex work. In fact, their cases may be more compelling because they are men, have to be tough, suck it up, are less likely to seek help.

Oh.

So Glenn hates his own gender, as well as women. He's not sexist, then; he is a thoroughgoing misanthrope.