Prostitution

Prepare for Oprah!

 

Scientific fact about frontal lobe.
I did not call any age an idiot, you used that name all on your own.

Having babies is importation to everyone?

Murky waters.

If sex is just sex age does not matter.

 

I don't mean to be a dick, but have you actually read what you are saying?

"If sex is just sex age does not matter"? You seriously believe this to be true?

 

Yeah, this. I'm not sure if I've ever called anyone an idiot on this forum, but seriously, this makes you a big one.

 

What are you discussing if not legality or morals. There is nothing else.

Humans act according their morals. If their morals don't conform to what is considered acceptable in society, then they find themselves subject to the rule of law.

What else is there?

We hope that people have decent morals. We depend on the law to protect us if they haven't.

I agree with the last post too.

 

Personally, I don't agree with prostitution or any other form that involves selling yourself. I just see it as very wrong selling yourself and your very intimate 'service' to any old stranger, even if the prostitute themselves chooses their clients. That intimacy should only belong to an individual's lover, and not to anyone who can pay.

 

I agree with this.
I believe sex is something to be shared between man and wife, and I don't actually care if everyone finds that old fashioned. It's not something that should be bought but something to be shared between two people that love each other.

 

I think prostitution is more than that.
There are vulnerable young people drawn into it all the time.
It's heavily associated with drugs.
Not all young people have stable homes and secure backgrounds. They make good prey for the drug pusher and the pimps.
Not all prostitutes are free to choose their clients. They have to eat, they need a fix, they have kids to feed - they have few choices.


There's a difference between an intelligent adult chosing to enter the world of prostitution and a child being led into by someone whose only intent is to make money out of her (or him).

As a society, aren't we supposed to protect the vulnerable? How do we do that if we don't exert some sort of control over an industry which uses and abuses them.

Prostitution will never go away. Regulate it. Every other industry is subject to a country's rules. Why should that be any different?

 

I know prostitution is complicated, like people have said about drugs and stuff.

But we're all vulnerable in one way or another. We can't protect everyone. A better way by helping these people would be to educate them so they can have skills that regular jobs need so they can earn money in a safer and more professional way.
And making prostitution legal essentially deems prostitution okay and really it isn't. Legalising will only encourage more people to become prostitutes and for people to take advantage of it.

 

This is where I stand. Not necessarily man and wife, but certainly love.

This.

 

I agree with everything you say. But the fact is that we have been aware of this problem for years. We know that the vulnerable young are deliberately preyed on. We've heard all the stories about rent boys on railway stations and illegal immigrants forced into what is little more than slavery. You only have to look around any town or city to see girls on the street and, in many cases, you'd be hard pressed to believe that they were old enough or wise enough to know what they were doing.

If educating people so that they can find jobs works, we've had plenty of time to do that.

In an ideal world, every child would have every chance, every person would be respected, but it doesn't work like that, so we have to do what we can to minimise the hardship people suffer because there will always be someone out there ready to take advantage.

I agree with you that prostitution is not o.k. It's a scurge. But it exists and it has for thousands of years. We either turn our back and ignore it, or we do something to make it less harmful.

I think that the 'public face' of prostitution, the people you see selling themselves in the street, is just the tip of the iceburg. It's a dirty industry and much more lies beneath the facade.

 

Prostitution will not go away. Ever. So, the question of whether or not to legalise it is the question of whether your sense of moral righteousness is more important than the safety of other people. You are perfectly entitled to believe that prostitution is immoral, but, as the Christians say, hate the sin, not the sinner. Legalising prostitution gives those who are forced or choose to pursue that path the recourse to legitimate legal protection and safe access to medical treatment, as well as effectively dismantling a lot of the 'pimp' culture that develops around it. I don't for a second believe that legalising it would encourage little girls to grow up wanting to be prostitutes or anything that extreme. As this discussion has shown, the idea of prostitution is comfortably outside most people's sense of morality, and I don't think legalising it would change that, or at least not to such an extent that it outweighs the huge benefits that it would provide in terms of health and safety of those unfortunate enoug to be forced into that position.

You are perfectly within your rights to denounce prostitution, but I think its a mistake to condemn prostitutes out of a sense of moral righteousness.

 

Okay but then those laws should restrict sexual activities for minors, not ruin it for adults. I had a decade on your niece when I started, so I don't see the problem. It's bad enough forum admins ban me for saying the f-word in front of kids, I'm not gonna lead a sex- and cash-less life just to set a good example for some kid who will eventually see it's not all puppies and rainbows.

It's renting, not selling.

No can do. I have many skills I could turn into money, but not as easily, conveniently and lucratively as sex. I'm fluent in 5 languages, learning a 6th. I'm a good visual and audiovisual artist, I'm great with animals and so on, but hell I'd never do any of that stuff for a living, except film making. It doesn't pay enough and it's not as much fun as sex. Really, why should I be a teacher or a bus driver or a zoo caretaker for $10/hour (at best, minus taxes) if I can make $800 a day tax free and enjoy myself AND pick my working hours and still be loaded at the end of the month? Really, no way I'd do a boring average fulltimer that might even involve inconvenience as long as I have my moist gold-mine
Also, prostitution done well does involve professionalism. Lots of it.

Up goes the thumb.

 

I was addressing J-Jammer's assertions that age doesn't matter when it comes to sexuality. I should really start quoting the people I'm responding to in my posts.

I think the prostitution laws we have in the States are pants-on-head retarded, personally, as is the social attitude toward it. A politician could never win an election on a platform of legalizing sex for money, but if he tries to say it should be illegal to have sex for money when a CAMERA is involved he's a Constitution-raping monster. I'm allowed to have sex with any consenting adult I please, I'm allowed to give money to whomever I please, but if I give money to a consenting adult in exchange for sex I go to jail.

People can harp about how sometimes prostitutes are underage, and how sometimes they do it because it's one of the few jobs one can maintain while on drugs, but there are already laws against underage sex and (though I think this too is retarded) drugs. Regulate it if you must, but outlawing something that we all know will never go away to any extent and is often used in a safe and healthy way is just silly.

 

I don't think these are good arguments, Banzai. The moral argument that it is just wrong and therefore should remain illegal is used by many in other areas of law regulating sex as well. For example, you have plenty of people who think that homosexual activity should be outlawed because they just feel it is wrong. I don't think individual moral attitudes toward these things is a good basis for making something illegal.

As for concerns for the prostitutes, anyone who truly holds out concern for the women engaged in prostitution should support legalization. All of the ills you cite are made worse in an illegal system. In a legal system, the women have access to medical care (and in fact it can be mandated), the are generally better off financially (which means more ability to leave the work if they wish), and they have recourse to the law in cases of abuse (which they don't have in an illegal system because they are afraid to approach authorities because they themselves are in an illegal line of work).

Those are my thoughts.

 

People use that same sense of moral righteousness to condemn homosexual activity, or interracial marriage. I don't believe it is a good basis for forming public policy, so I agree with you.

 

Excellent points. I especially like the portion I highlighted. That part alone would make it so much safer. There's a reason so many serial killers (just for one example) have preyed on prostitutes: they're unwanted social pariahs who are afraid of the law. Christ, it pisses me off when I think how much less violence we'd have if we had the balls to decriminalize stuff.

 

So, we have those for and those against. We have those who say that removing the illegality removes the criminal element. We have those who believe that legalization corrupts the moral fiber.

This is all a bit like playing Pac Man on a 1980's Casio watch. After two days, you can play without even looking at the screen.

Is there anything new to be gleaned here?

 

Who cares? It's a bloody internet discussion forum. If I had something more constructive to do I'd do that instead.

 

Maybe I am wrong for having an issue with child abuse? You said teens did stupid things and drugs etc that to me = an idiot it was my word you are right. I think anyone behaving that way at any age is an idiot. A grown man going to a grown woman and saying will you have sex if I pay x amount and the woman says yes might not be something I agree with but it is not something I think is any of my business either. And no don't find the prostitutes I have known disgusting, sure someare but I found them to be human beings.

Fact is no method of contraception is 100% or my third child would not exist. (well unless you get sterilised or snipped etc), moment you choose to have sex if you are a fertile human being pregnancy becomes a possibility. The age of consent around sixteen to eighteen makes sense from a physical having baby point of view. Having the age of consent at thirty makes no sense physically.

I believe chastity,is fantastic I waited until my wedding night at 25 and have 0 regrets. Not to mention got me the hottest, nicest boyfriends growing up, all of whom I am still friends with- HOWEVER not everyone does. What I do in my bedroom is my business - what someone else does in theirs is none of mine. If my husband was of the ilk to have affairs or we had an open relationship then I would rather he used a prostitute personally than go around with a series of women, promising them 'relationships.'

Where I do believe the government is right to intervene is where a person's rights are removed by another rather than a choice of their own.

 

Besides unfortunate troll-feeding, no sir!

 

Prostitutes shouldn't be condemned on moral grounds. You do what you have to.

But the people who feed off their needs should be.

 

What especially disturbs me about the moral argument is how some cultures actually do base law and punishment on individual morals. We can consider ourselves lucky that our laws have even the lightest bit of reason behind them; there are countries in which you're lucky if it's only 500 whiplashes for committing a crime that is a crime because it offends some big shot's morals.
Just imagine a court in which the judge is passing sentence based on his individual morals or those of the plaintiff! It would soon reach an extent at which you get stoned to death or strung up for being gay, or have your arm crushed for stealing a loaf of bread. One word: Sharia. "You acted immorally by choosing your own partner, it is only fair and adequate that you be hanged". Anyone want that?

 

What about a really really lonely, really really ugly guy?

 

Yeah, there are quite a few areas of law where criminalization has made problems significantly worse. You'd think that here in the U.S. we'd have learned our lesson from Prohibition and all of the crime that sprang from it.