June 10, 2012
Legalizing Prostitution: From Illicit Vice to Lawful Business
Chris Vaughan in Metapsychology:
Why would a work on legalizing prostitution have thirty five pages of closely printed notes and a bibliography running to almost sixteen pages? The answer lies in the incendiary nature of the subject matter. Emotions frequently run high when it comes to discussing the sex trade and there doesn't seem to be any middle ground. Ronald Weitzer, Professor of Sociology at George Washington University is determined to bring some calm dispassionate reasoning based on solid research to the debate. Too often, he says, this debate is still stuck in what Popper termed the pre-scientific stage. Arguments are formulated on impressionistic, untested assumptions. Hence when it comes to prostitution, given that only a minority of the population ever experience prostitutes in the flesh as it were – between 15 – 18 per cent across the Western world - then the debate is coloured by impressions gathered from the media, from literature, from films and plays and from the more high profile street prostitutes on view in any large city.
My own impressions were formed when the neighbourhood where I live, at the time a decaying inner city suburb of large Victorian houses, many of them sublet, was invaded by a posse of street prostitutes who had been driven out from the city's traditional 'red light' area by angry residents taking direct action. His broadly researched description of this form of selling sex match my own observations as we, as residents, strove with the help of the police, the civil courts, city officers and social workers to get them to desist or move on and stop using our neighbourhood as their place of work and all the attendant ills it visited on us. He lists these: the initial transaction is in a public place: the sex act takes place in a public or semi-public place: many underage prostitutes are runaways in a new locale with no resources and little recourse but to engage in some kind of criminal activity - theft, drug dealing, selling sex. They sell sex out of dire necessity or to support a drug habit.
More here.
Posted by S. Abbas Raza at 06:20 PM | Permalink
Comments
Prostitution, along with polititians and lawyers, ranks high among the prophesions Lord Acton observed and reflected upon.
Being the oldest of prophesions, it flourishes in the DR, not because it's legal, but, because it's not illegal.
To read more about why it should be legalized: http://www.monografias.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?query=prostitucion%20larocca
Posted by: Félix E. F. Larocca, MD | Jun 10, 2012 9:15:08 PM
Every employed person, in the entire world, is working out of 'economic necessity'. Sex workers are no more 'forced' to work than anyone else is. FORCED is being kidnapped, beaten, locked in a brothel and made to service men against your will. Going into sex work for any other reason - whether it's to save your children from starvation or to buy a brand new BMW - is a CHOICE. Yes, for some it's a choice they did not want to make and, perhaps, one they regret making. Yes, some sex workers hate their job and wish that they could leave it... but so do millions of other people in millions of other occupations.
Right now, there are tens of thousands of lawyers, teachers, barstaff, soldiers, etc, crying themselves to sleep because they're desperately unhappy in their work, but can't leave because they have to feed their families.
* Do we pity the doctor who hates his work, but is 'trapped' by his $500,000 mortgage?
* Do we feel guilty about 'forcing' the broke waitress to serve us our food?
* Do we feel that we are 'abusing' the hotel cleaner who scrubs our toilets?
The bankers screw people for money and they get bailed out; sex workers do their job and politicians and religious ministers throw up their hands in horror.
So why is job satisfaction only critical when the work involves naked genitals ??
Sex has been around forever and prostitution has been around forever. It is an unadulterated exchange of services, no more or less degrading for either buyer or seller than any other professional relationship in a civilized society. As I see it the same arguments against prostitution – buying or selling – could be made against any professional political, economical, or religious service – politician and soldier, doctor and lawyer, psychologist and priest – you name it.
Sexual behavior is a positive, nurturing act, and whether it is given out of love or rendered as a service, as long as it is consensual it is still positive. I cannot fathom how one could think that making another human being experience pleasure for a fee could be degrading or demeaning unless it is degrading to make other people feel good.
Everyone who works "sells" one or more parts of his or her body. Athletes, actors, actresses, construction workers, physicians "sell" their body. The body is what is needed to do physical work. It would be difficult to engage in any profession without the use and therefore "sale" of one's body.
Sex and the desire to be touched in a nurturing way are human needs, like drinking water, eating and sleeping. If not a need, after enough time it's certainly high on the list of wants.
Posted by: Carol | Jun 10, 2012 9:33:08 PM
Carol, I applaud you and your elegant courage.
QEII and her entourage, for the stupid Diamond Jubilee, weren't 'selling' themselves (in a symbolic way, of course) any less than Ashley Dupre.
C'est la vie...
Posted by: Félix E. F. Larocca, MD | Jun 10, 2012 10:09:19 PM
Gambling, sex and drugs are likely the three most craved human activities on the planet. But in America, where virtually everything is for sale or on sale, these particular three activities are considered immoral vices and are declared criminally illegal in the law in most places with a few exceptions.
Yet, there is no shortage of any of these three vices is there? Sports gambling is probably the biggest illegal racket in the world. Sex is everywhere now from television and movies produced by the Hollywood Perverts, to the internet. And how many minutes between ten and fifteen does it take to have an order of drugs delivered to your door almost anywhere USA?
But by making all these highly craved human activities illegal, they exist in a dark underground world, as they likely did in Victorian England (the father of America) and most other earlier societies as well, long before all the scientific knowledge from sex and drugs was known and at a time when the fleecing of customers was commonplace.
Today, the illegitimate sex, drug and gambling trade, all underground in the USA, have caused enormous human suffering. In many ways America is the most backward third or fourth world country on the planet. Victorian principles are hard to erase from the ignorant mindset. Even the Hollywood Perverts have been unable to overcome it. Sexually transmitted diseases are on the increase as is use of drugs.
Sexual crimes are also rampant although they might be reduced if prostitution were legalized and properly regulated.
In many ways, America is the most ignorant, hypocritical society on the planet.
Prostitution should be legalized and regulated. This would lead to much work which could be done by young nurses and medical doctors and possibly pre med students; i.e., checking all the participants for disease daily.
And the biggest prostitutes on the planet, our lawmakers, could now do it all in the open for a change.
There are also many prostitutes in the Academy who also will do virtually anything for dinero.
Posted by: WJAbbe | Jun 10, 2012 10:29:43 PM
The primary reason prostitution is illegal is that in majority of the countries, especially the less developed ones, it is almost always forced and involves underaged girls. Hence it is a short cut for law enforcement to book those involved since it is usually hard to discern between those who are forced and those who aren't.
Posted by: ganji | Jun 10, 2012 10:35:11 PM
Would legalizing prostitution prevent illegal sex trafficking of children?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BV5W6F4L5i8&feature=mv_sr
Posted by: Louise Gordon | Jun 11, 2012 12:54:01 AM
Prostitution is indeed a continuum as Carol says. Whoever preforms work that they dislike for money is a prostitute. Does a dentist enjoy drilling teeth or does he enjoy the large salary? Of course it is more nuanced than that. The dentist may well enjoy using and developing his skill, just as a prostitute may enjoy developing her skill at giving pleasure to clients. Most people probably like some aspects of their job and dislike others. The worst risk for sex workers is that posed by disease from being intimate with many people. This is also a risk for the clients of sex workers. The human immune system is only designed to accept a certain level of abuse before it loses resistance to disease. It is in this sense that sex work is "unclean" and therefore looked down upon. The other risks of sex work from violence are very real. Both the risks of disease and violence could be lessened by legalizing and regulating prostitution. I think, however, that it should be strongly discouraged in media and education campaigns just as smoking or drunk driving is now.
Posted by: Ralston McTodd | Jun 11, 2012 2:37:17 PM
In Canada there is a strange contradictory situation where buying and selling of sexual services is legal but related activities central to the business i.e communication and procuring is outlawed. Most convictions in Canada are under section 213 (communicating).
The inherent absurdity of Canadian laws on prostitution prompted a judge to liken them to something out of Alice-in-Wonderland and Canada's Chief Justice to characterize aspects of the situation as "bizarre."
Sex-positive feminists rightly argue that sex work is a basic human right and that sex workers shouldn't be stigmatized and marginalized. The work of the Vancouver-based legal advocacy organization PIVOT is an example of the enlightened approach to the often degrading and high-risk situations faced by sex workers in Canada. In 2006 PIVOT released a report with input from all levels of government advocating decriminalization of the sex trade - "Beyond Decriminalization: Sex Work, Human Rights and a New Framework for Law Reform."
Sex workers on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside were targeted for years by the serial killer, Robert Pickton, who got away with preying on these women in part because of the low value placed by authorities on the lives of people viewed as transient and marginal. This goes some way toward explaining the lack of real action by Vancouver police and the RCMP in the 1990's and 2000's when one sex worker after another vanished off the streets. A determined effort to follow-up would have led much more quickly to Pickton's door.
Feminists who have concerns about prostitution on the grounds that it leaves women open to exploitation are right, but wrong to oppose legalization. The exploitation of women in the shadowlands by pimps, abusive johns and traffickers is the real problem - as is the attitude of neglect taken by government and the police.
These men and women should be brought out of the shadows and accorded rights and protections.
Posted by: j_93 | Jun 12, 2012 1:55:37 PM
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