France: Just Another Regressive Left Shithole

[ronburgundy]

I question the capacity of government to regulate the profession if prostitution was made legal.

Everyone "knows" that government is incompetent and screws up everything that they touch.

Why can't we just rely on the free market?

Should there be a winking emoticon at the end of that?

In case you were serious, legalizing it does in fact allow the "free market" to resolve a large % of the problems.
Making it illegal is the least free market situation you can have and what causes the non-free black market from which most of the real crimes and harm to sex workers arises.
Making it legal would allow the market to resolve many of the problems. It would allow sex workers and customers to report crimes against them just like people working in other industries. It would allow people who run prostitution businesses and treat their workers well to out-compete all the asshole pimps. It would mean that customers were not already engaged in a crime which lowers the threshold on their willingness to commit other crimes against the workers. It would make prostitutes an above board part of the society who would thus feel more self worth and thus raise the threshold of how they expect and demand to be treated.

Regulations on the industry would just make it like every other industry. How many people in France are enslaved in other professions or beaten at work on a regular basis? The answer is essentially none and the entire reason is that these are legal professions.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

I think he's trying to say the following: France was in the news for setting up fines for clients of prostitutes under the rationale that prostitutes themselves are most often sex slaves or drug addicts who wouldn't be improved by fining. Therefore, France is a bunch of unenlightened feminazis who hate men.

If you have an illegal act both participants should be punished, as long as each freely engaged in the act. The notion that women who engage in sex work are all helpless, innocent victims is indeed feminazi ideology.
Of course the ideal would be to legalize it, leave consenting adults alone and focus law enforcement on those who are actual victims and victimizers, and not presume that everybody engaging as a provider in a particular business, frowned upon because of sex-negativity, is a victim by definition.
Why this is in any way controversial I have no idea.

The general claim "If you have an illegal act both participants should be punished, as long as each freely engaged in the act" considers that you have a single act. But you don't in this case. Rather, you have two acts: the act of paying for sex (which is illegal), and the act of providing sex for money (which is legal). Those are two different acts. The question is whether there are good reasons to ban one but allow the other, but your general claim goes too far.
Personally, I don't think good reasons have been given. The law seems too restrictive; regulation plus actual enforcement of the regulations seems like a clearly better option to me.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If you have an illegal act both participants should be punished, as long as each freely engaged in the act. The notion that women who engage in sex work are all helpless, innocent victims is indeed feminazi ideology.
Of course the ideal would be to legalize it, leave consenting adults alone and focus law enforcement on those who are actual victims and victimizers, and not presume that everybody engaging as a provider in a particular business, frowned upon because of sex-negativity, is a victim by definition.
Why this is in any way controversial I have no idea.

The general claim "If you have an illegal act both participants should be punished, as long as each freely engaged in the act" considers that you have a single act. But you don't in this case. Rather, you have two acts: the act of paying for sex (which is illegal), and the act of providing sex for money (which is legal). Those are two different acts. The question is whether there are good reasons to ban one but allow the other, but your general claim goes too far.
Personally, I don't think good reasons have been given. The law seems too restrictive; regulation plus actual enforcement of the regulations seems like a clearly better option to me.

Both are participants in paying for sex.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

The general claim "If you have an illegal act both participants should be punished, as long as each freely engaged in the act" considers that you have a single act. But you don't in this case. Rather, you have two acts: the act of paying for sex (which is illegal), and the act of providing sex for money (which is legal). Those are two different acts. The question is whether there are good reasons to ban one but allow the other, but your general claim goes too far.
Personally, I don't think good reasons have been given. The law seems too restrictive; regulation plus actual enforcement of the regulations seems like a clearly better option to me.

Both are participants in paying for sex.

One pays for sex, the other gets paid for sex. Those are different acts. If you want to use a less precise term "paying for sex" to refer to both acts, that does not affect the point I made: those are two different acts, one of which is legal and one of which is illegal. The issues of whether the act should be legal, whether both participants should be punished, etc., are different ones for each of the acts
(side note: Do you think those who buy or sell heroin should both be punished, or both be left alone? If the former, do you think they should both be equally punished?).

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Both are participants in paying for sex.

One pays for sex, the other gets paid for sex. ...

I think this is especially true when one considers that there are most often intermediaries. One person, the purchaser, knows there are quite a few risks involved: that the prostitute could be a drug addict and cannot rationally make decisions due to their addiction, that there may be coercion involved from the pimp entrepreneur, that such potential coercion might be violent, that the prostitute may have been involved in prostitution since a minor with no other way of getting out of it, that the prostitute will face emotional trauma from the act either during sex or afterward, etc etc. The potential second person is the intermediary who might be violent or might use other coercion and tricks such as sex trafficking etc to get the prostitute under his control. The third person is the prostitute who might be a victim but also it is entirely possible they are someone who just likes sex and getting money for it because it's easier than other jobs or whatever even though they have venereal diseases and other problems from the "job."

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Just to be clear, I was talking about consensual cases (it was originally a reply to one of Derec's posts).

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Both are participants in paying for sex.

One pays for sex, the other gets paid for sex. Those are different acts. If you want to use a less precise term "paying for sex" to refer to both acts, that does not affect the point I made: those are two different acts, one of which is legal and one of which is illegal. The issues of whether the act should be legal, whether both participants should be punished, etc., are different ones for each of the acts
(side note: Do you think those who buy or sell heroin should both be punished, or both be left alone? If the former, do you think they should both be equally punished?).

Sorry, I had written the side note questions for Derec. In your case, I would add "Or do you think at least in some cases, one of them should be punished, but it's not the case that the other should be punished?".

 

[Tom Sawyer]

If it's consensual on both sides, I think it's inane to have either person charged and even more inane to have just st one charged. While you're correct that buying heroin is worse than selling heroin and it's fine to distinguish between different roles in a transaction, the rationale behind both charges is that heroin is harmful and therefore the authorities should be involved. Consensual sex is not harmful, so the authorities have no place getting involved in the first place.

When it comes to the rape of sex slaves, it's fine to target the people who are doing the rape and financing the profitability of enslaving people for rape. If they were unaware that they were committing an act of rape and thought that they were having consensual sex, however, that should be taken into account since they're unintentional criminals.

Throwing those two vastly different situations together under one law is also inane. It's cool to parse out what each person did in determining whether it's a crime, but but using overly broad generalizations which don't take into account what ache did in order to make that determination is not fine.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Some prostitutes in France protest the new law.

 

[iolo]

If it's consensual on both sides, I think it's inane to have either person charged
.

Is it ever really 'consensual', any more than any other kind of employment? Until we get shot of the system we are forced to live under, those who can afford to simply use and exploit other people to the limit.

 

[ronburgundy]

Some prostitutes in France protest the new law.

The one in the middle is smokin' hot. Excuse me while I run to the ATM.

 

[ronburgundy]

If it's consensual on both sides, I think it's inane to have either person charged
.

Is it ever really 'consensual', any more than any other kind of employment? Until we get shot of the system we are forced to live under, those who can afford to simply use and exploit other people to the limit.

If it were fully legal, then it would be far more often fully consensual than it is when criminalization creates a black market for it.

Support for criminalization is support for sex-slavery and rampant assault and rape of sex workers.

A regulated market system create far more power to choice and refuse consent than any other. In fact, if legal, prostitutes in the modern age would have zero need for any employer that could exploit them. They could easily run their own business via online arrangements and be less exploited than workers in almost all other industries.
Besides, even if your point were valid, then it wouldn't argue for criminalizing those who pay for sex anymore than criminalizing those who pay for milk.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Some prostitutes in France protest the new law.

The one in the middle is smokin' hot. Excuse me while I run to the ATM.

She looks 14 or 15.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

If it's consensual on both sides, I think it's inane to have either person charged
.

Is it ever really 'consensual', any more than any other kind of employment? Until we get shot of the system we are forced to live under, those who can afford to simply use and exploit other people to the limit.

If she makes a choice to do it then, yes, it really is consentual.

 

[SimpleDon]

I question the capacity of government to regulate the profession if prostitution was made legal.

Everyone "knows" that government is incompetent and screws up everything that they touch.

Why can't we just rely on the free market?

Should there be a winking emoticon at the end of that?

In case you were serious, legalizing it does in fact allow the "free market" to resolve a large % of the problems.
Making it illegal is the least free market situation you can have and what causes the non-free black market from which most of the real crimes and harm to sex workers arises.
Making it legal would allow the market to resolve many of the problems. It would allow sex workers and customers to report crimes against them just like people working in other industries. It would allow people who run prostitution businesses and treat their workers well to out-compete all the asshole pimps. It would mean that customers were not already engaged in a crime which lowers the threshold on their willingness to commit other crimes against the workers. It would make prostitutes an above board part of the society who would thus feel more self worth and thus raise the threshold of how they expect and demand to be treated.

Regulations on the industry would just make it like every other industry. How many people in France are enslaved in other professions or beaten at work on a regular basis? The answer is essentially none and the entire reason is that these are legal professions.

I can't pull anything over on you, I was being facetious.

Yes, you are right, we would be better off if prostitution was legalized and regulated. Certainly the prostitutes would be much better off.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If it's consensual on both sides, I think it's inane to have either person charged and even more inane to have just st one charged. While you're correct that buying heroin is worse than selling heroin and it's fine to distinguish between different roles in a transaction, the rationale behind both charges is that heroin is harmful and therefore the authorities should be involved. Consensual sex is not harmful, so the authorities have no place getting involved in the first place.

Exactly--so long as it's consensual both parties conspired to commit the crime. I see no reason to punish one and not the other.

(And I think far more harm comes from making prostitution illegal than would come from whatever increase would happen if it were legal.)

 

[Angra Mainyu]

If it's consensual on both sides, I think it's inane to have either person charged and even more inane to have just st one charged. While you're correct that buying heroin is worse than selling heroin and it's fine to distinguish between different roles in a transaction, the rationale behind both charges is that heroin is harmful and therefore the authorities should be involved. Consensual sex is not harmful, so the authorities have no place getting involved in the first place.

I was addressing Derec's general claim, not the specifics about prostitution (and also Loren's reply). I wasn't saying prostitution deserved a punishment similar to selling heroin.

As for the rationale, that's a potential rationale. I think a better one is about what they deserve (whether in the case of heroin or prostitution).

While I haven't checked the statistics and there are available replies, I think if someone wanted to make a serious case for a distinction in treatment in the prostitution case (at least, for street prostitution; one can make similar arguments for other situations), I think the best option would be something along the lines of:

At least 1 in 20 (to be conservative) street prostitutes in France are slaves who behave similarly enough to non-slaves during the brief interactions with clients that the latter (at least, first time clients) usually can't tell the difference (if they can, it's in less than 1/10 cases). This is well known, so a client should know there is no less (aproximation favorable to the client) than a 1/25 chance that he's raping a slave, just for pleasure.
If he is aware of that, he deserves no less than 1/25 of the prison time a person who willingly rapes a slave just for pleasure would deserve. If he is not aware of that, it's due to gross negligence, so he deserves about 1/25 of the punishment deserved by a person who rapes a slave when they should be aware that they're raping a slave, but out of gross negligence fail to be aware of it.
As a client has sex with more prostitutes, he knows or should know that the chances he's raping people increase, and so does the punishment he deserves.

On the other hand, prostitutes who are not slaves deserve no such punishment.

Of course, there are good potential replies, either questioning the two first numbers, or the "no less than 1/25" moral assessment (and maybe a couple more). But that would be a far better rationale to make a serious case.
There is also a bad reply but which would likely be successful in France, I think: reject the idea that desert is the basis for punishment, and attack the character of whoever proposed it.

In any event, the fact remains we're talking about two different acts, and the reasons for or against punishing each (or how much) are different.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

If it's consensual on both sides, I think it's inane to have either person charged and even more inane to have just st one charged. While you're correct that buying heroin is worse than selling heroin and it's fine to distinguish between different roles in a transaction, the rationale behind both charges is that heroin is harmful and therefore the authorities should be involved. Consensual sex is not harmful, so the authorities have no place getting involved in the first place.

Exactly--so long as it's consensual both parties conspired to commit the crime. I see no reason to punish one and not the other.

(And I think far more harm comes from making prostitution illegal than would come from whatever increase would happen if it were legal.)

Have you read my previous replies to you, and to Derec?
Anyway, what do you think of heroin? Should buyers be punished too, because they conspired to commit the crime?

 

[Derec]

If it's consensual on both sides, I think it's inane to have either person charged
.

Is it ever really 'consensual', any more than any other kind of employment? Until we get shot of the system we are forced to live under, those who can afford to simply use and exploit other people to the limit.

So do you then propose to outlaw hiring people in general?

 

[ronburgundy]

The one in the middle is smokin' hot. Excuse me while I run to the ATM.

She looks 14 or 15.

Not even close. She is easily in her 20s and fully post-puberty as indicated by her high cheekbones, overall facial bone structure, large breasts, and thick eyebrows.

But hey, if you don't have a rational argument, why not claim the other guy is a pedophile.

Is she shorter than the other "women". Sure, because adult women vary in height, and some female prostitutes, especially ones who look like a couple of the other women there, are actually men.