Shouldn't a Woman's Right to Choose apply to prostitution?

[Derec]

In countries like the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand the best looking naughty ladies are often men. So there are probably more men involved than we realise.

Sexuality is a spectrum. You can really do whatever you want.

 

[whichphilosophy]

In countries like the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand the best looking naughty ladies are often men. So there are probably more men involved than we realise.

Sexuality is a spectrum. You can really do whatever you want.

Where prostitution is legal there could be a case if suing for misrepresentation of goods and services.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

What is needed in this thread here is a bit more intellectual honesty. Many prostitutes are not women and a fair number are actually male.

So? Is a Woman's Right to control her body somehow more or less important than a man's right to do the same? The argument in the OP applies equally to male prostitutes. I only brought up "Woman's Right to Choose" because that is how a person's right to control their body is phrased in abortion rights advocacy. Tell me how that same argument doesn't apply to prostitution. And tell me how I am being "intellectually dishonest" in the OP.

This convo is much less about advocating for a woman's tight to choose than it is about indulging in male fantasy.

How so?

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

In countries like the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand the best looking naughty ladies are often men. So there are probably more men involved than we realise.

Sexuality is a spectrum. You can really do whatever you want.

I had a crush on a woman who is mixed Thai/Cambodian for years and years. Somebody then told me they had good reason to believe she used to be a he (knew mutual friends going back to his/her childhood). I still found her very attractive and maintained my crush. I admit that this surprised me.I thought such a revelation would repulse me. It didn't.

 

[dismal]

I only brought up "Woman's Right to Choose" because that is how a person's right to control their body is phrased in abortion rights advocacy.

No, you wants us to think that's why you brought it up, but it was really because you're a homophobe who's afraid of gay prostitutes and wants to deny their existence while also sexually objectificating on women and stuff. And racism.

 

[Toni]

So? Is a Woman's Right to control her body somehow more or less important than a man's right to do the same? The argument in the OP applies equally to male prostitutes. I only brought up "Woman's Right to Choose" because that is how a person's right to control their body is phrased in abortion rights advocacy. Tell me how that same argument doesn't apply to prostitution. And tell me how I am being "intellectually dishonest" in the OP.

This convo is much less about advocating for a woman's tight to choose than it is about indulging in male fantasy.

How so?

Do you really think that women who wish to work as prostitutes are not able to do so?

I realize that a lot of the men in this forum like to believe that making prostitution legal would ensure that prostitution is safe for prostitutes. It isn't. Those health screens for STI are all about protecting the customer (and the business owner) not the sex worker. The sex worker who has a reactive test for a curable STI is out of commission until the infection is cleared (at least ideally. I have my doubts about that, actually). If she turns up HIV positive, well, she's SOL.

The customers are not screened. Even the very newest tests have a lag period between infection and detect ability. Coincidentally, that lag period corresponds to a high level of infectivity, at least re: HIV.

If prostitution were safe, there would be no need for panic buttons, body guards, pimps.

If legal prostitution reduced the demand for under aged sex workers, or unwilling sex workers, illegal sex trade would vanish in areas where prostitution is legal instead of proliferating.

Very few sex workers enter the line of work as adults. Or without coercion or abuse. I find it hard to make the case that any woman who wishes to be a prostitute finds significant barriers.

I'm much more concerned about those who enter the profession because they are trafficked, too young to work other legitimate jobs or find themselves trying to survive after running away from an abusive home.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Do you really think that women who wish to work as prostitutes are not able to do so?

Not legally in many places, no. Can they do it anyway? Sure. That isn't the point. The argument I am addressing is that of a person doing what they want with their body. Her body. Her decision. None of anybody else's business to tell her what to do, right? Why doesn't that logic not apply equally to if she (or he, as you rightly pointed out) wants to have sex for money?

I realize that a lot of the men in this forum like to believe that making prostitution legal would ensure that prostitution is safe for prostitutes.

That isn't the argument in the OP. But if you really want to go there, there are good arguments that it indeed would make it considerably safer. I refer you to the Bedford Supreme Court of Canada decision.

Those health screens for STI are all about protecting the customer (and the business owner) not the sex worker.

You think STI screens are the only way legalization would make things safer? That's like saying sobriety tests are the only way that legalizing alcohol made things safer.

The sex worker who has a reactive test for a curable STI is out of commission until the infection is cleared (at least ideally. I have my doubts about that, actually). If she turns up HIV positive, well, she's SOL.

Your point being? She can take precautions, or she can take the risk. Why should that not be her decision? Her body, right? Are you telling her what she should be allowed to do with her body?

If legal prostitution reduced the demand for under aged sex workers, or unwilling sex workers, illegal sex trade would vanish in areas where prostitution is legal instead of proliferating.

Who says it would? We still have slaves in sweatshops stitching clothes. Legalizing factory garment work doesn't end that. It does make it easier to catch though. When all prostitution is illegal, nobody is going to come forward to report the horrors they may observe.

Very few sex workers enter the line of work as adults. Or without coercion or abuse.

Evidence?

I find it hard to make the case that any woman who wishes to be a prostitute finds significant barriers.

Is criminality not a barrier? Are all of the dangers that come with criminality not dangers? I suggest you read the Bedford Supreme Court of Canada decision.

I'm much more concerned about those who enter the profession because they are trafficked, too young to work other legitimate jobs or find themselves trying to survive after running away from an abusive home.

Are you? If you are, then why ban prostitution? Johns, madams, and regulators could be your allies. Few people who go to prostitutes want to contribute to sex trafficking. Few who run escort services want to get caught up in it either. By making prostitution as a whole illegal you provide these people places to hide and inhibit your would be allies from coming forth. Getting sex workers off the street and into regulated, inspected, and taxed workplaces (included self employment and cooperatives) is bad why?

If you are truly pro-choice, how can you be for banning prostitution? I think you need to apply a bit more intellectual honesty, as you put it.

 

[laughing dog]

Where prostitution is legal, is there still illegal prostitution and sex trafficking?

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Where prostitution is legal, is there still illegal prostitution and sex trafficking?

Yes.

 

[RavenSky]

Where prostitution is legal, is there still illegal prostitution and sex trafficking?

Apparently yes:

Sex trafficking statistics are frustratingly incomplete, but a recent report estimated the number of victims in Europe at 270,000. And Germany and the Netherlands have repeatedly ranked among the five worst blackspots.

There is “absolutely” a correlation between legalised prostitution and trafficking, says Andrea Matolcsi, the programme officer for sexual violence and trafficking at Equality Now. “For a trafficker it’s much easier to go to a country where it’s legal to have brothels and it’s legal to manage people in prostitution. It’s just a more attractive environment.”

She points out that Denmark, which decriminalised prostitution in 1999 – the same year Sweden made the purchase of sex illegal - has four times the number of trafficking victims than its neighbour despite having around half the population.

It’s one reason the Netherlands has gone into reverse with legalisation. The Deputy Prime Minister, Lodewijk Asscher, has called it “a national mistake”. As Deputy Mayor of Amsterdam he spent millions of euros buying back window brothels, turning them into shops and restaurants in an effort to rid the city of the gangs that had moved in.

Interesting article: http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects/welcome-to-paradise/

Frankly, I had always been in favor of legalization on the assumption that legalization would reduce trafficking and violence against the sex workers; but it appears that the reality is the opposite in places that have tried it.

 

[Derec]

Apparently yes:
Interesting article: http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/pr...e-to-paradise/
Frankly, I had always been in favor of legalization on the assumption that legalization would reduce trafficking and violence against the sex workers; but it appears that the reality is the opposite in places that have tried it.

While I am sure legalization does not remove trafficking entirely, I do not think you can trust the data peddled by anti-sex work activists like Andrea Matolcsi.
I really hope they are exaggerating on Netherlands. It would be shame if they went the illiberal, authoritarian, sex-negative way of Sweden, Iceland, and most recently, France.

 

[RavenSky]

Same article

Barbara Birkhold in the Stuttgart Police Department tells me that men contact the police “far too rarely” about women they think might be being coerced. “They are often more scared that it will become known that they used prostitutes.”

Myria Vassiliadou, the EU anti-trafficking co-ordinator, tells me about a Nigerian woman she met recently in London. This woman was trafficked to Britain where she served up to 20 clients a day. “She was telling these clients that she didn't want to be there, that she was forced and that she would be killed if she didn't do what the traffickers said. She told the men and the men would say, ‘I don’t care. I paid for this.’”

Forced prostitution comes in many guises. Some women are kidnapped, others are tricked with the promise of jobs as nannies or waitresses. Others choose to work as prostitutes but have no idea of the conditions that await them. Often, a woman’s pimps or traffickers are people from her own town. They know where her family lives and aren’t afraid of harming them in order to control her. Sometimes it’s the families who pressure girls into prostitution in the first place - unable, or unwilling, to think of another way for a woman to earn a living.

Hermann Müller knows that some of the women working in Pascha have pimps, “but [the pimps] are not allowed to come in the club,” he says. If a woman asks them for help, they put her in touch with the police. “Two weeks ago,” he says running his hands over his close-cropped hair, “a girl said to our manager that some guy wanted to have money from her because he drove her from Romania to Germany. And then he wanted to have money from her every week or something.” Pascha called the authorities and the girl went with them. Müller’s not too sure where.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Why should it surprise anybody that we see more and have more recorded incidents of sex trafficking etc where prostitution is legal? That's kind of the point. Do you think because you don't see it, it isn't there? Uncovering it will mean you see more of it.

But this is a distraction from the OP, which is about bodily autonomy. I still want a rational answer to the OP and why Toni says it is not "intellectually honest".

Does a woman's right to choose cease when there are men who force other women to make the same choice?

To throw an unexpected added curveball, this also applies to bans on Islamic face veils. Should the woman not have a right to wear it if she wants? Does the fact that men force other women to wear it undo that right? Does legalizing niqab cause increase in fgm and honor killings?

 

[RavenSky]

Even for a young woman who went into it voluntarily (although reluctantly and only from desperation)

...Klara – whose father had fallen ill. The family was getting desperate for money so when Klara saw a newspaper advert offering temporary work as a prostitute in Germany, “she thought, ‘it will be awful but for three months I can bear it.’ And then she was raped by several men the night she arrived to “get her ready” for prostitution. They took her passport. There was another girl there who wouldn’t do something a customer wanted and they broke a bottle, a glass bottle, and raped her with that. She was cut inside. It was shown to all the others.” Klara was trapped there for four years.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Ravensky, do keep in mind that articles like that one are usually written by activists and ideologues.

I would suggest instead actually talking to women (and men) who work in the industry. These are the people who actually know. Yes, trafficking happens, but a lot of women are in the business because of the money. Make $20 per hour or $200 per hour? Many can stomach the job and go for the latter.

The question here is should she allowed to make that choice, or should we declare her a criminal for doing so?

 

[RavenSky]

This kinda sums it up:

so you check into a hotel and look at your smart phone, you choose a woman,” – “like a pizza,”

As always, the richer get richer and the desperate get screwed. In this case, though, that is literally.

I would like to see a business model that genuinely allowed women who genuinely wanted to do this to be able to do so safely and profitably.

It doesn't look like any country has got it right yet.

Ironically, a place where it is still illegal seems to be doing the best job of it:

“Prostitutes are undoubtedly the most vulnerable group of people in society,” says Chris Armitt, the national police lead for prostitution in England and Wales where around 80,000 prostitutes work.

Armitt’s Merseyside force has an excellent record when it comes to punishing crimes against prostitutes. Since 2006, it has stopped arresting streetwalkers (even though soliciting is illegal in Britain) and started working with them instead. “The sex workers will tell us, ‘there’s a girl being pimped and she’s had her passport taken,’ and that information gets to us quickly and we’re able to act.”

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Also, somebody explain this logic to me:

Sex: legal
Sex for money: illegal
Sex for money on camera: legal

What?

 

[Toni]

Apparently yes:

Sex trafficking statistics are frustratingly incomplete, but a recent report estimated the number of victims in Europe at 270,000. And Germany and the Netherlands have repeatedly ranked among the five worst blackspots.

There is “absolutely” a correlation between legalised prostitution and trafficking, says Andrea Matolcsi, the programme officer for sexual violence and trafficking at Equality Now. “For a trafficker it’s much easier to go to a country where it’s legal to have brothels and it’s legal to manage people in prostitution. It’s just a more attractive environment.”

She points out that Denmark, which decriminalised prostitution in 1999 – the same year Sweden made the purchase of sex illegal - has four times the number of trafficking victims than its neighbour despite having around half the population.

It’s one reason the Netherlands has gone into reverse with legalisation. The Deputy Prime Minister, Lodewijk Asscher, has called it “a national mistake”. As Deputy Mayor of Amsterdam he spent millions of euros buying back window brothels, turning them into shops and restaurants in an effort to rid the city of the gangs that had moved in.

Interesting article: http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects/welcome-to-paradise/

Frankly, I had always been in favor of legalization on the assumption that legalization would reduce trafficking and violence against the sex workers; but it appears that the reality is the opposite in places that have tried it.

That's exactly why I oppose legalized prostitution. It doesn't seem to eliminate the risks nor eliminate illegal sex trade.

 

[RavenSky]

Back in 2002, the liberal left imagined a sex industry in which responsible managers would push out exploitative pimps. Empowered prostitutes would work in safety and the money from this hitherto black market would go into pension pots and the German treasury. Well, they got their taxes.

Paradise’s Jürgen Rudloff appeared in a documentary, “Sex - Made in Germany”, which aired on the German public broadcaster ARD last summer. In one scene he’s sitting in his spacious kitchen dressed in an open-necked white shirt and linen jacket, surrounded by his four shiny-haired, privately-educated children.

Would he be happy for either of his two daughters to work at Paradise, the interviewer asks. Rudloff turns puce. “Unthinkable, unthinkable,” he says. “The question alone is brutal. I don’t mean to offend the prostitutes but I try to raise my children so that they have professional opportunities. Most prostitutes don’t have those options. That’s why they’re doing that job." He pauses and looks away.

“Unimaginable”, he repeats. “I don’t even want to think about it.”

Very well done article

 

[Derec]

That's exactly why I oppose legalized prostitution. It doesn't seem to eliminate the risks nor eliminate illegal sex trade.

Just because it doesn't eliminate all the problems and risks does not mean it doesn't make the situation much, much better than pushing the whole industry (which has a legitimate place) underground.
It's like Prohibition of alcohol. People still wanted to drink, but they had to do it illegally. Doesn't mean that legal alcohol trade doesn't have risks or problems, but things are much better than under Prohibition. Are you also against ending the Prohibition because "it doesn't seem to eliminate the risks"?