Category: Let's talk
I understand this is a sensitive topic. If it isn’t something you can read and upsets you, stop here.
I’ll be posting more on my view.
Whenever I read an article, or hear a news story on this topic, it makes me sad and grieve for the women, and yes, men, who decide to practice this trade for a living, or even to live when they find they are up against a financial wall, or an educational deficit that keeps them unemployed, or underemployed to make ends meet.
I don’t however feel bad for these that practice the trade because they like it, and find the work rewarding, or pleasing, or simply easier then cleaning rooms, working in a sweatshop factory, or any other difficult, and sometimes, even worse in health and hazards then prostitution jobs.
Governments, law makers, and religion has fought against the sex trades for as long as they’ve been with us, and that is since mankind started.
This profession isn’t going anyplace, no matter how amoral, wrong, or whatever its opponents feel it is.
In fact, many times, the opponents against the trade are the best and worst customers.
They take advantage of their upper hand to receive free and often services that the workers wouldn’t normally provide, or do under the circumstances asked.
What happens to protect and serve? It goes out the window when you an officer of the law has the hots for the girl, or guy you just arrested.
This says something about human sexuality, doesn’t it?
This is a world-wide problem that needs to go away.
What brought this to my mind, was an article I read today I totally agreed with.
I believe if we make prostitution legal, and allow the women, and yes, men, to decide what they wish to do with their bodies to earn a living, just like we allow them to work themselves to death in sweatshops, not only would the practice be healthier for all, but decriminalizing it would make the abuse go away.
What do we think.
This topic was on the boards a long time ago, but due to not being posted to in a long time is locked.
If you’d like to read some of the previous post, this is the page.
http://www.zonebbs.com/boards.php?t=5086&qn=1
There's far too much vileness in the sex trade even now. Sex trafficking for prostitution/porn is everywhere, you just need to dig around to find evidence of it. I'm not sure if decriminalizing it would make things better or worse. At the very least, it might help shed light on the problems though. I always think about how brothels are portrayed in so much fantasty fiction. Often the girls are respected, taken care of and look out for each other. Any abuse results in the abuser being swiftly dealt with. If there were more rights and responsibilities put in place, maybe things could be better. It really isn't going away any time soon. I do have a little issue with the moral implications though, not with people engaging in those services, but the advertising. Humans being sexual creatures is all true, well and good, but having it thrust in your face all the time is frustrating, and often demoralizing and objectifying, especially for women. Not saying everyone needs to cover up and be incredibly modest or anything, but I imagine the advertisements that would come from such "legal" services. Kids are even already being more sexualized in the media. I'd hate to see it get worse. Maybe it wouldn't. But I doubt it.
Thanks for your post.
Let us look at some of the issues you raised from another side.
Violence. The reason sex workers are abused, is they don’t have recourse or rights to punish these that have robbed, beaten them, or even raped them.
You are a sex worker, and you have “spread your legs for money” How can you now claim rape, or abuse?
It sex workers could go to the police, I believe the violence would go way down, or even stop.
If a girl willingly goes on a date, and has no problem giving her partner sex gets raped, or abused by the partner, she can take her legitimate claim to the police.
Why is she so different? Only because money hasn’t changed hands directly?
Maybe she’s received gift from the partner in hopes she’ll give sex, but she isn’t obligated to, right?
If the sex worker takes money, or gifts, they are perfectly willing to now provide sex, but if they aren’t paid, why isn’t it viewed as robbery, or rape?
The reason trafficking of young girls is so popular, is know one cares to protect them. If you have plenty of available sources of the same sex as the traffickers are providing, wouldn’t that kill the business?
It is the same as pot. It is legal in some places, and the street crimes and such related to the illegal sales of it have simply gone away. You don’t have any value anymore in it illegally.
Does a sex worker necessarily have to advertise herself in lingerie, or nude? Couldn’t she advertise in trade papers with a fully clothed picture of herself, but offer private pictures only to these that are interested?
Suppose I set myself up, but have a safe place, with an alarm system, and a guard to make sure I’m not mistreated by my clients, just like a bank, or any other high-profile services has. If I’m left alone, couldn’t I provide my trade quietly and not need to walk the streets in revealing outfits?
You do know we have a class of prostitutes who never walk anyplace at all, and who practice the trade quietly?
She/he could be your neighbor, but you think they work a regular job someplace.
I’m a legitimate business, and have the same rights and protections as legitimate businesses, so my practice could be as clean, and safe as going to the beauty shop, doctor, could it not?
If I paid taxes, and could have regular healthcare benefits, I could keep my health up.
We have women and men who do porn, or what have you, who never get or spread STD’s.
If my clients are judges, doctors, prominent citizens, and you know about this, they aren’t likely to want, nor have these things. They pay a higher price, and expect clean services.
The article I read suggest that if prostitution were made legal, women would have the upper hand over men. The clients, or police, governments would lose that power they now have, and women could now dictate the terms of providing such services.
Even women, who believe a woman has the rights to say what she does with her body are afraid of this, because now they’d need to wonder if their partners are visiting these legitimate businesses.
Interesting thoughts, don’t you think?
Amnesty international, the same group that set up the women's marches is behind many of the thoughts I've posted.
They are the group that promotes womens rights to their bodies, and if she wishes to take money for sex, this should be her right too.
Again, why is this so different from accepting gifts?
It is legal in Nevada. I believe it is carefully regulated there.
Correct, and it has been reported STD's and violent crimes against sex workers has been reduced.
Let us look at all the amoral activities we participate in daily willingly, and feel it is our God given, and human rights to do so without interference.
We are even happy to take our children along on these outings, and have a good time when we go.
On any morning, we are happy to go to our favorite coffee shop, and have a cup of sinful coffee, or tea.
We take little Johnny, and Lisa to Walmart after, and allow them to buy these violent games, skimpy bathing suits.
We even buy bad things ourselves. Cigarettes, wine, beer, and invite little Johnny or Lisa to help us carry the bags out to the car.
Now, it is about lunch time, so we go to some fast food joint and guess what, buy little Johnny and Lisa a good hamburger, and they smile, and eat someone’s relative, or maybe even a holy spirit.
Maybe we have lunch at the deli, and order a ham on rye for heaven’s sake.
Next weekend, we’ve got a family vacation planned, and we invite our long-term partner to come along.
We’ve gotten a special rate on the embassy suites, and we’ll have a suite with two bedrooms and a sitting room.
The Embassy suites is a respected hotel, and will have two separate bedrooms, so we feel responsible as a parent, because we’ll have little Johnny and Lisa right with us. We’ll not leave them at home.
Did you know the Embassy suites is a provider of sin and amorality?
We check in, then decide to have dinner, so we take little Johnny and Lisa to the bar, oops, excuse me, the restaurant, and all around us people are drinking alcoholic drinks.
We see all the couples, but we have no idea who’s married, who’s cheating, who’s gay, and who’s selling sex, but we don’t care, this is the Embassy suites after all, right? We even order a round of drinks at our table, then have the pork rib specials for all.
We head out to the pool, where we allow Lisa, of all, to wear her cute bikini.
Time for bed, and we’ve had a wonderful day.
We retire to the sin filled suite, were we’ve got a minibar, cable TV offering all manner of sex, complimentry coffee, and tea no less.
We tuck little Johnny and Lisa in bed, a bed that has surely had sex happen in it, maybe less than 5 hours ago. May have even been used for prostitution purposes, but its clean, and the sheets are nice, right?
We then retire to our room, maybe watch a little soft-core porn romantic movie with an R rating, have some unmarried sex, in another bed that was maybe used for sinful reasons and fall asleep.
After a restful night, we might have some more unmarried sex, then order room service.
Eggs, bacon, French press coffee, and we allow Little Johnny and Lisa to watch these cute cartoons with While Coot.
Totally relaxing in the palace of sin and amorality.
So, why is selling someone’s body, or sexual favors worse than my vacation? If I want to eat a ham on rye, I’m going to eat a ham on rye, and I don’t care how amoral you say it is, I don’t believe it.
Typical as ever, post #2 comes from a member of the Morality Squad.
Actually, I can see where Remy is coming from here. He's not saying it's entirely wrong and disgusting. He's saying that we have to watch very carefully that people don't get objectified more than they already are. This is a problem.
In general, I don't know how I feel about this. I think there are a lot of taboos about sex in general that shouldn't exist, and I wish the sex trade was cleaner, safer and whatnot for all involved. It's not something I could ever see myself getting into - whether being an active part of it, or sampling from it - but that doesn't mean I'm a prude who's looking down my nose either.
If they're going to decriminalize it, then they really do have to clean it up and better regulate things. People who are in this trade, women especially, do need to be protected. And before you get angry, I only mean that historically women in the sex trade often get abused by men, and that probably isn't apt to change unless it's made extremely clear to those men that no abuse will be tolerated.
Thanks for your post.
Let’s look at abuse and why it happens, or might happen.
Many, but not all workers in this field are vulnerable people.
I’m narrowing this down to prostitution only, not the whole scope of sex workers and the variety of jobs in this trade.
The job itself makes you vulnerable, due to the type of dress, or lack of dress you might use during your work.
The places you work, and the positions you work in make you vulnerable too.
If you have a boss, that person isn’t subject to any labor laws.
When you are at work, if you make a mistake and lose a client, your boss can’t punish you by beating you. They must give you a verbal warning, or fire you.
If you are feeling lazy, and don’t show up for work, you are also subject to the same punishments.
In this trade, your punishment is mainly abuse. Who can you complain to when the boss comes around and beats you because you were late, or not on the job at the correct time?
How many sick days do you get?
Now, if your boss brings you from another country, and you can’t even speak the language of the country you are in, and you have little education, your bosses can get you dependent on his praise, or drugs, or even the things you need to live, like food.
Once the law in your city gets to know you are a prostitute, they also use you for sex, and abuse you too.
Who can you complain to, and what rights do you have, if you even understand you have rights, and can complain?
We, as upstanding citizens need to protect the vulnerable people.
Are moral values, judgments, and even laws are not helping, nor deterring this trade, so if we are relying on morality, rightness, humanity, shouldn’t we do better by these workers?
We do anyone and everyone else, don’t we?
Let’s take sex out of the picture for a minute.
Many upstanding and what we would think of as moral people abuse the workers at a fast food place.
You asked for no pickles on your burger, and the little girl making it makes a mistake.
How many times have you witnessed these people being verbally abused by customers? Customers that are “good people?”
If they could, I’d bet many would jump behind the counters and physically abused the little girl too.
What if it wasn’t against the law, or she had no rights?
Put pickles on your burger, and she’s going to get slapped.
The worlds society abuses the vulnerable, and for that reason, prostitutes are abused.
I have a problem with equating things like drinking coffee with sinful behavior. Where is that in the Bible?
Though I do agree that many good points have been raised here, I do think we are looking at prostitution simplisticly. Legalizing and regulating would address many of the issues, but not all. The so-called white slave trade, which is international, is a whole other complicated topic. We also tend to think of prostitution as a simple transaction of sex for money. It is more complicated than that though. To legalize it, defining it would be essential to prevent many other sorts of degradation that currently goes along with it. I am not entirely disagreeing, just saying it is a bit more complex a subject than a bunch of horny guys on here would like to think.
Typical, post 7 is quick to mock and jeer at anything to do with morality. Morality has his place, Imp. But if you'd read my post you'd understand that I'm not condemning prostitution. I'm actually all for making it legal and getting prostitutes out from under the influence of abusive pimps and into a more regulated and hopefully safer environment. The sex trade isn't going away, but the shit prostitutes go through needs to stop. The kidnapping of runaways needs to stop. The disease and drugs and abuse needs to stop. And the severe body shaming and objectification needs to stop. I have a daughter, and I am painfully reminded of the kind of world she lives in. So yeah, I'm a member of the morality squad. Deal with it, or get your own self kidnapped and sold and see if my morality is still worth mocking.
Thanks for all the post.
Coffee and tea are stimulants. Pork eggs, and other things are against some religious diet laws.
Cows are sacred.
Remmy can help you with the coffee thing if he would.
A person’s morality depends on that person, and values, and we all take other moral values and toss them out without even thinking about it, or our worlds falling apart in sin and evil.
Sure, this is more complicated, due to the issues.
I’d agree that prostitution is more than the exchange or sex and money, and for that reason is why it won’t go away.
For some people, it is important.
Things that are done under the cover, so to speak, always seem to have much wrong attached to them, but most times, when we bring things out, much of the wrongs dissolve.
No, not all, but we’ll never live in a perfect world.
I strongly believe our daughters would live in a better world if we’d simply protect them, and I mean across the board.
You raise a daughter, but you’ll never know if she one day will choose this lifestyle.
Boys are also subject to it, but not as bad.
I believe legalization of prostitution would cut down on pimps, trafficking, and all that stuff that goes bump in the night. Nothing wrong with paying for that if that's what you're into paying for.
You know the odd thing, is we can pay for just about anything to be done to us.
When it is sexual in nature, and even that depends on what people think of as sex, it is taboo.
You can legally pay to get a massage, and these turn some foks on.
You can pay to be dominated, spanked, or whatever, and that's legal too.
I knew one lady that describe a service she'd perform. It involved putting on a cloth diaper, and simply sitting on her clients face, or as best she could.
She did nothing elxe.
Now, that is sexual, right, but no actual physical sex happened, so it was legal.
Lap dances are legal many places.
It is an interesting field.
Well I guess sex is evil. Ah well.
Yep.
Laughing.
Thanks for all your post.
So what often happens is that people delegitimize something, make it illegal. Then because it's underground, certain unsavory underground elements attach themselves to it, then that thing is seen as synonymous with those aspects of being underground.
Gays and lesbians were certainly in this predicament, a people group whose neighborhoods have the lowest in-group violence crime rates.
Some of the worst and most disingenuous arguments against prostitution tend to come fro0m those who created the environment to begin with.
How oftenb do you see police stinging pimps? No, they'd rather be that douchebag in a huge SUV with a teeny weeny going after a 5'3" prostitute than go after her pimp. Pimping is not a mutually beneficial business relationship. All the money is the pimp's all the responsibility the prostitute's.
I think they leave the pimps alone because it bolsters their argument against prostitution, then go after some low-hanging fruit -- the prostitutes or even the johns, and yukk it up with the boys about what studs they were.
Again, separate the business from the underground elements artificially imposed upon it by those that keep it illegal, then argue for or against.
Hell, look at marijuana in the states that allow it.
If it were me, sex workers of all stripes would get a business license if they worked for themselves, or get their 4p1K, paid vacation, etc., if they worked for someone else.
The prohibitionists' hobby of shooting doves in a barrel would be over.
But bring it abuv ground and the ghosts and goblins vanish.
Not right away, but yes.
I totally agree about the pimps.
Nothing there, so.
Thanks for your post.
lol benefits from being a prostitute. Imagine, employees get health benefits.
People it's not just a problem here, I mean what about the kids who get
kidnapped and are never found? That's still prostitution. Your not going to tell
me if a six year old needs to make money for her family, it's her right to give
her body up for sex? If prostiution is legalized, I'm sure there would be age
limits. And because of age limits, it would still put children in danger.
Excellent points Leo.
But all of that sex trafficking would go away if prostitution was properly regulated.
I agree.
Not all, but most.
Children are going to be exploited no matter what, because people have that kink.
That is wrong period, not prostitution because this is what you want to do for a living.
Even if you are of age, and forced, it is slavery, not prostitution.
Child labor would be on the same level as that. You bring kids in to work in factories, and whatever. They aren't doing anything sexual.
Probably the underground smugglers are the most avid supporters of keeping sex work illegal.
Just like many drug dealers are campaigners for keeping drugs illegal, which of course keeps their profit margins higher.
Sure, I completely agree.
I'd even wonder if you could have say an 18 year old, or whatever the legal age was where you lived, when you wanted, if that burb the want for kids to some degree?
Some girls are really small. Dress them up right, and you'd think you have a small girl with you.
She's not, but looks wise she is.
Puritanical judgmental people would also fight this. Those who insist on setting morality for everyone else.
Yes. They are the people fighting it now.
It was the purpose of my post about the simple things we really don't care about, or even think about we violate daily, but someone else would absolutely be upset to know we do.
Myself, I'm about to get dressed, and go buy a cup of sin. Smile.
Bless me now.
Thanks for your post.
H.L. Mencken's definition of puritanical:
The fear that someone, somewhere, just might be happy.
I likes that.
Smile.
I love that quote Leo. I didn't realize who had first said it.
It is a good quote