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[Aztechnology]

I haven't read the full article, but wat? End demand? Lmao!

"You can freely have sex for money, price has gone down because it's legalized and there are more options available."

Nah fam, suddenly doesn't sound appealing anymore. I think I'll just try to hit someone up on tinder, someone might have a low enough self esteem to sleep with me.

Spoiler

I apologize for the poor humor, but yea suffice to say I don't think demand would be going down.

 

[benicillin]

It's a complicated issue, but at the very least I think that the selling sex part should be decriminalized. If you're in that position the last thing you need is to be arrested. Buying sex should probably remain illegal as it would do less harm to the prostitutes and not disproportionately harm them.

It also is a gendered issue in the sense that it affects women way more than men. It's difficult for me to morally say legalize it entirely when you know that women would be taken advantage of every day, further enforcing the idea that women at their most base are a commodity.

 

[Coriolanus]

Well, duh. That's the goal. A reduced demand reduces the extent of trafficking and other abuse. Legalization increases it and increases trafficking.

The article you linked in the previous page mentioned it increased trafficking. It made no mention of other abuses.

 

[entremet]

If it's illegal in New York, why should the question be phrased like the norm is that it's not a crime?

It should be phrased as "Should prostitution be decriminalized?".

Just a pet peeve of mine.

It's a hypothetical.

It's meant to engender discussion through the article, which presents points for and against.

Also the NYT Magazine has a national focus.

 

[spekkeh]

I have very mixed feelings about this. I believe in self determination and that government should have no say in what you do with your own body. Therefore I think prostitution should be legal. However living in the Netherlands where it has been condoned/legal since a long time, it seems to have not dialed back human trafficking, in some cases maybe even making it worse. I'm similarly conflicted about drugs. In theory, everyone should be able to ingest whatever they feel like, but the opioid crisis in the US is exactly what happens when you can get easy access to hard drugs.

 

[Sheroking]

I feel like prostitution in the form of escort services and brothels should be legal, licensed and taxed. It's logical, safer for all parties and has the potential to a good source of tax revenue.

 

[BrassDragon]

I have very mixed feelings about this. I believe in self determination and that government should have no say in what you do with your own body. Therefore I think prostitution should be legal. However living in the Netherlands where it has been condoned/legal since a long time, it seems to have not dialed back human trafficking, in some cases maybe even making it worse. I'm similarly conflicted about drugs. In theory, everyone should be able to ingest whatever they feel like, but the opioid crisis in the US is exactly what happens when you can get easy access to hard drugs.

My job involves dealing with organized crime on a policy level and what I'm going to say is probably going to be ignored in this debate as it is everywhere else but here goes:

There are NO reliable figures on the scale of human trafficking ANYWHERE.

It's what we call a 'dark number' in law enforcement - we know it's there and some outward effects of human trafficking are measurable (like, say, how much money we seize when we roll up a gang or how many health workers notice signs of violence with prostitutes) but the real number of people trafficked / enslaved / exploited is completely opaque.

I swear, hand on heart, that anyone who makes sweeping statements about the rise or fall of human trafficking is twisting these handful of measurable quantities to suit their agenda. Yes, even high ranking police officials.

We. Just. Don't. Know.

People who go even further and use these unreliable indicators to find correlation or causation between legality of prostitution and human trafficking are, frankly, talking out of their ass. I've seen natural spikes in recorded incidents (because we assigned task forces to the problem) as 'proof' that the problem is increasing when in fact it may just be a matter of more resources leading to more discovery. For all we know, the total dark number has been dwindling.

Also consider that prostitution is just one subset of human trafficking - real world slavers won't stop their trade because demand for one service goes up or down. There will always be demand for human beings, the snakeheads don't care if their 'product' ends up in a brothel, restaurant, mansion, sweat shop or drug lab.

My humble suggestion is to stop hiding behind the human trafficking boogey man and just consider your own moral and practical stance on prostitution... because your laws for and against will NOT stop human trafficking as a crime and blight on humanity. For what it's worth, I do feel that legalizing prostitution makes 'regular' professionals more cooperative in pointing out excesses in their world to law enforcement (and the vast majority of arrests start with a cooperative witness so that's a big win.)

 

[A Link to the Past]

In that case, the answer is no. I believe liberty, self-autonomy, and self-determination are principles that should be the basis of most, but not all, laws. There are exceptions: for example we rightly do not allow people to simply sell their internal organs to the highest bidder. On its face this would violate all three principles, but we have determined that this ban is still justifiable for various reasons.

The difference is that I actually think committing resources to enforcing the ban on selling your own organs is a worthwhile use of said resources, while I've said a couple times that I don't think trying to enforce a prostitution ban is a good use of resources.

Why do we disallow organ sale, though? That's the question we need to ask - there is a legitimate health and safety issue that doesn't exist in the justification of a ban on sex work.

 

[Chainsawkitten]

The article you linked in the previous page mentioned it increased trafficking. It made no mention of other abuses.

I phrased it unclearly. The 'it' in the second sentence refers to 'demand', not 'abuse'.

To clarify:
There are two ways to diminish the total level of abuse within an activity. To reduce the prevalence of the activity entirely, thus by extension also reducing the level of abuse, or to reduce the percentage of abuse that's taking place. (Of course the two can also be combined, which would probably be the best solution in most instances (given that the activity causes enough harm that wanting to lessen the activity is justifiable, old people slipping and dying isn't a particularly good reason to try to get people to not shower).)

The idea behind reducing demand is that there will be less prostitution overall, including abuse, not that the percentage of abuse will be lower. This was the idea I was explaining in the first sentence.

In the second sentence I was claiming that this holds true not just in theory, but also in practice when it comes to trafficking. The percentage of trafficked prostitutes is (to my knowledge) not lower in Sweden than in Denmark but about the same, but the total amount of prostitutes is, and majorly so. So Sweden having significantly less trafficking than Denmark isn't a result of Swedish prostitution being "nicer", but simply being "lesser".

Of course, there is also the argument that legalized prostitution would reduce the percentage of abuse more significantly than the increased demand/prevalence of prostitution. For trafficking, this is false, but I didn't mean to claim it was false for non-trafficking related abuse. At this point I haven't read enough data to conclude anything about non-trafficking related abuse. Personally, I sincerely doubt legalization will lead to a total amount of less abuse and other venues should be explored to try to make prostitution safer (and certainly legalizing the prostitute's part in the matter is unquestionable, being potentially abused can never be a reason for prosecution), but if people can supply some good data that standards increase much more than demand/extent of the industry I'd love to see it.

 

[Acosta]

Absolutely not, a completely waste of resources just for a diminishing group of people can feel better with themselves (not talking exclusively about religion). It´s like trying to stop a river with your bare hands, completely useless.

Things won't magically become better for sex workers, but they won't be worse and there is hope for some improvement along the way, meanwhile we'll liberate resources for more necessary stuff.

The "end demand" part made my eyes roll to the infinite, lol.

 

[Killing_Joke]

Street prostitution, yes.

Massage parlors should be left alone. They ain't harming nobody.

 

[Vincent Grayson]

Street prostitution, yes.

Massage parlors should be left alone. They ain't harming nobody.

Not true. Often, they import their sex workers from abroad, and exert significant control over their lives. Even when it's not slavery, it can be damn close.

I'm all in favor of legalizing prostitution, but the potential for abuse needs to be addressed and well-monitored.

 

[Mael]

How would this stop the demand? What about prostitutes that like their job? Why should non violent customers be punished, but servers not?

I'm not saying that you HAVE to, I'm saying if you want to punish someone for that because for some reason society feels like prostitution should be illegal.

You're saying this like all sex workers want to stop, which isn't true. Plenty of girls in the business can get a regular job, but they don't. They like the money, and they like the freedom of being their own boss. Some just like sex.

And I don't think that's a majority of them in any way, I don't think I've even seen numbers pointing to that even.
If someone wants to do that they shouldn't be shamed or ostracized or anything, society should provide for them like it does for other type of self employment jobs.
However for the vast number of people basically thrown into it against their will, the customers and the pimps should absolutely be punished.

Norway, Sweden, Iceland, France.

And the result is, again: It's been shown to reduce street prostitution, the demand for prostitution overall and human trafficking. (In the Nordic countries, it's too early to tell in France.)

France?
We have something called "Brigade des moeurs" that is basically all about stuffs like prostitution and jailing them!
There is a law that is in the making since 2011 and that has been voted last month, it hasn't been signed by the president and there isn't even a decree applying the law.
I also doubt this could lead to a worse situation than the current status quo which has the whole legal burden on the prostitutes.

 

[Chainsawkitten]

France?
We have something called "Brigade des moeurs" that is basically all about stuffs like prostitution and jailing them!
There is a law that is in the making since 2011 and that has been voted last month, it hasn't been signed by the president and there isn't even a decree applying the law.
I also doubt this could lead to a worse situation than the current status quo which has the whole legal burden on the prostitutes.

Yeah, that's what I'm referring to. I was under the impression it has already passed and is going to be put into practice, after technicalities. But I haven't really looked into it. Are there more things it needs to pass/anything else making it unlikely to reach implementation? I did specify the results I were talking about didn't apply to France (yet).

And I agree, out of all possible ways to deal with it, I think prosecuting prostitutes is the worst.

 

[mantidor]

Pimping should be illegal.

I think that in any country that it's legal this is definitely the case.

 

[Harmen]

People like sex and paying people for services is completely normal. I don't see why this should be illegal at all. That said, the sex industry seems gross and abusive, which definitely needs to change. But at this point, I think legalisation may allow for improvements moreso than trying to stop it. When legal, regulations can be made to protect/aid the prostitutes. At the very least legalisation would allow for legitimate businesses to compete with the shady ones (instead of all of them being dark underground businesses with human trafficking and whatnot).

 

[Iorv3th]

Legal or not it's still happening and it's much more dangerous with it being illegal to both the women and the john's.

 

[Mael]

Yeah, that's what I'm referring to. I was under the impression it has already passed and is going to be put into practice, after technicalities. But I haven't really looked into it. Are there more things it needs to pass/anything else making it unlikely to reach implementation? I did specify the results I were talking about didn't apply to France (yet).

And I agree, out of all possible ways to deal with it, I think prosecuting prostitutes is the worst.

It's been voted by the National Assemblee last month, it needs to be signed into law by the executive branch (the President) AND then it needs to be published in the Official Journal.
Afterwards there needs a final Application Decree to finalize the ways the law is applied.
That last part is the most important as without it no law can be legally applied.
In short without it, it's a nice declaration of intent that no one should give a shit about.
It happens more than anyone is willing to admit.

My general point isn't that someone HAS to be punished, it's gross that prostitutes get the brunt of the legal burden on top of all the shit they have to weather.

 

[dave is ok]

Street prostitution, yes.

Massage parlors should be left alone. They ain't harming nobody.

Except for the slaves

 

[dity]

No, and we should stop using the slur "prostitution" too.

It should be all properly regulated like the Australia sex worker industry. The only ones being punished should be those exploiting sex workers - like brothels that underpay their employees and don't provide proper protection.

 

[Iorv3th]

No, and we should stop using the slur "prostitution" too.

It's a slur? I thought it was just a job title.

 

[womfalcs3]

So somebody's official job is "sperm dumpster". That humiliating.

 

[dity]

It's a slur? I thought it was just a job title.

Legitimate non-exploited sex workers do not use that word to describe what they do. It's a word only associated with the criminalisation and hate against sex work.

So somebody's official job is "sperm dumpster". That humiliating.

A lot less humiliating than the plethora of creepy threads we get on gaf about members trying to interact with the opposite sex

 

[Mael]

Chainsawkitten, I forgot to add some critical info that could be the reason why you thought it was much further along than it really was.
It was 1rst presented in 2011 and was lost in legal limbo for 4 years.
We changed majority since then and no one really wanted to do anything about it.
We also had a laughable open letter by politics saying that they really were against prosecuting customers when it really looked like they were against prosecuting themselves more than any concerns about the sex workers.

So somebody's official job is "sperm dumpster". That humiliating.

You shouldn't talk ill of legislators.

 

[hunchback]

Street prostitution, yes.

Massage parlors should be left alone. They ain't harming nobody.

I have to disagree with you on massage parlors. In the US I would say that is where a large percentage of Asian women are being trafficked from massage places. They also move them from state to state so they are harder to track. The rub and tug business is very harmful and needs to be monitored way more than it currently is.

 

[hodayathink]

I think this an important post. I think we can to a degree look at the Porn industry as a reference to what legalized prostitution would look like and there's a staggering amount of horror stories that kind of mirror the sentiments in your post. I mean I'm prepared to be wrong, but I think there's just more harm than good that would come from legalizing prostitution.

The level of exploitation would be incredible.

And even then, the porn industry is better and safer than it was in the 80s before Freeman, when it was just as illegal and underground (filming wise) as prostitution was.

 

[OniBarubary]

My job involves dealing with organized crime on a policy level and what I'm going to say is probably going to be ignored in this debate as it is everywhere else but here goes:

There are NO reliable figures on the scale of human trafficking ANYWHERE.

It's what we call a 'dark number' in law enforcement - we know it's there and some outward effects of human trafficking are measurable (like, say, how much money we seize when we roll up a gang or how many health workers notice signs of violence with prostitutes) but the real number of people trafficked / enslaved / exploited is completely opaque.

I swear, hand on heart, that anyone who makes sweeping statements about the rise or fall of human trafficking is twisting these handful of measurable quantities to suit their agenda. Yes, even high ranking police officials.

We. Just. Don't. Know.

People who go even further and use these unreliable indicators to find correlation or causation between legality of prostitution and human trafficking are, frankly, talking out of their ass. I've seen natural spikes in recorded incidents (because we assigned task forces to the problem) as 'proof' that the problem is increasing when in fact it may just be a matter of more resources leading to more discovery. For all we know, the total dark number has been dwindling.

Also consider that prostitution is just one subset of human trafficking - real world slavers won't stop their trade because demand for one service goes up or down. There will always be demand for human beings, the snakeheads don't care if their 'product' ends up in a brothel, restaurant, mansion, sweat shop or drug lab.

My humble suggestion is to stop hiding behind the human trafficking boogey man and just consider your own moral and practical stance on prostitution... because your laws for and against will NOT stop human trafficking as a crime and blight on humanity. For what it's worth, I do feel that legalizing prostitution makes 'regular' professionals more cooperative in pointing out excesses in their world to law enforcement (and the vast majority of arrests start with a cooperative witness so that's a big win.)

I quoted this so people actually read this great post.

 

[opoth]

I'm happily married, would never consider anything like it, but that being said...

Puritanical societies make the situation worse. Sex work has been and always will be a reality as long as our bodies are designed to procreate, you can't legislate it out of existence.

Much like abortion and drugs, when we push it into the back alleys, we create potential negative personal situations that don't need to exist - if it's a trade that isn't looked down on in shame, you won't hear horror stories about women being "'forced" into the trade or whatever.

I think its just another facet of human nature that needs to be accepted and ultimately regulated and taxed like legal cannabis, gambling, etc.

 

[CadetMahoney]

It's a hypothetical.

It's meant to engender discussion through the article, which presents points for and against.

Also the NYT Magazine has a national focus.

The question being phrased in a more meaningful way doesn't stop it being a hypothetical, doesn't stop it being a question for discussion points either. Most states ban prostitution too.

 

[kavanf1]

My job involves dealing with organized crime on a policy level and what I'm going to say is probably going to be ignored in this debate as it is everywhere else but here goes:

There are NO reliable figures on the scale of human trafficking ANYWHERE.

It's what we call a 'dark number' in law enforcement - we know it's there and some outward effects of human trafficking are measurable (like, say, how much money we seize when we roll up a gang or how many health workers notice signs of violence with prostitutes) but the real number of people trafficked / enslaved / exploited is completely opaque.

I swear, hand on heart, that anyone who makes sweeping statements about the rise or fall of human trafficking is twisting these handful of measurable quantities to suit their agenda. Yes, even high ranking police officials.

We. Just. Don't. Know.

People who go even further and use these unreliable indicators to find correlation or causation between legality of prostitution and human trafficking are, frankly, talking out of their ass. I've seen natural spikes in recorded incidents (because we assigned task forces to the problem) as 'proof' that the problem is increasing when in fact it may just be a matter of more resources leading to more discovery. For all we know, the total dark number has been dwindling.

Also consider that prostitution is just one subset of human trafficking - real world slavers won't stop their trade because demand for one service goes up or down. There will always be demand for human beings, the snakeheads don't care if their 'product' ends up in a brothel, restaurant, mansion, sweat shop or drug lab.

My humble suggestion is to stop hiding behind the human trafficking boogey man and just consider your own moral and practical stance on prostitution... because your laws for and against will NOT stop human trafficking as a crime and blight on humanity. For what it's worth, I do feel that legalizing prostitution makes 'regular' professionals more cooperative in pointing out excesses in their world to law enforcement (and the vast majority of arrests start with a cooperative witness so that's a big win.)

Really interesting (and frightening) perspective, thanks.

 

[LocalE]

I am of the belief that you can't buy consent since money is a form of coercion. Thus prostitution should be illegal. However it should not be illegal to be a prostitute, rather only being a pimp or a john should be illegal.


Don't punish the women, many of whom are forced into prostitution by force or by circumstance. Punish the peddlers and consumers. It would make women who are prostitutes more likely to cooperate with authorities if they aren't facing criminal charges themselves.

Well I not only disagree with your particular stance on these subjects, but also with everyone who thinks it should be decriminalized while still 'punishing' the consumers.
That's bullshit.

Also, I assume that you really don't just mean "women who are prostitutes", right? Surely, you just mean "prostitutes", as it shouldn't make any difference whether a prostitute is male or female. Right?

Really though, this "johns should be punished" stance aggravates the hell out of me. How does that make any sense?

And the "consent is impossible because of money" idea is so wrong-headed in my eyes that I can't really imagine what brings a person to believe that that makes any sense at all.

But, really, would someone like to try explaining why "johns should be punished" makes any sense at all?
Because that is such bullshit.

You'll notice that my PoV is pretty much "fuck the customer" in that equation :lol

Yeah, so I guess my PoV is basically "fuck that PoV".

Unless by "fuck the customer" you mean, "have sex with the customer. Because that's your job."

I'll never understand why people get so weird about sex.