Are only limited by the number of humans involved.

Goddess how I wish it wasn't so damned hard to get people to see this stuff.

When we sanction the idea that it is ok to rent people's bodies to be used as sex toys, that sends a very clear message to sex buyers, and to others who might not have become sex buyers were it not sanctioned.

There are regulations controlling prescription medications, but those drugs are still abused. Regulations can only do so much.

The difference is, when users abuse drugs, they're abusing a thing.

When sex buyers abuse prostitutes, they are abusing PEOPLE.

Sex buyers don't all want to use condoms. Many of them don't want to restrict themselves to acts that legal prostiutes agree to engage in. Many of them prefer very young if not underage prostitutes. Anyone who thinks having a legal brothel will somehow channel these sick pieces of shit toward adult prosrotites who have a say in what they do is in deep denial.

Those who champion the rights or sex buyers over the voiceless, ignored people who seem be considered no more than collateral damage ...

That point about unprotected sex seems to be supported through the content of a recent hide.

Such posts are very revealing to those who actually pay attention.

It's interesting, the games some people play. Pity more don't notice.

Did you get a hidden post somewhere?

Not sure if Bains and I are thinking of the same one but I'm fairly confident we are.

When it comes to underage prostitution, the goal isn't to drive those johns to adult prostitutes. The goal is to move the adult prostitutes out of the way. Put the adults in brothels or similar environments so that the sick fucks stand out more.

Also, it's much more likely that adult prostitutes and their customers will report suspected child prostitutes when they don't fear being prosecuted themselves.

How does keeping prostitution illegal help this "collateral damage"?

A couple of years ago they started passing harsher laws against sex buyers and traffickers (pimps) but seriously why are people so eager to cater to sex buyers?

There is so much harm done by those who buy sex. Yet the neoliberal focus is, of course, as always, on money.

And with such ungodly sums of money at stake, you can rest assured tbat those who stand to make the most are investing in pushing their agenda to legalize it.

Liberals and progressives treat propaganda from the oil and has industry with suspicion. Same with any other outrageously lucrative industry.

Why, when it comes to this one, is the neoliberal stance so incredibly popular?

Considering prostitution has been legal in Nevada since the 1800s, I don't think we can argue that legalization increased child prostitution more recently.


A few reasons, depending on the person.

Some like it because government "shouldn't be in our bedrooms". The same "leave me alone" that some use to support abortion rights.

Some like it because it's kinda strange to have an activity that is legal if it's free, but illegal if it's commercial.

Some like it because they think throwing these vulnerable people in prison does not help them. Personally, I'm in that camp.

Some like it because they see laws against prostitution and laws against drugs as similar "force our morals on others" laws.

And some like it because they like buying sex.

But back to the question I asked before, How does keeping the black market for sex help?

Prostitution is ubiquitous, so making it illegal doesn't seem to be hurting "demand" or "supply". Pimps thrive when prostitutes need protection from violent Johns as well as law enforcement - decriminalization has greatly cut down on pimps in the UK. And a John who thinks "that new girl is really young" is gonna keep his mouth shut if he's worried about going to jail for seeing an adult prostitute. And a criminal record makes it far harder for the prostitute to get a "legit" job, making it much more likely that she remains in the sex industry.

I don't see an upside for the prostitute, or the community as a whole.

It's not legal throughout the entire state.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Nevada

So I guess my question is what, in the end, is the lesser evil? Certainly I think the selling of sex should be decriminalized, because keeping it illegal only makes things worse for vulnerable people - but on the buying end, I'm more ambivalent (with the caveat that knowingly buying sex from someone underage or trafficked should be a serious crime punishable by a prison term).

And then it would much tidier and cooler, not to mention convenient!

Spot on

DURec

I swear that movie is almost a documentary.

That comment made, I agree with the OP and the sexualization of young girls disgusts me as well.

The act of sex and who they desire would be different if it were legal on paper as opposed to legal in practice? Your point makes no sense.

perverted men ever stop that behavior? Legal or not?

I am just wondering how you suggest we stop men from doing that? Banning prostitution apparently didn't stop it.

Prostitution has been banned by various countries since the spread of Christianity nearly 2000 years ago.

How has that worked out? Unsurprisingly it's no more successful than the War on Drugs

Rather than where poor people live?

They just call themselves escorts.

Do they walk the street? How old are they? Where are they based? What are the consequences for the rest of the neighborhood?

That's a myth.

How do I know? I hired an escort as a gag for a friend. At the time, she rented a condo in (which at the time was) my area. Asian, pretty, was putting herself through school.

And what does the rest of that matter? Do you want me to submit an ecological impact study too? Christ.

sounds pretty swanky.

Craigslist, backpage, myredbook, other sites that havent been mentioned in the media and I don't know
Prostitution is in very small towns in Wyoming, it's almost everywhere.

You don't know what it's like to live surrounded by it.

Weird comment.

It is your comment that is weird.

You asked how the poster would know that not all prostitutes walk the streets, and I replied that it's common knowledge to anyone who uses the internet. Feel free to keep reading your own baggage into my statement.
Good day.

Prostitution ordinances are local anyway. Engage in your neoliberal experiment in your own community and leave poor people out of it. None of that requires cooperation from me or anyone else on this board. Examine the laws in your state and county and work on it there. You think it's so great, let the kids of your community grow up being preyed upon.

I think I'd rather work on legalization nationally.

I'm not asking or expecting your cooperation.

Obviously you aren't serioulsy interested in legalization or you would have bothered to figure that much out. I find it improbable an adult could be so uninformed about basic civics as to imagine laws about prostitution were federal. The only part that is federal relates to transportation across state borders. We have this thing called the 10th Amendment to the Constitution. Read it sometime.

I can't help but think this issue is simply an opportunity to continue a favorite theme:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025330486#post25

At least you're consistent.

Bizarre. I didn't say federal legalization, did I? I said national.

You enjoy arguing but you're piss poor at it.

will work out as back-asswards as same sex marriage, legal here but not there etc .

Whether legal or not. Legalizing it won't transform the nature of sexual predators, but it will expand the sex trade. With that comes deterioration of neighborhoods. In the Twin Cities, communities have worked hard to get those businesses out, to change zoning laws, to close the photography shop the prostitution was run out of in the neighborhood I talked about. Neighborhoods have since revitalized.

The more prostitution expands, the more deterioration in its wake. That is as true for legal sex businesses, like strip clubs, porn shops, and "massage" parlors, as illegal ones. You see the problem is with the men who buy women, not the laws. Making adult prostitution legal won't miraculous end their desire for underage girls or do away with their attempts to procure them. Evidence showing an increase in human trafficking following legalization demonstrates it is in fact the opposite. When it is legal to buy women, then they want teenagers and children. Taffickers know their is money to be in an area, so they force women into sexual slavery to make money off them. That is what has happened in Germany.

If you think prostitution is so great, put it next to your kids school, not mine. I notice no one responds to that point because you wouldn't dream of doing that. All you do is try to justify why our lives should be shit, like our only purpose is to serve as a Third World playground. No. We will not do that.

illegal prostitution, so I still don't get why this is a good argument against decriminalized prostitution.

this is an argument overall about class and sexwork, which i believe is a very problematic reality, but its not an argument against decriminalization.

What about legalization would change that? Did you see that it was in effect legal in my neighborhood? The cops protected the trade, not the community.

The same thing occurs in communities with strip clubs and porn shops. Those are entirely legal, but they attract clients from outside the area who see women as something to buy and underage girls are all the better. There is evidence from places where prostitution has been legalized that shows human trafficking, including of underage girls and boys, increases as a result.

Your notion of some Utopian world where men who purchase women suddenly cease being predators because of a law makes no sense, nor is it supported by evidence. Capitalism is not the perfect order of things. Reducing everything to a commodity creates more inequality, not less.

there was no way for a person to report underage prostitutes without admitting to an illegal act.

Unfortunately, I think we can all agree that that kinda thing is nothing new, whether it relates to human trafficking, or drug smuggling, etc. Hell, it's probably as old as the concept of the police force itself!

We've also seen this happen with the Drug Wars, too, particularly in places like Los Angeles(any SoCal folks still remember C.R.A.S.H., btw?), Miami, etc.

there can be multiple problems afoot in a scenario, you know

In fact, one observation I've been able to make over the years is that social conservative views and corruption(not just of police, but government in general), instead of being the worst of enemies, have often gone hand in hand, in this country, whether it be in the projects of New York today, or small-town Alabama in the '60s, or L.A. in the '80s.

Police corruption didn't cause that. They allowed it, which is what you all advocating should be the case everywhere.

Human beings are not drugs. I am not a plant. I am a person. That we are no more than objects to be bought and sold in your scenario is the heart of the problem.

faced by sexworkers.

and I appreciate that. The OP's declaring he wouldn't even read my post was very frustrating, so I felt I had to write this. You answered just as I was finishing this OP.

The other point I want to make is that neighborhoods have worked hard to get the strip clubs, prostitution, and porn shops out. This whole area was full of that stuff when I was growing up. Now the street where I used to get propositioned by adult men is full of restaurants and ethnic groceries started by immigrants. There is even a yoga studio on the next block, which I found amazing. A similar neighborhood in St. Paul now has a library where a strip club used to be. Those changes represent decades of community activism. People worked hard to get that stuff out of their neighborhoods. I fear legalization would only bring it back and lead to the accompanying deterioration of communities that always follows in its wake. Evidence coming out of Europe about the increase in human trafficking in places like Germany does nothing to alleviate those concerns.

Surely avoiding the further spread of slavery is important, if nothing else?

Yes there are some areas that have improved, but we've also seen the treatment of woman as sex objects go from bad to worse (in my opinion). I don't think going further in this direction (by legalizing prostitution) is a positive step in the slightest.

Bryant

When people like Douglas Fox, Peter McCormick, Mark McCormick, etc. are allowed to have such input into crafting policy, that tells you the reality of the situation. It's about money. Anyone fooled into thinking that making things easier for pimps and sex buyers is really about helping prostitutes and exploited women and children is being played.

As sex workers keep telling anti-prostitution ideologues, it doesn't help. It's illogical to keep trying something we know has never worked and doesn't work.

but legalizing hurts those who become victims of human trafficking (largely underage girls and boys) who are forced to labor as so-called legal prostitutes. The point of my OP is the sex workers and Johns are not the only ones affected by prostitution. The more it's spread, as anyone who grew up in a red light neighborhood or has read the accounts of Europe about the impact of legalizing prostitution, the more innocent people are caught in its wake.

The thing is those effects are happening despite prostitution being illegal. Why would continuing that help stop those effects?

We got it out of our neighborhoods. Legalizing it could bring it back. If people want to put it in Edina and Shoreview (two wealthy suburbs in my area), that is their call, but not here, not again.
Note that another poster in this thread grew up in similar neighborhood and knows exactly what it is like.

You also talked about driving out strip clubs and porn shops. Those are legal. So making prostitution illegal doesn't seem to have driven it out - you also had to drive out legal businesses. And those other businesses being legal hasn't caused them to return.

Also, legalization opens the door to regulation. Regulation gives you the option to restrict where it happens to move it out of neighborhoods. Much like many cities force strip clubs to not be in residential areas.

Is community organizations demanded those businesses close down. The prostitution was run out of a photography studio, which is no longer there. I know in the Rhondo neighborhood (where the library I mentioned is), it took decades of work to transform the neighborhood. They've insisted the zoning ordinances be changed. The neighborhood I grew up in has been through various stages. It got really bad for a while, was a major crack area, totally rundown (worse then when I was growing up) but has since been revitalized. That no-good police station is gone, and immigrants moved in. It is mainly they who have revitalized that neighborhood by opening up businesses. Rhondo is a principally African American neighborhood rather than an immigrant community.

You haven't engaged once with the issue of urban, suburban/ poor vs. property areas. Why is that? That is key to all of this. It certainly is how those of us who live in those neighborhoods see it.

You'll note that I mentioned in many of my posts that we need to fix our broken economic system. I haven't gone into it more deeply because the threads were about legalizing/not legalizing prostitution, and how we fix our economic system is a very lengthy discussion in its own right.

I think we differ in that I see attacking/splitting/dichotomy-ing suburban/"rich" areas as trying to drag them down, instead of lifting up the poor areas. (Not saying that is your intention, but that's the way your posts come off to me.)

I'd rather bring up the poor instead of pulling down the suburbs....except by taxing the hell out of the rich to pay for it.

Isn't that nice. Wouldn't we all. In fact, the poor people especially want it, which is why those communities in my cities have driven out the sex trade. Guess what? It worked. Those neighborhoods are revitalized.

Yeah, I sure do see it as about suburban/urban because it mirrors a First World/ Third World dynamic. My experience was of growing up in that Third World community that was exploited for the benefit of the First World. You have theoretical ideas of capitalist utopia are entirely uninformed by reality. I resent that people from middle and upper-middle class areas engage in neoliberal fantasies about how to introduce the sex trade back into my city after we worked for decades to get rid of it. You want it in your community, put it there. Prostitution laws are local anyway. You can have your neoliberal experiment in your own community, where your children grow up. None of you have expressed any willingness to do that. It's all about how our lives are shitty anyway, so why not legalize it. No. No way something like that passes a Mpls or St. Paul City Council. We know far too much about the experience of living with it.

since I didn't share them. But don't let that get in the way of ranting against your strawman.

Good thing I didn't do that. Remember how I've brought up regulation multiple times now, and how it can be used to move legal prostitution out of your area?


They're state-wide.


Yeah, incinerate that strawman! So much easier than talking about what other people actually said.

Not that I saw. I repeatedly suggested that you (and others) so keen on legalizing prostitution have it in theirs. You nor anyone else has agreed to that. You have instead talked about why legalization shouldn't make a difference to people like me. You never said, yeah, that makes sense, put it where the customers are just like in other businesses. You talked about how poor areas are already shitty so what difference would legalization make. That is how I came to the conclusion in my previous post. That and your comment about my wanting to bring down other areas, which indicates to me that you understand prostitution brings economic blight.

I don't believe laws are entirely state wide, but that likely varies from state to state. I know that in Nevada some counties have legal prostitution and some do not. And even if laws are state-wide, zoning is a matter for counties and city councils. An example is dry counties or why some places in Colorado sell recreational marijuana and others don't.

If you think establishing prostitution brings down an area, as your comment to me suggests, why would you want to see it proliferate? Regardless, I don't support it in my area, which in no way encumbers your ability to establish it in your own.

The two are not separate.

And if anything, trafficking is easier - you're already breaking the law, so might as well break it a little more.

With legal prostitution, the door's open to regulation, and that means checking IDs and other activities to thwart trafficking.

That is why trafficking increases in areas where it is legal. Your point is exactly why the two are indeed connected.

Nevada doesn't have more trafficking than other parts of the US. The UK did a massive sweep and free ride home to try and rescue trafficked people. Less than 10 took them up on the offer.

The two are not directly tied.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5356616

When you talked about the desensitization to violence through media and it's effects on violence in society, including war and torture? I wanted to read it again and link to it for someone else to read.

Last edited Fri Aug 8, 2014, 01:42 AM - Edit history (2)

I see it as conditioning and desensitizing. Like the Handmaiden's Tale.

Like Cheney, Rush and Fox saying waterboarding isn't torture. Like the media calling civilian dead collateral damage. Like television shows showing the human body being tortured, mutated, twisted into things just to be used by...

Who, and to what end, it is never asked. But it's like a train wreck that people can't get their eyes off of it.

There is a lot of media that has always painted an image of women as things to be used, to vent anger on, to ethnically cleanse, for profit, whatever. The same media portrays men as sadists, killers and tools of war to be discarded when broken. Not human.

It's part of the coarsening and tone deafness to each other being presented to the youth and others in the nation to titillate and take their eyes off the powerful.

To make less meaningful the fact that the powerful are torturing workers, animals, the planet and humans for profit and as sport. Yes, it's sport to do this and it's treated as entertainment. They are teaching us their values.

Refusing to face the facts of what to some are obviously lesser people's lives, fears and pain, is our loss. We ask the same questions over and over again about why some will gravitate toward religion in the face of those who dismiss their pain for sterile arguments about rights and freedoms.

It's about feelings. It's about respect. Not about critiques of style or art, but real lives that see the daily desensitization of pain and disregarding the poor, the unpopular and the vulnerable since they are not attractive enough to have a market value according to media.

There really can't be a DU discussion about this that does not end in mockery. So I seldom join into threads on the rights of the vulnerable at DU. I have only stated my ideas and what is deeper than a movie or book. No one will agree, which is fine by me.

And my not indulging the mockers at their demand that I answer them, is my right, too. People can ignore those who feel differently, but IRL I know many who have shifted to the right as their refuge for just this reason.

*By disrespecting them, they will leave us, because they see us as arrogant, refusing to show them respect by not allowing them to talk, calling them names and mocking their feelings. On things we should all value as humans. They go back to an older path, no longer listening when we have fine things to say, so we have lost an ally.*

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025296248#post14

*I think this is what you mean by neoliberalism, and never considered it in this context and found it liberating here, and when Chris Hedges said something about it:



Noam Chomsky speaks to what you grew up in and what I saw a lot of later:



Found a video about a book I'd never seen before for you:



Uploaded on Apr 23, 2011

This interview with Robert Jensen is based upon his new book Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity.

Media Mouse asks Professor Jensen a wide range of questions dealing with the impact that pornography has on men, how to analyze pornography through a media literacy lens, and what is the relationship between the anti-pornography movement and other social justice movements.

Jensen provides a detailed feminist critique of pornography.

http://mediamousearchive.wordpress.com/

http://mediamousearchive.wordpress.com/

AMAZON review of book:

In our culture, porn makes the man. So argues Robert Jensen in Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. Jensen’s treatise begins with a simple demand: “Be a man.” It ends with a defiant response: “I chose to struggle to be a human being.” The journey from masculinity to humanity is found in the candid and intelligent exploration of porn’s devastating role in defining masculinity.

Getting Off seamlessly blends personal anecdotes from Jensen’s years as a feminist anti-pornography activist with scholarly research. In his trademark conversational style, he shows how mainstream pornography reinforces social definitions of manhood and influences men’s attitudes about women and how to treat them.

Pornography is a thriving multi-billion-dollar industry; it drives the direction of emerging media technology. Pornography also makes for complicated politics. These days, anti-porn arguments are assumed to be “anti-sex” and thus a critical debate is silenced. This book breaks that silence. Alarming and thought-provoking, Getting Off asks tough, but crucial, questions about pornography, sex, manhood, and the way toward genuine social justice.

Robert Jensen is an associate professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege and Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity.

http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Off-Pornography-End-Masculinity/dp/089608776X

Hope this will be useful.

of what/why/how it all is forming a society of zombies willing to do the bidding the 0.1%

The porn of today is so -different- now than from even One Generation ago.

Little by little, one by one.

Thank you.

It's very useful. Thank you for posting it!

We need to fix our economic system to get rid of such "Third World playgrounds".

But how does keeping prostitution illegal help that? Or help stop the harassment you experienced?

Prostitution is usually chosen as a "least-bad" option, as opposed to a good option. We need more good options, but making prostitution illegal doesn't help that.

Now, if someone is advocating only decriminalizing prostitution and not fixing the rest of the system, then they're just out to use poor people for their pleasure.

To close down the strip clubs, porn shops, and move the prostitutes out. One neighborhood succeeded in getting a library built on the location of a notorious strip club. That represented decades of community activism. Making it legal would bring it back it. I don't for a second believe that the suburban guys who frequent prostitutes want it in their neighborhoods. They'll make sure it's in ours. And no, I'm not going to sit back and wait for some hypothetical end to capitalism so the neoliberal agenda can move forward.

You make it so it stays in upper income areas, I have no problem. If you want your daughters to grow up being harassed day in and day out, that's your business, but I'm not sitting back while a bunch of middle- and upper-middle class men who don't give a shit about the rest of us drive our communities back into the ground.

This is part of the push of capitalist neoliberalism to commodity everything including human bodies, to increase profit at the expense of human rights. If is so fucking important to you people, do it in your own communities and leave us out of it. Sell your own sons and daughters rather than buying ours. Of course that won't happen because that's not the purpose. The entire premise is based on exploitation of the powerless for the pleasure of the privileged, who come into the city to purchase under age girls and then go back home to the suburbs while our communities go to hell. I don't give a fuck what those men want. They desire to buy human beings doesn't take precedence over the people who have worked hard to make our communities livable.

Studies show that prostitution increases exploitation of underage girls, human trafficking--SLAVERY. That people insist on it anyway tells me they do not care about those human beings anymore than they care about people like me and the others who grew up with me. This is about increasing the neoliberal fiction of is about the rights of the "individual," which as always means white men of means. It increases class, race, and gender domination, which is part and parcel to the expansion of neoliberalism.

"close down the strip clubs, porn shops, and move the prostitutes out." is getting rid of two legal businesses and one illegal. How does keeping prostitution illegal help that?

No, but legalization opens the door to regulation. In many communities there are restrictions on where someone can open a strip club. You could put similar restrictions on opening a brothel, and thus get it out of neighborhoods and into commercial/industrial areas.


How does keeping prostitution illegal help that? The prostitutes are going to go to where there is the least police activity. That isn't going to be the "rich" neighborhoods.....at least street level prostitutes. Rich neighborhoods have plenty of "kept women".


How does keeping prostitution illegal help that? Again, the prostitutes are already there. Keeping it illegal means they stay there. And it means criminal records for prostitutes so that they have a much harder time getting a "legit" job.

We need to fix our economic system so that people are not resorting to prostitution. Punishing these people doesn't do that.


Studies also show that is the case whether or not prostitution is illegal. Making it legal results in more reported cases as prostitutes can avail themselves of the legal system instead of hiding from it. The recent German study only covered reported cases. No attempt was made to figure out an estimate of unreported cases prior to legalization. Plus, the German model makes trafficking more likely - prostitutes must work out of a licensed brothel, and there are strict limitations on number of licenses and who can get them.

As an alternative, the UK model basically requires prostitutes to work in private, and puts restrictions on where they can be. The law also bans pimping - you can't make money offering the sexual services of another. When there was fear of massive trafficking in the '00s, the UK authorities interviewed many thousands of prostitutes and offered a free trip home. Less than 10 took them up on the offer.


Prostitution being illegal did not stop that. So why would continuing prostitution being illegal stop it?

It hasn't helped with limiting human trafficking. Prostitution is a blight on society. It doesn't help liberate women in any sense of the word, legalized or otherwise.

[link:http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/human-trafficking-persists-despite-legality-of-prostitution-in-germany-a-902533.html|

and examines the effects. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1986065

You can download the paper for free.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1986065

Not whether or not it is legal. Human trafficking exists, but the more prostitution proliferates, the more it promotes slavery and sexual exploitation of children.

The way my post answered your question was that that communities organization to get rid of the sex trade, both legal and illegal, which enabled their communities to revitalize. The neighborhood I grew up in no longer has widespread prostitution, porn shops and strip clubs. That stuff is gone. In their place are businesses that provide jobs.

Laws in the US governing prostitution are local. Prostitution is legal in much of Nevada. Work to make it legal in your community if that's what you want. I don't really care to hear your justifications for why the lives of poor people should be hell because some men feel compelled to buy human flesh. Put it in the middle- and upper-middle class areas where the Johns live. Other businesses are located by their customer base. Why should prostitution be different? Put it next to your kids schools and let your daughters get preyed up as they grow up. Leave poor people out of your capitalist fantasies.

Oh wait....

State, actually.


Yet there are not reports of tons of trafficking in Nevada.


Over and over again, I've pointed out that legalization opens the door to regulation, which would allow us to put brothels away from neighborhoods.

Over and over again, you insist I want one open next to your house so that you can rail against it.

What's the source of your claim that there's "almost none"?

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/oct/20/government-trafficking-enquiry-fails



Here's another story that covers the broader topic of the estimates various people cite, such as your bbc source.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/oct/20/trafficking-numbers-women-exaggerated

that charts 121 countries. That is far more than the BBC. Why do you refuse to read it?

As described in the second article I linked, people strip out all the caveats in academic studies, and declare their largest number to be the truth.

Then when they actually go looking for these people, they fail to find them. As in Pentameter Two. But wait a little bit, and there will be a new academic study with lots of caveats to ignore.

from birth to the age of 10, bainsbane, know your concerns, too. thank you for posting. "don't trust nobody" was something my siblings and i understood at a very young age.

Our voices are totally lost by people who have no idea of what it is like, who think the notion of liberty, which really means liberty for the privileged, trumps all--including our human rights.

To be honest, however, I have to agree with jeff47 and others who've made this particular point: the fact that prostitution remains illegal actually seems to be part of the problem; every single bit of evidence I've seen over the years, very strongly suggests that reforms in laws and other civil codes regarding this subject have actually *decreased* victimization overall(including human trafficking).....and even, at least to some extent, the vice versa as well.

With that said, however, I sincerely believe that legal reform is only one part of the process to reducing victimization. Culture has to be changed as well. We *can* make a better world, but it's going to take *all* of us.

Actually the evidence I've seen says the opposite, as Spider Jerusalem posted in the other thread on the subject. Legalizing prostitution has lead to increased human trafficking, which is slavery.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1986065
http://findingjustice.org/what-happens-when-you-legalize-the-sex-trade/

you believe in the Theory of Free Will. Free-willed women supporting their violent pimps. Independently wealthy women with a hobby.
That sort of thing.

In the Netherlands there are street prostitutes who are drug addicts who are not part of the regulated trade there.

I do not. The entire ideology is based on the will of the powerful, of the privileged over the few. I do not accept the ethos of capitalism as just and do not believe human beings should be treated like refrigerators. I also resent the idea that your theoretical faith in the marketplace trumps my human rights. However you want to justify it, my experience is part of the reality, as is the increase of human trafficking that has accompanied legalization. People want to pretend none of that exists and we don't matter, hence my point about invisibility. I'm making clear that your theory about what you think should happen is just that, theory. Those of us who grew up in red lights areas know the reality of what it is like for people just trying to live their ordinary lives.

that would exist and pursue that course regardless of the legality or illegality of prostitution.

How is the situation you described any different from the wife or husband (and their kids perhaps) that are "victimized" by the loss that can and often does consequently occur should such be revealed? It has absolutely nothing to do with what most mean and refer to with the "victimless crime" designation -- that there are no victims in the confines of that relationship -- and your experience doesn't change that.

All you've done is widened/added to something with a narrow definition. The same kinda arguments have been made with other "victimless crimes" like the drug war many of us are all too familiar with, and your "story" is roughly analogous to say, some adult trying to sell pot to a kid. Do you seriously think that most of us adults around here are unaware of these things? You appear to advocating the notion that the John and prostitute should remain vulnerable to criminal prosecution on the basis that doing otherwise wouldn't deter the wouldbe trafficers, child prostitute recruiters/seekers, etc, when obviously by the existence of your experience, it ain't getting the job done. ANd of course we haven't gotten into nor will we, the socio-economic factors that play a role the kinda prostitution, drug-riddled communities you're likely talking about.

I'd suggest that nobody wants to make you invisible, they just don't wanna make the time and text investment in helping you understand that your experiences do not change what is meant by a "victimless crime" for legal, prohibition overturning purposes. By your standards, alcohol should still be prohibited based upon all the evil some do with it as a result of it being legal, as should some of the practices of some religious kooks with children in this country, or even chain-smoking parents filling their kids lungs with it too. Just because some abuse things and the people around them is not sufficient cause to criminalize something only tangentially related to it -- like pedophiles, etc, not knowing the diff between an innocent little girl like you and a kid that chose prostitution.

That's all a function of where you lived and happenstance, not the now illegal prostitute/client relationship you appear to want to perpetuate just because child predators exist in the world, and you happened to live in a place where their was a lot of them primarily because their was a lot of poor women thinking they had no other way outta of it, or to even live comfortably in it by other means.

Last edited Thu Aug 7, 2014, 08:43 PM - Edit history (1)

or a bottle of alcohol doesn't show great concern for human beings. We are not things, even though men who buy sex see us as such.

What I experienced was a result of the sex trade. You may be right that it had nothing to do with its legality. It had to do with its proliferation. Wherever prostitution proliferates, child predation and sex trafficking increases. And legality only increases it: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1986065 After decades of hard work, community groups succeeded in driving out the prostitution, strip clubs and porn shops, and now those neighborhoods have revitalized. People here would like to seem prostituting flourish in them once again. We will not accept it.

This makes no fucking sense:

The difference is I was a child, not a sexual predator. I was not seeking to buy children. I was simply walking home from school. Pretending prostitution is only about the relationship at the moment of the sex worker and her client is to deliberately ignore the implications of the institution, from increased child predation to increased human trafficking--slavery. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1986065
It is no different from saying there are no victims in strip mining or fracking because the act itself seems to proceed smoothly, as thought the environmental damage doesn't exist. I and others like me are the environmental damage you want to ignore, you insist are not victims and instead are completely irrelevant, insignificant compared to the men's desire to buy and acquire girls and even children.






In other words, what I don't understand is that I don't matter. People who actually have lived among prostitution shouldn't be listened to because our experiences are irrelevant. No, believe me. I understand that very well. I understood it as a child and here you are to remind me again. All that matters is that men be able to buy sex at will and not be hassled by police in the process.

What is it you know about this issue? You show no awareness of the research on the subject and insist my personal experience is meaningless. Yes, I am well aware of the argument that sex is the highest form of liberty and that concern for anyone other than privielged men equates with "religious conservatism." It's a neoliberal argument that would solidify patriarchy, heighten the power of men of means above women, children, and the poor. In your scenario, no one's rights matter but the man who buys sex. His desire to buy and own--because leglizaing prostitution increases human trafficking--supplants a young girl, boy, or child's right to live a life free of sexual predation. That is what you are saying. Your entire analysis is from the point of view of the "customer," who is often a predator.

Laws about prostitution are a local issue. The middle-class and upper-middle class need not decimate poor neighborhoods to establish their right to legally buy human beings. You can legalize prostitution in your own counties. Yet not a single person who advocates legalization wants that. They evade the point and insist on telling me how our lives are bad already, what difference would legalization make? We worked too hard to rebuild our communities. Put the brothels you wish to frequent next to your children's schools instead of ours. Let them grow up being preyed upon and leave poor people the fuck alone. We will not be the Third World playgrounds to the self-entitled people of means who view us as entirely inconsequential. Turn your own communities into the hell holes you think so essential to "freedom."

you're not gonna beat me up with some strawman about how my citing other "victimless" crimes that similarly "can" create victims "equates to" a dehumanization or objectification of you. That's BS wholly unsupported by both their use and the obvious intentions behind their use, which was to make a single point -- that you can find "victims" of a lot of things if you wanna play the "Six Degrees of Separation" game. That however doesn't undermine much less rebut that within the confines of John/prostitute relationship to which the "victimless crime" thing is applied, there aren't any victims unless similarly, we start talking about STD's or violence of some sort which aren't considered either in the "victimless crime" designation.

Of course where there's a high concentration of illegal activities occurring in tandem with one another as prostitution is associated with, the likelihood of your personal experience is gonna be correspondingly greater, but again that has nothing to do with the victimless crime nature of the John/prostitute relationship per se, but rather the totality of the socio-economic environment in which it and you found yourself immersed.

I also didn't say anything about your personal expereince being "meaningless", but that and all your other emotional appeals/strawmen/just making shit up are in terms of rebutting what I posted. The simple fact of the matter is, I'm looking at it objectively, whereas you are mired in subjectivity as a victim of what illegal prostitution and the sad environment it contributes to can bring. You aren't the only victim of prostitution from being harrassed by young blood seekers, because they are many and varied, ranging from the wives and kids that don't benefit from the money the prostitute gets -- which is much more substantive in some cases I'm sure than the words you were victimized by in a "sticks and stones" kinda way -- to the physical harm the prostitutes themselves sometimes suffer, and more.

Keeping prostitution illegal, like with the war on drugs, is nothing more than an invitation to and means by which the darker elements in our society make what may or may not be a bad thing in terms of any particular individuals use of either a bad thing collectively, far worse, because of the many and varied criminal elements that gravitate to the kinda lawless environment that illegality fosters.

We can simply agree to disagree as to whether legalizing prostitution will ameliorate the problems that apparently left you and others scarred, but in the final analysis that's really a whole different question as to whether a man/man or man/woman of the client/sex service offerer kind should be legal or not. Just because women dominate in the sex trade due to the much lower proportion of gays in society hardly provides you with ammo for invoking sexist crap about patriarchy. Try selling that to any male prostitute you happen across and let us know how it goes. It's all about making money in an easy way for most, and in way many might find enjoyable.

and buying sex isn't buying a human being like a slave either, otherwise you could take them home and use them again like any other product you purchase. A service is not a product, is it? http://ezinearticles.com/?Differences-Between-Products-And-Services&id=159561

Is because of the study I linked to in my response to you. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1986065

I was speaking of human trafficking--the slave trade in very young women, girls, boys, and even very young children who are sold into prostitution. The study above surveys 121 countries and shows that where prostitution has been legalized, human trafficking has increased measurably.

I realize you cannot answer in this thread but you are free to respond to the issue in your own, if you like.

The solution must lie in minimizing the damage. That cannot happen if one willfully refuses to pay attention to the aspects of the industry he finds inconvenient to consider.

What?

So the sex buyer's wife shouldn't know that she's being exposed to STDs second hand because of her philandering spouse?

Letting her know that she should get tested is "victimizing" her?

Really?



Yeah. No, it isn't. Not at all.

Trying to sell pot to kids is nowhere NEAR as destructive as sexually harassing them.

Fucking hell...


No, she's saying that it gets WORSE when it is made legal, which has been demonstrated where it has been implemented.




Yeah. Fucking hell.

I can't even

The difference between an innocent kid and "a kid who chose prostitutuon."

Oh no wait I totally can. There's access to prostitutes to maintain. and a multi-billion dollar industry to defend!

try a reading comp class, or find enough integrity to provide an honest deconstruction of what I wrote.

I'm not gonna waste my time explaining "what?" should be obvious to anyone with the intellectual heft and integrity necessary to do an honest deconstruction of what I wrote.

that's why you "can't even"...

can't never could do much of anything, at least right or properly

I hope not many people here would need a fucking class to figure out what's wrong with that statement.



Bye!

Is that children that age cannot consent to sex. Redqueen is well aware that underage girls and boys work in the sex trade. That those kids "choose" that work through economic privation does not justify pedophiles preying on them. Sex with them is by definition rape and the men who buy it are rapists. They are criminals, sexual predators of the worst sort who belong in prison. The evidence you site above is the best yet for why prostitution is such a serious problem.

WTF?

because of that leave.

to the type of behavior you were exposed to.

I appreciate that.

It won't, but it's nice of you to say so.

Key words-- "inner city." I was immediately reminded of Dorothy Allison (author of Bastard out of Carolina), who commented on the bad reputation she shared with her sister. "We were never virgins, even when we were." One more way in which lower income people become non-people.

Very much so, and the way in which the relationship between poor urban neighborhoods and suburban areas mirror a first/third world dynamic. The people around here so keen on legalization have no idea what it is like to live surrounded by the sex industry. They act like legalization would miraculously change all that, but not a one will say sure, put it in my neighborhood.

What brave knights they are, hiding in their ivory towers. I haven't posted on this because what I know is too much data, too many angles, social, economic and personal.

I explained a slice of it years ago to redqueen. Living in an environment like that is very stifling to those trapped in it, and not by their own choice, and I don't know any who did choose freely to be used and abused.

Stifling... of course I'm using an euphemism, as there is so much more to say that people don't want to hear at DU. It doesn't suit the fun and carefree attitude being projected by those for whom it's all a game they can walk away from unharmed.

I still can't make that post with all that data, and make it ideological. For those I know and care about, all of it is intensely personal. It made their lives and mine a prison. When I see the level of pontificating about the oppressed here and there, but never a word about this, the outrage is disingenuous.

JMHO...

because it doesn't find their worldview, which is which that other poster outright refused to read my posts in the other thread.
I imagine you've experienced similar things on this site, which is why you're now reticent. Hopemountain knows what's it like too. There are a few of us and a few more who care. I suppose for the rest our "data," as you call it, is insignificant.

doesn't it?

With you at all. What I have said is that other people exist on this planet. You may view that as unacceptable, but it nonetheless is true.

I listened to you and engaged with you at length over that and many other issues until you made it clear disagreement entitled you to resort to one personal attack after another instead of discussion. You made the choice to treat me with contempt, and now you act indignant that I don't defer to you? I know people like me don't matter to you or the men who feel entitled to buy anyone, regardless of age. Now or when I was 10, little has changed.

A 2012 study published in World Development, “Does Legalized Prostitution Increase Human Trafficking?” investigated the effect of legalized prostitution on human trafficking inflows into high-income countries. The researchers analyzed cross-sectional data of 116 countries to determine the effect of legalized prostitution on human trafficking inflows. In addition, they reviewed case studies of Denmark, Germany and Switzerland to examine the longitudinal effects of legalizing or criminalizing prostitution. The study’s findings include:

Countries with legalized prostitution are associated with higher human trafficking inflows than countries where prostitution is prohibited.

Criminalization of prostitution in Sweden resulted in the shrinking of the prostitution market and the decline of human trafficking inflows. Cross-country comparisons of Sweden with Denmark (where prostitution is decriminalized) and Germany (expanded legalization of prostitution) are consistent with the quantitative analysis, showing that trafficking inflows decreased with criminalization and increased with legalization.



http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1986065

Not sure why people imagine legalization will erase all negative effects. Clearly that isn't so.

negative; and IMO, not the worst.

young girls/boys that happen to live in the inner-city neighborhoods where prostitution is tolerated. Specifically, the modeling that these children see.

I have lived in neighborhoods where the only (few) people with money after the 5th of the month were the dope boys, the "pimps" and the prostitutes.

As horrible as human trafficking is ... it affects only the poor unfortunate soul caught up in it; whereas, the soul crushing message the I have seen in these neighborhoods is: "Get that money!"

There are more people enslaved today than at any point in human history, and a good percentage of them in the sex trade.
Not to discount the effects you talk about, or that I discussed in my OP. There are many people caught in the wake of the sex industry.