What would the consequences be if Prostitution were fully legal in the U.S? (Canada, crime)
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The implications of its illegal status is quite a lot. 3 examples (there are more)
A working girl who has been assaulted cannot go the police without risking prosecution themselves.. sometimes (not all) the police themselves are the ones victimizing them. As such, they are an easy target.
Due to society stigmatization of prostitution, a working girl's greatest protection is operating in quiet and anonymously. They go through great lengths to segregate their personal lives. If caught, their name gets published.. Often making them targets for victimization, shaming in public, and being ostracized from family. Sometimes to the point that they loose custody of their children.
Working girls often are substituting their income. I know dental hygenists, students, retail, food services, car sales etc... Getting caught can also mean loosing their primary source of income and further impact to future opportunities. If they are struggling to climb the socio-economic ladder, we knock them down with an arrest, charge them, and then make it even harder for them to climb up that ladder.
Marijuana is finally legal for recreational use in some states and can be far more dangerous (hallucinating while driving or combined with alcohol and other drugs) than someone paying for intercourse. So, why not prostitution?
Marijuana is finally legal for recreational use in some states and can be far more dangerous (hallucinating while driving or combined with alcohol and other drugs) than someone paying for intercourse. So, why not prostitution?
Oh come on now. Just about everything becomes more dangerous when you mix it with alcohol and other drugs, including sex!
Marijuana is finally legal for recreational use in some states and can be far more dangerous (hallucinating while driving or combined with alcohol and other drugs) than someone paying for intercourse. So, why not prostitution?
Wait... combining driving with alcohol versus combining driving with intercourse.. did I hear that correctly?
The original question lacks so much in scope. There are so many men (as well as trans folks) also involved in sex work. It's not just women working in this industry.
I think being neutral on sex work would allow for increased safety and regulation, allowing us to track incidences of human trafficking, STD transmittal, etc., much more effectively than we do now as a society.
However, as we're seeing with marijuana legalization now, sometimes opening these things up creates a moral vacuum that folks rush to fill with a variety of regulations to make themselves feel better about coming to a compromise around legalization. So, sex work could become overregulated and actually force small independent workers out of business, clustering the industry in the hands of larger 'sex work companies'. Could be bad stuff.
Overall I think we need to cease the punishment of sex workers and solicitors unless other crimes have been committed (rape, for example).
As we evolve(devolve?) in to more of a hook up culture our basic human sexual instincts come more in to play and that means men are supposed to put in a lot of effort to impress women and women are supposed to pick the winners and the losers of that competition. Since people do not pair off permanently as often as they used to those winners and losers are picked by the amount of sexual access they get to women in general. The big winners have access to many women and that access gets more scarce as you go down the social ladder until you have those men at the bottom who get no access at all.
Prostitution gets in the way of this dynamic. The winners still get their reward but they no longer have the motivation to try as hard to get it. The losers do not get their proper penalties because as long as they have money for a prostitute they have access to casual sex without any sort of social proofing required. Women have always been able to use sex as a means of gaining a certain amount of control over men and in a hook up culture that power is magnified greatly. Prostitution robs them of much of that power, so why would they ever agree to legalize it?
Exactly. I don't blame women for protecting their leverage, but that's exactly what it is...even if they don't realize it.
The only remaining advantage if prostitution was legalized is that there's a strong stigma against it. Powerful, famous and wealthy men can use these girls without stigma because there's an assumption that they can have any kind of woman they want (with or without paying for it). Average Joe's aren't going to admit to doing it in front of most of their buddies or other women unless they travel in very, very open-minded circles.
Not legal in Nevada... just in certain counties of Nevada. Among the regulations are provisions that require sex work to stay inside a brothel, licensing for both the brothel owner and employees, and that they are isolated to rural areas of the state.
I would be fine with that.
Wow...what an odd requirement. So put all the brothels in the rural parts of a state, which are typically poorer economically and don't have the political clout to oppose undesirable (depending on who you ask) activities? Along with the landfills and prisons that get stuck in those communities because their more suburban and urban counterparts have the resources to fight their coming?
Wait, if drugs are legalized along with prostitution, why don't we also put all the "regulated" meth factories, heroin shooting galleries and crack dens in the rural areas, too, since nobody with any clout cares what goes on in the sticks?! Let the people from noveau riche suburbia come in and get their thrill or fix on and then go back to their superficially upstanding lives. Yeah, that's a good "progressive" social justice strategy.
Last edited by Jowel; 12-13-2016 at 03:46 PM..
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