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What is your opinion on prostitution? Should it be legal?

Discussion in 'Off-topic Discussion' started by Becoming Jasmine, Jul 26, 2020.

  1. Becoming Jasmine

    Becoming Jasmine Fapstronaut

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    I disagree. The porn industry is fully legal, but it still has big ties to human trafficking. You never know where these women came from. How do you know it’s not a problem? Even if it isn’t there, I garuntee it would be if we legalized it here.

    Besides, it teaches men to objectify women, and view sex as a commodity. How would a guy who’s only sexual experience has been with prostitutes think of sex with his partner? Probably as some sort of object, not particularly accounting for her pleasure or desires.
     
    domasfernandez likes this.
  2. Prostitute bad. Me no like prostitute. Me no fuck prostitute. You fuck prostitute if you want. Me no care.
     
    domasfernandez likes this.
  3. iLoveRain

    iLoveRain Fapstronaut

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    It should be illegal and very carefully watched. Many women regret getting into this sort of thing, and their owners wouldnt let them quit anyway .

    It's a bad thing. Some women even die ,killed .

    But ,yeah it's my opinion.
     
    Becoming Jasmine likes this.
  4. Lilla_My

    Lilla_My Fapstronaut

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    It's interesting how a lot of you mention that legalizing prostitution would eliminate trafficking, when in all likelihood, the opposite is true. Enslaved and trafficked women require little if any salary, leading pimps to being able to establish their business as a low cost alternative.

    There is also an old myth flourishing that legalizing prostitution would eliminate sexual offenses, while the exact opposite is true: in countries where buying sex is legal, there is also more crime against women. Normalizing prostitution is normalizing the thought that a person can be acquired more or less against their will for sexual entertainment.

    In this day and age, though, this debate is useless. You can just put a camera up on any rape/meat purchase you want, and it's considered harmless pornography.
     
  5. Becoming Jasmine

    Becoming Jasmine Fapstronaut

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    Again, maybe this is true in Australia (and that’s a big maybe), but it wouldn’t be true in America. I guarantee you’d see people getting trafficked into it from other countries with the threat of being exposed to the authorities if they tried to quit, but where they came from is so bad or dangerous that this is preferable. It happens in so many other “legitimate” businesses here that it may as well be a part of our culture. Forget what you’ve heard about America hating immigrants. That’s just engineered to isolate and exploit them.
    *gasp*. WHAAAAAAT?!!! I had no clue! It’s not like I live here or anything.

    Seriously, it never ceases to amaze me that people outside the US think they need to explain these things to us. Do you not realize how incredibly rude that is? Of course we know about our nation’s problems. I can’t walk down certain streets without having to worry about being shot just for being there. We have more than enough homes for everyone, yet people are still homeless on the streets. People die because they can’t pay for doctors to help them live. We literally have leaders who think raping women is excusable. You think I don’t understand how bad things are? I doubt you do.

    Also, we haven’t legalized weed. It’s only been fully legalized for recreation in a few states here, and in most places it’s only allowed for medical uses. In some places they’ve stopped throwing people in prison for it, but that doesn’t mean they won’t arrest drug dealers. Where I live, if you get caught with weed, you’re going to jail.

    Oh, and while I don’t really care if they legalize weed since we already legalized alcohol, legalizing all drugs would be stupid. Opium was legal in China for awhile thanks to Britain’s military, and it destroyed their workforce. Again, porn is legal, and it’s still a problem. Making things legal doesn’t make them good.
     
    domasfernandez and kropo82 like this.
  6. I don't think that's true. Any data to backup your claim?

    Against their will? The whole point of prostitution is that it's voluntary.

    Enslaved and trafficked? Jesus, where do you live? Even if it was something that happens, why would the pimps lower the price lol.

    I think you have a naive view of the "industry". The reality is pretty boring. The party getting screwed (unfortunately for them mostly figuratively) is the johns. The hooker lures him in, gets the cash and then makes the act purposefully unpleasant so that he leaves quickly. The guy won't complain or do anything to her because he's more scared of her than she of him.

    Hoes make quick and easy money and then burn through it buying expensive clothes and drugs. Your sympathy is grossly misplaced.
     
  7. Btw legalization won't do much; most will keep offering their "services" on the black market in order to avoid taxes and remain anonymous.
     
  8. kropo82

    kropo82 Fapstronaut

    It's tricky because there are so many confounding factors, and it is difficult to find non-ideologically driven data. One influential study "Decriminalizing Indoor Prostitution: Implications for Sexual Violence and Public Health" by Scott Cunningham and Manisha Shah (here) showed that "decriminalization caused both forcible rape offenses and gonorrhea incidence to decline for the overall population". However there are sound arguments against the validity of this research (e.g. "Does the Decriminalization of Prostitution Reduce Rape and Sexually Transmitted Disease? A Review of Cunningham and Shah Findings" by Lily Lachapelle, Clare Schneider, and Melanie Shapiro here). So I do not think we can rely on the Rhode Island study in the way that pro-legalisation lobbyists want to.

    One Korean study of sex offenders is pretty forthright: "if a sex offender had visited prostitutes more often in the past year, he was more likely to commit a sex crime" (from "An Analysis of Sexual Violence – The Relationship between Sex Crimes and Prostitution in South Korea" by Seo-Young Cho here)

    I asked on twitter if anyone new good research on this. There's a page from a group who are in favour of legalising prostitution here.

    But since this thread has lots of posts about trafficking perhaps this is the most aposite study: "Does legalized prostitution increase human trafficking?" by Seo-Young Cho, AxelDreher, and Eric Neumayer (here). The authors studied 150 countries and found that here’s more human trafficking where prostitution is legal/decriminalised.

    @Ghost in the Shell, is that the kind of data you were interested in to see how we might back up @Lilla_My's point?

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Aug 3, 2020
  9. I'm afraid that's always the case with social studies.

    Not really since the paper is not about violence against women but about inflow of trafficking. Also, the authors clarify that because of insufficient data and other reasons their result needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Finally, it doesn't study the impacts of decriminalisation, only those of legalisation. I'm not in favor of legalisation.

    Criminalisation however is IMO a waste of resources. The negative impact on society is small if any at all and effective measures require breach of personal privacy and even then it's often difficult to decide whether or prove that a given sexual relation meets the definition of prostitution or not.
     
  10. Kaladin504

    Kaladin504 Fapstronaut

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    I think it should always be a crime to reduce a woman to a sexual object. If a woman is willing to be degraded/objectified for money, does that mean we should do it? If people volunteered to get paid to be beat up, would we push for that to be legal? To be clear, I am not suggesting that all prostitution is physically violent, but it is always neglectful of the woman's dignity. The second question is a hypothetical for the sake of argument. The fact that a woman is willing to neglect her own dignity doesn't mean it is alright for us to take advantage of it. it.
     
  11. Fine, then don't do it. Things like this are individual and belong to the realm of personal ethics. The state can not and more importantly should not direct all aspects of our lives.
     
  12. thinking_differently

    thinking_differently Fapstronaut

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    The way Prostitution Industry has developed over the years is the reason you can never have a fair Industry which will respect basic Human Rights and provide safe, Fair, Professional service.

    There will always be traffickers and there will always be oppression, because of how the industry was developed.

    Because of this current ugly situation, wherein there’s unsafe service, with complete Violation of Human Rights, prostitution Should NOT be made legal, it will only encourage more Illegal Start ups. It’s kind of like the P industry, Which Was Legalised and as a result, tons of illegal start ups got encouraged.

    Only because of this current scenario, the way this industry has developed, I would never Consider Having sex with one Prostitute. Never. For safety, and for moral reasons.

    Had the Industry been fair, take Spas, for instance, which are fair, and professional upto a large extent(there will always be exceptions of course)
    Where The person who’s gonna Clip your toes, clean your feet is respected for his/her job, and is paid adequately, There is no issue.
     
  13. Kaladin504

    Kaladin504 Fapstronaut

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    I see where your coming from about wanting to limit state power. I guess the question is then at what point is something a matter of personal ethics, and at what point should it be made illegal? And what should be the criteria for criminalization of a certain behavior? Ultimately: what principles should laws be based on?
     
    Becoming Jasmine likes this.
  14. Good question. I can think of two things that matter right now but surely there's more.

    One, is the act harmful enough? Two, can it be enforced effectively?

    Example 1 - murder. There's a dead person at the end of it - bad enough I'd say. Also murderers are comparatively easy to catch.

    Example 2 - throwing a bucket of paint at someone. It's probably not difficult to find the perpetrator but the suffering of the victim just isn't high enough to involve the courts.

    Example 3 - discrimination. Unfair loss of opportunity can have a serious negative impact on a person's life. However, it is impossible to prove unless the perpetrator confesses as it's a question of motivation and we can't read minds yet (btw, if we could, should we?).

    Another criterion I like is the conservative principle of if it ain't broke don't fix it. Any change of rules should always have a convincing justification.

    And if you're still unsure whether to criminalize or not, don't. It's better IMO to allow people to be a little stupid or a little evil than to dictate excessively. People sometimes seem to behave surprisingly well even if they aren't forced to. For example, consider the fact that China apparently had almost no traffic laws until 2003. Or that in the past there was no police force in many parts of the world yet humans didn't go extinct. :)
     
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  15. Cathcart22

    Cathcart22 Fapstronaut

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    Doesn't this not fit the criteria? Murder for sure is harmful, but is difficult to enforce. If I catch the murderer after the deed is done, no amount of punishment to him can undo the crime. Still though - murder is illegal, and we don't really question it.

    The enforcement of laws has to do with the prevention of the act, not the punishment after, though the punishment can certainly act as a deterrent.
     
    Kaladin504 likes this.
  16. I agree with Ghost in the Shell that the state shouldn't be responsible for dictating people's life beyond making sure nobody gets hurt against their will. I am the first person to say that sexual objectification is objectively morally wrong. Yet there are people who want to be sexually objectified because they enjoy it. I think verbally and physically hurting people is objectively morally wrong, yet there are people who voluntarily choose a BDSM lifestyle because they get pleasure from pain and degradation. If that's what they want and they don't feel harmed, then they should have the right to do so.
     
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  17. Kaladin504

    Kaladin504 Fapstronaut

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    I mostly agree with those two criteria, although be careful about the second one. A surprising amount of crimes (including murder and theft) go unsolved. I am also not sure that allowing the government to prevent prostitution is excessive. To me it is saying "do what you want in the bedroom, just don't pay for someone else's sexuality". Sexuality is deeply private, but it is also relates to human dignity. To me, legalizing prostitution is the government condoning something that is in opposition to an objective truth.

    The criteria I would also add/clarify that the law should be based on the principles of objective moral truths. While we don't want laws to dictate people's lives, they should promote moral behavior,, and moral behavior should never be punished. Also, I don't know the fact that humans didn't go extinct means a particular civilization was good. It means it was functioning, but doesn't speak to the quality of it.

    Lastly, looking at the principle, "If it ain't broke don't fix it", shouldn't prostitution remain illegal in the places where it still is.

    I am getting a little confused about the concept of allowing someone to harmed because they are willing to subject themselves to it. The fact that someone consents to a particular behavior doesn't make it less harmful. Also, to clarify I am not talking about government intervention in couples bedrooms, I am talking about the government preventing the selling of people's sexuality as a commodity.

    I also understand that the law is not the end all be all as to how we should act. Which leads to another question: We cannot simply outlaw immoral behavior, so how can we create cultural change in our society in ways that don't involve the law?

    Thank you both for the discussion so far.
     
    Cathcart22 likes this.
  18. Searcher78

    Searcher78 Fapstronaut

    So ... Sharia law? ;)
    There is no such thing as "objective moral truths". Morality is always subjective.
    Some might say it's immoral to force one's moral standards about sexuality onto others, especially because it is as you say "deeply private".
     
  19. FutureKing

    FutureKing Fapstronaut

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    Really tho the most pragmatic solution in my mind is this:

    1. Allow/condone indoor prostitution (Escorts, Brothels)
    2. Ban outdoor prostitution (Streetwalkers.)
     
  20. You're talking about government intervention in freedom of personal expression then. Why can't people make money off doing something they enjoy? Tons of women go out to bars or clubs at night with the intention of having casual sex with someone, because they enjoy the act of sex, because they see no harm in using and being used by another person for sex. How can you decide for someone else what is harmful?
     

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