A giant Teutonic brothel - Has liberalization gone too far?

[Ideologue]

I believe a lot of research shows that most prostitutes were abused, many started as prostitutes very young and there are links to addiction. This is a problem for social workers not police, but men buying women is a problem for the police.

[Ide]Nationalize it! Send the pimps to the gulag, centralize the business by building giant brothels and putting bureaucrats in charge. Sign them all up for pensions and health care, including mental health.[/Ide]

EDIT: Dammit, fucking beaten

[Habbaku]

Has anyone here ever hired a hooker?

Pat hired a POW once.

[Camerus]

You are changing the argument though. You first posited why is it that we don't see more middle-class girls from happy backgrounds...now you are advancing some bizarre argument about people dying to work in the field.

  Not at all.  I understood you were suggesting it was due to societal "shame" that frowns upon promiscuity that is preventing girls from happy middle-class backgrounds entering the field.  I said I doubted that.  Change "dying to" to "wanting to" if it makes you feel better.

[Ideologue]

I mostly agree with Shelf. 

For me, prostitution is a problem simply because it violates the most fundamental and arguably universal moral law, namely reciprocity or the golden rule.  What if it was your sister, mother or daughter who was working as a prostitute?  It's just not in the same league as working a boring office job or whatever.  Realistically speaking, the only girls who get into it are either addicts, victims of abuse or trafficking, girls from grinding 3rd world poverty, or some kind of combination of those factors.  Thus it feeds on previous human misery. If it were truly a legitimate choice, I wonder why we don't see more middle-class girls from happy backgrounds going into it...

More seriously, I really am not sure that's true.  Porno chicks aren't all addicts/abuse victims/poor (3d World wise)/whatever.  And that's in many regards similar to prostitution.

I think where you'd see malaise creep in is the day-in, day-out grind, so to speak.  There is a fair amount of empirical evidence that commodifying sex undermines its role in romantic relationships.  So I wouldn't recommend it as a career.  But as a summer job while at MIT or Georgia Tech?  Why not?  And in the process you help sexually inactive, frustrated men; aggregate utility is increased.

P.S. A guy I knew was an escort for a while.  Last I saw, he seemed to be normal.

[Ideologue]

Has anyone here ever hired a hooker?

Pat hired a POW once.

I tried to google the acronym, but all I got was stuff about Japanese war crimes.

[jimmy olsen]

Has anyone here ever hired a hooker?

Pat hired a POW once.

I thought it was a gift from his host, who just happened to be a war criminal.

[Camerus]

I mostly agree with Shelf. 

For me, prostitution is a problem simply because it violates the most fundamental and arguably universal moral law, namely reciprocity or the golden rule.  What if it was your sister, mother or daughter who was working as a prostitute?  It's just not in the same league as working a boring office job or whatever.  Realistically speaking, the only girls who get into it are either addicts, victims of abuse or trafficking, girls from grinding 3rd world poverty, or some kind of combination of those factors.  Thus it feeds on previous human misery. If it were truly a legitimate choice, I wonder why we don't see more middle-class girls from happy backgrounds going into it...

More seriously, I really am not sure that's true.  Porno chicks aren't all addicts/abuse victims/poor (3d World wise)/whatever.  And that's in many regards similar to prostitution.

My understanding about girls in porn (and I could be wrong and am too lazy to Google it) is basically that they do it once or at most twice, and then realize it's a shitty life and get out of it.  So if it is the same as prostitution, a girl who turned a trick once or twice then got out of it isn't in the same league as the girl working night after night on the street corner or brothel. 

[Berkut]

If we grant the moral argument, what does that have to deal with the legal argument?

[The Brain]

People who want to ban prostitution represent the age-old idea that female sexuality cannot be entrusted to actual females. It must be controlled by wiser minds. I disagree with this, I think that women are in fact able to make decisions about their sex lives.

[Tamas]

People who want to ban prostitution represent the age-old idea that female sexuality cannot be entrusted to actual females. It must be controlled by wiser minds. I disagree with this, I think that women are in fact able to make decisions about their sex lives.

how un-ethical of you

[jimmy olsen]

If we grant the moral argument, what does that have to deal with the legal argument?

Isn't that what ultimately all law is based on? Agreed upon public morals? Enough people came to believe slavery is immoral so it was banned, enough people  believed that drinking alcohol was ok so prohibition was ended.

[Zanza]

I've seen 500,000 to 1 million thrown around for Korea, a country with only 50 million people.

Let's say Korea has 25 million women. 10 million will be too old or too young to work as prostitutes. So 1 million prostitutes out of 15 million women, so a 1:15 quota? If you then assume that young women are over-represented among prostitutes, the demographic of say 20-30 year old Korean women would have a 1:10 quota of prostitutes. Sounds way inflated.

[garbon]

You are changing the argument though. You first posited why is it that we don't see more middle-class girls from happy backgrounds...now you are advancing some bizarre argument about people dying to work in the field.

  Not at all.  I understood you were suggesting it was due to societal "shame" that frowns upon promiscuity that is preventing girls from happy middle-class backgrounds entering the field.  I said I doubted that.  Change "dying to" to "wanting to" if it makes you feel better.

I think social shame does play a big role in considering prostitution a a viable option. We've what, multiple millenia of denigrating it?

[Sheilbh]

I think Grab On (or the Log) was right when he said you view sex as some sacred thing we can't sully with a commercial nexus.  The Virgin Mary and all that.

It's not religious at all. As I say I think socially sex is treated specially because we're aware that sexuality is a fundamental part of who we are. So if it's like work or any other service would it be okay to remove someone's benefits because they refused to take a job offered them in a brothel?

That would mean that adult German males visit a prostitute about ten times per year if it was perfectly evenly distributed, which I very highly doubt. I would assume that many never ever visit a prostitute, so the remaining minority (?) would have to be very regular customers.

I suppose if there's a significant portion of European sex tourism going to Germany that accounts for part of it. But I think this is part of the problem I have, if prostitution is legal, easily available and destigmatised then, money aside, why wouldn't men use it regularly? Why do anything else? It seems very 18th century.

It is okay exactly 100% of the time in every context so long as she consents freely.  Why she consents is her business isn't it?

I disagree. First of all there's lots of talk about coercion and obviously a violent pimp is coercive. But as I say from what I've read most prostitutes have been sexually abused before becoming a prostitute. They start early. Many have serious problems with addiction and almost all - including in Germany - do it because of a particularly tough financial system. I don't see how that's not coercive. It may be socially coercive but if a job is linked to sexual abuse, addiction and poverty then I'm not convinced we can easily talk about people consenting to go into it.

Secondly I'm troubled by a society moving towards accepting that women can be bought for sexual use by men. I think that's a social issue as much as anything to do with individuals and it's problematic in terms of how we view and treat women.

Also it just seems like yet another sexual liberation for women that primarily benefits men. We come from a society that accepted prostitution. It was absolutely the norm until the early twentieth century, I don't think we should go back to that. I don't see a problem with men having to masturbate instead of using a woman.

Also I was not aware 100% of Prostitution involved men buying sex with women.

No I include rent boys in all this - except for the gender stuff - because I think much of it's true there. The number of women buying male prostitutes is tiny, it is overwhelmingly of men on women. But it would go there too I don't think men should be bought for sexual use either.

Yeah because it isn't as if our society doesn't shame women for being sexually promiscuous let alone getting paid for sex.

Obviously that's wrong. No-one's saying shame the women, they've had that for long enough. Shame and arrest the men. I think part of the rationale for the Swedish system has been that this is an overwhelmingly gender-specific problem - men buying women.

Which is part of why I like that model. I believe recently 40 women, many from Romania so possibly not there legally, testified against their punters and pimps. I think that's great. That the women involved feel comfortable and safe enough that the state isn't going to trouble them and that we're not going to shame them that they feel able to participate in the trial of the men who used them.

More seriously, I really am not sure that's true.  Porno chicks aren't all addicts/abuse victims/poor (3d World wise)/whatever.  And that's in many regards similar to prostitution.

Yeah. If I'm honest I have issues with porn too. I can't fully work them out but I'd say there's two big problems I have which is the element of coercion, which I think is a stronger theme in gay porn because of all the gay-for-pay, and the way that money is draining out of porn thanks to the internet and I think it is moving to cutting costs on the talent as it were.

[Berkut]

First of all there's lots of talk about coercion and obviously a violent pimp is coercive.

Being a violent, coercive boss is illegal, even in Germany. The only way pimps get away with it is when the job itself is illegal, making it impossible for the victims of the crime to report them.

But as I say from what I've read most prostitutes have been sexually abused before becoming a prostitute.

Sexual abuse is illegal. Prosecute and criminalize that.

They start early. Many have serious problems with addiction

Many non-prostitutes have serious problems with addiction. Deal with that problem.

I will grant that the percentage of people with drug problems who go into prostitution is almost certainly much higher than those who do not. On the other hand, the percentage of people with drug problems who drink too much alcohol is almost certainly much higher as well. Should we make drinking alcohol illegal?

People with drug problems almost certainly turn to a variety of shitty jobs at a much higher rate than non-addicts. Should those other shitty jobs be outlawed?

Being a drug addict sucks in general. Deal with that problem - prostitituion, to the extent that it is a secondary effect, is most certianly a *secondary* effect of drug and sexual abuse.

and almost all - including in Germany - do it because of a particularly tough financial system.

Almost everyone in a shitty job is in the shitty job because of financial coercion. Most people in non-shitty jobs are there because of "financial coercion".

What I don't understand about this argument is that by definition, the people you are attempting to protect would be better off without your protection. After all, if giving middle aged men blowjobs is a crap job, then the only reason people are doing it is because the alternatives is even worse. You are demanding that they go with the alternative, which must in fact be a worse choice.

All the issues I've listed here are secondary effects - abuse, drug use, crappy financial alternatives. If you object to these things, object to them. If you made those circumstances better, fewer people would resort to shitty jobs.