"Selling is legal. Fucking is legal. Why isn’t selling fucking legal? " --George Carlin

[archerships]

"Another women’s issue, prostitution. I do not understand why prostitution is illegal. Why should prostitution be illegal? Selling is legal. Fucking is legal. Why isn’t selling fucking legal? You know, why should it be illegal to sell something that’s perfectly legal to give away. I can’t follow the logic on that at all. Of all the things you can do to a person, giving someone an orgasm is hardly the worst thing in the world."

--George Carlin

Posted via email from crasch's posterous

Comments

[vyus.livejournal.com]

I didn't understand why you couldn't just tape it and call it porn. Making porn is legal, right?

[gentlemaitresse.livejournal.com]

Not everyone wants to be videotaped while having sex, but yes, that is legal... because it's *art*. ;-)

[infrogmation.livejournal.com]

Porn is an "art", but fucking is only... what, a hobby?

I'm all for legalizing professional participation, bur sex, like comet spotting, is one of the few remaining fields where most of the best work is still done by enthusiastic amateurs.

[neoteny.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of the business idea I came up with in college, of girls selling condoms with a "free trial". Still wonder if that would fly...

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

Because those who made the laws felt that whores don't deserve the same protection we give hairdressers.

[danlyke.livejournal.com]

I'm not exactly sure I can get behind the same sort of government monopoly we extend to hairdressers intruding into the intersection of commerce and sex...

[daphnep.livejournal.com]

What government monopoly do we extend to hairdressers?

[daphnep.livejournal.com]

Ah!

I can't say I ever thought of that as a problem...but okay.

[danlyke.livejournal.com]

As eruv points out, licensing, which is nominally there to protect the consumer because of the use of assorted nasty chemicals in hair treatment (ie: curling, bleaching and coloring), but in practice is mostly used to make sure that cosmetology schools have customers.

See, for instance, the licensing struggles over manicure/pedicure places.

[daphnep.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I guess I don't really have a problem with knowing that the place I go to get my manicures gets checked every now and then to make sure they sterilize their cuticle cutters in between me and the guy after me. I rather like that, in fact. I guess the freemarket way would be going to only the really expensive places because they spend money to assure you of those things...but would they still be clean, and how would you know?

[crasch.livejournal.com]

How do you know that your cuticle cutters are clean now? How often do you think that the licensure board checks their cutters?

Certification is another way to ensure quality, without preventing people from entering the market. In order to become certified, a manicurist would have to meet the sanitation standards of the certification board. As a consumer you could choose to patronize only certified salons. However, unlike with licensure, you could still patronize un-certified salons if you so choose.

[daphnep.livejournal.com]

I rely on their greed--the same thing that makes licensing neccessary in the first place, ironically. I rely on the shop to want to stay in business and not risk losing their license...the same way I rely on restaurants I frequent to fear failing their health inspections so much that they'll take the extra efforts needed to keep rat shit out of the milk.

How is certification less government intrusion than licensing?

I'm not derailing, here--I'm thinking about it in terms of prostitution, too. Generally, safety(for the prostitute and for the client) is a primary concern in most conversations about legalization of prostitution. I've never heard a call for legalized and unregulated prostitution, so I'm curious whose interest that serves.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Licensure is mandatory in order to do business. If you don't have a license in a field which requires one, you can't legally work.

Certification is voluntary. Certification may help you win the trust of safety conscious consumers such as yourself, but you don't have to be certified in order to work.

Underwriter's Laboratory is an example of a certification body for physical products:

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

The American Board of Medical Specialties is a certification body for physician's services:

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

If prostitution were legal, we'd have similar certifications for brothels and/or prostitutes.

[daphnep.livejournal.com]

Got it. Thanks!

[velellavelella.livejournal.com]

The government hates the idea of the sale of something you cannot easily regulate.

[pokarpokarpokar.livejournal.com]

cawps like their kickbacks and free sex

[xleste.livejournal.com]

Actually, in places prostitution is legal, the illegal aspects (like human trafficking) go up something like 300% in the same area. There is the other aspect too in that only the "top" 2% of prostitutes actually really have choice in the matter. These are the girls who have choice about when they enter and exit, how many men they take on, and tend to have some education and are part of the dominant culture (i.e, in America, they're white). In places where prostitution is legal, more people are trafficked against their will. You'd think it was the opposite, wouldn't you, and that it should be regulated, but it just doesn't work that way.

I don't have a moral objection against prostitution, I do have issues around human trafficking, and sadly, sexual trafficking and prostitution are highly correlated to the point it becomes hard to tell the difference. I'm not sure what the solution is, but from the studies of what happens to illegal trafficking in unenforceable ways, usually by massive organized crime systems, in areas where prostitution is legalized, simply legalizing prostitution is not "simple".

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Let's make sure we agree on first principles.

* Women own their own bodies.

* As a corollary of 1), if a woman chooses to have sex with someone, then it is her right to do so.

* Even if we think a woman's reasons for having sex are unwise, it is still her right to do so. For example, if a woman wants to have sex with five men a night, the law should have no say in it.

* "Choose" in this context means that she's not being threatened with violence if she chooses not to have sex.

Do you agree with all of the above? If not, how would you add/amend them?

[xleste.livejournal.com]

I completely agree with all of these!

The problem exists in that it is NOT the case with most people involved in the sex trade. That real level of choice only exists for 2% of prostitutes. That's the truly horrifying part for me.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Thanks! What do you mean by "real level of choice"? From what I can gather based on your previous comment, would it be fair to say you believe a woman only has a "real level of choice" if she meets all of the following criteria:

1. Can enter and exit the field without threat of violence
2. Can decide on the number of clients she takes on without threat of violence
3. Has some education (4th grade? 8th grade? High school?)
4. Is part of the dominant culture (in the U.S., is white)

Is that correct?

[xleste.livejournal.com]

Not at all.

Choice exists where she has physical safety, equal power with the buyers, and has real viable alternatives.

#3 and #4 only has to do with choice insofar as those who are able to choose have a higher correlation - so there's no causality, but there is a link between issues of race and socioeconomic status.

The other place I would encourage you to do some research is on the psychology of johns. Extensive interview research with them shows that they 1) tend not to see women as human beings and 2) believe that money exchanged mitigates harm done. There's also some research on the psychological effects of prostitution, including rates of PTSD easily equivalent to those in war zones. The main point I'm making is that this is a hugely complex issue.

If a woman really has choice, she should absolutely have the right to decide what to do with her own body. It's why I'm pro-choice despite being anti-abortion on a personal level. On a societal level, legalizing prostitution seems to be like rolling out the welcome mat to organized crime. In areas where prostitution is legalized, # of illegal brothels increase by 300%. In an ideal world, what a woman can do with her body should not be illegal - but we don't live in one, and despite being an optimist and really liking and believing in the good of humanity, I also work in areas of women's rights where I see the really nasty side of humanity.

If someone can figure out how to legalize and enforce prostitution without the corresponding rise in human trafficking and the real harm done, I'd be all for it.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

What do you consider "equal power with the buyer"?

What do you consider "real viable alternatives"?

[xleste.livejournal.com]

Equal power with buyer means that they are in a position to say no. Viable alternatives means that they have access to safe housing (safe housing being a major issue with prostitutes) and alternative means of making money. Sadly, ways used to control prostitutes includes getting them addicted to drugs and then being the sole source, or taking away their papers (ie. passports, etc) and telling them they have no alternatives, or importing them and telling them that they've incurred debt and have no other way of working it off since they're illegal and have no legal access to work. It's a crazy run.

I'm feeling at a lack of time to fully go into depth on these things. Where are you going with these questions? it's a little odd to be on the receiving end without any shared input on your end on where you're coming from. I could try to get more and more nitpicky with my answers, but the general gist of them is that I believe cases of choice are actually very few, and that issues of power and coercion are very very complex in prostitution and that sadly, prostitution is not far from sex and labor trafficking - those circles overlap to a broad degree.

I'm out of time to work on this today but I'd be happy to have a conversation with you in the future. I will also try to look up my sources for the numbers - they were from a presentation by a panel during human trafficking awareness month by a prominent researcher.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

I'm asking questions in order to understand where you are coming from. Everything I know of you suggests that you are kind hearted and feel strongly about women's rights, so it puzzles me that you appear to support laws that allow the police to threaten violence against women who choose to have sex for money. I suspect that your beliefs stem from your conception of "choice", so I'm trying to find out what that means to you.

Of course, I understand if you don't have time to engage in this conversation right now.

[xleste.livejournal.com]

Gah - but I can't resist a reply. :)

I actually don't think prostitution should be illegal because I think it penalizes the wrong crowd and criminalizes the wrong behaviors. I just see a lot of problems with legalizing it that give rise to a lot of concerns. See where I'm caught? :p

Maybe it's pimping that should be illegal, but I'm sure there are a whole host of problems with that that I haven't even begun to wrestle with. :p

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the reply. I'm sorry that I presumed your position, without asking you directly. Yeah, I can see how you would feel unhappy if you thought that legalizing prostitution would lead to large increases in actual crime, or if you thought that only 2% of prostitutes have freely chosen the profession.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Also, although I hope it goes without saying, I think that all people should be treate as human beings. I also support efforts to reducing PTSD among prostitutes. I would be grateful for your cites for the claims that a) only 2% of prostitutes freely choose their profession b) trafficking goes up 300% in areas when prostitution is legal.

[xleste.livejournal.com]

I trust your intent. :) And I find this one a hard issue because I DO believe people should not be penalized for being prostitutes, which is what happens when it's illegal, and I have no moral issue with it. In some ways, I wish courtesans were still an honored and prevalent profession. (Actually, I know one.)

I also just look at the complexity of the issues that are intricately linked to prostitution and it makes me shudder and get a little overwhelmed because it's so not clean-cut because you start getting into issues of race, power, socioeconomic status, crime and law enforcement, organized crime, etc.

[daphnep.livejournal.com]

I find it curious that both parties in this conversation are making the presumption that all prostitutes are female.