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I'll bring up the point I always bring up regarding sex work: why are so many people focused on whether or not this actually produces better results for people?

I'll bring up the point I always bring up regarding sex work: why are so many people focused on whether or not this actually produces better results for people? Legislation, by and large and particularly in the United States, is driven first and foremost by principle, rather than utilitarian objectives. Even if legal prostitution led to higher crime, more violence, death and disease (none of which is true, of course), the issue is still fundamentally one of principle. Why does the state have a role to play in a transaction between two consenting adults? The only sensible argument would be that the state has a role only insofar as consent is in question, and therefore maybe assists in some capacity in terms of ensuring consent. Beyond that, we simply should not be legislating in search of outcomes. In much the same way that alcohol prohibition might lead to lower rates of violence, rape, obesity, cardiovascular disease, unemployment, unwanted pregnancy, etc...we oppose prohibition from a principled position. Just as you might argue that putting a security camera in every room in every house would vastly remove unresolved criminality, false imprisonment, domestic violence, etc...we oppose such an invasion of privacy from a principled position. It really doesn't matter how sex work is actually affected by the legality of it, the state simply has no right to interfere in a consensual transaction which does not produce negative third party externalities, period.

danielbln 7y ago
> we oppose prohibition from a principled position Is that true? There are still many dry counties in the US, and full scale prohibition was an utter and total desaster. Seems more that people learned that alcohol prohibition doesn't work which lead to its abolishment, not a principled position.
aurea 7y ago
> Why does the state have a role to play in a transaction between two consenting adults? What are you advocating here? There are many transactions in which modern states interfere that are between consenting adults. In countries with minimal wage you could consent to being paid below it, but it would remain illegal. You can consent to being scammed in a transaction, but it remains illegal. Etc. These interference are meant to protect citizens. Just because the transaction would involve a sexual exchange doesn’t mean it’s any different.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- yardstick 7y ago
  I believe the difference is in both of your examples, the “victim” wouldn’t be committing a crime. Imagine if employees were jailed for accepting sub minimum wage, rather than just the employer.
  - petra 7y ago
    That's just an historical artifact, and in some countries it's changing - now the clients get arrested instead of sex workers.
    - chrischen 7y ago
      What are they being protected from? Immorality? A lot of the dangers to sex workers is because of these protections forcing them to go underground and work with shady exploitative dealers and trafficking.
      - speedplane 7y ago
        > A lot of the dangers to sex workers is because of these protections forcing them to go underground and work with shady exploitative dealers and trafficking. This is the older viewpoint. The newer one is that no one would consensually agree to sex work unless they were coerced. I am not in a position to opine on that viewpoint, but if it's true, then every sex worker is being exploited regardless of any laws or regulations.
        ericd 7y ago
        I don’t know much about this topic, but I would guess that it’s the structure of society doing most of the coercing in most cases. Which the government has at least some power to fix via improved social safety net programs.
        7y ago
llamaz 7y ago
Consider the example of a highway robber that holds you up at gunpoint and asks for your wallet on the threat of death. In this situation there is typically consent by the victim in handing over her wallet to the perpetrator - after all he has the _free will_ not to hand over his wallet. In the same way, you have the _free will_ not to work, but the consequences of not working are ending up on the streets. As a special case of this, a prostitute has the free will not to work, on the threat of ending up on the streets. The only difference between a generic worker and a prostitute is that it is the human reproductive act itself that is being commodified. I guess that the question of whether prostitution is exploitative or not, and whether generic work is exploitative or not, depends on what _alternative_ choices are available: Does society guarantee that you will not end up on the streets i.e. (1) is there a scarcity in the basic human needs of society, viz. housing, jobs, the recognition in law of that someone is a citizen etc. (2) does society provide these basic needs to all its members. From this framework it's possibly to argue that _in principle_ prostitution is exploitative. It is no more exploitative than any other form of work, but perhaps has a tendency to attract the most vulnerable in society who do not have a safety net to fall back on. So I don't see anything especially exploitative about a middle class woman becoming a stripper to get through college. But not everyone is middle class. What's undeniable _in practice_, is that legal prostitution leads to less criminal behaviour and exploitation. Hopefully we can work to change the conditions that make prostitution exploitative as opposed to an expression of an individuals creativity.
- RomanBob 7y ago
  This is an absolute butchering of free will. A person being robbed at gun point is being coerced. He is having a choice forced upon him by another person. Society, being composed of individuals all of whom do not want to be coerced has an interest in preventing coercion. This is not true of having to work. The biological necessity of your body requiring food is not forced onto you by anybody. So nobody can be held responsible for it. A prostitute being given the option to sell her body for money actually makes her life better, because depriving her of having to choose does not improve her life, while depriving a man of having to choose between being shot and giving up his wallet improves his life greatly.
chrischen 7y ago
It’s really just men who don’t like the idea of women doing these things with their bodies.
- kjeetgill 7y ago
  That is absolutely not true. Do you think mothers, sisters, friends, etc. can't be capable of concern for the "moral well being" (for the lack for a better word)? You don't have to be that conservative to find it at least a little uncomfortable or grimy. I'm not saying that should be the basis of law, but you must understand there's generally stigma associated.
  - 413x 7y ago
    There is stigma on many professions. (e.g. delivery boys, cleaners, mc'donalds workers etc.) I guess, legalized prostitution would bring enough money to be respected. (Like dentists, digging rotten teeth)
  - chrischen 7y ago
    Yes they can be as a side effect of these morals. But the morals are established by men wanting to control women. There are also women against abortion, heck even women’s rights. A mother or another women still doesn’t have the right to dictate to other women how they choose to take advantage or their own bodies. You have to look at who does it serve to establish this moral standard, and it serves a patriarchal society that overemphasizes the value of purity in women. Somehow if the issue focused on gigolos I doubt it would have as much moral opposition.
    - kaitai 7y ago
      It serves some women, too. Moral Women can cement a higher place in the patriarchal society than Immoral Women and pass a lot of unpleasant tasks to them.
      - chrischen 7y ago
        That is exactly why there are women that are seemingly against women's rights. A sort of Stockholm syndrome thing going on.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dragonwriter 7y ago
> I'll bring up the point I always bring up regarding sex work: why are so many people focused on whether or not this actually produces better results for people? Because most real world value systems amount, in practice, to rule-bounded utilitarianism, rather than purely non-utilitarian deontology. > Legislation, by and large and particularly in the United States, is driven first and foremost by principle, rather than utilitarian objectives. Utilitarian objectives are a set of principles, and while they are usually qualified rather than pure, they are very widespread set of principles and virtually every advocacy campaign appeals to them for that reason. You are simply wrong if you think most public support for or opposition to legislation, in general or in the US specifically, is based on moral principles that are completely divorced from perception of utilitarian consequences.
wodenokoto 7y ago
> why are so many people focused on whether or not this actually produces better results for people? Legislation, by and large and particularly in the United States, is driven first and foremost by principle, rather than utilitarian objectives. Seatbelts, speed limits, health regulations, heck even labour laws are about utilitarian outcomes - generally keeping people from dying prematurely or going to the hospital. The state generally interferes with transaction that are harmful between the two parties. You can't write whatever you want in a contract, even if it only pertains to first parties. As for alcohol prohibition: That's not a principle stance regarding the freedom to take harmful substance. It is an exception to the prohibition of access to harmful substances. We still want something that's bad for us, so alcohol is the exception for historical reasons, but for (probably misguided) utilitarian reasons, we don't allow all sorts of drugs.
- nothrabannosir 7y ago
  > We still want something that's bad for us, so alcohol is the exception for historical reasons, but for (probably misguided) utilitarian reasons, we don't allow all sorts of drugs. Our reasons for prohibition of certain drugs over others are far from utilitarian. If anything, they're anti-utilitarian. Compare the motivations for the 18th and for the 21st amendment.
  - wodenokoto 7y ago
    That's why alcohol is an exception.
    - nothrabannosir 7y ago
      Ok how is this sentence meant? "(We still want something that's bad for us, so alcohol is the exception for historical reasons), but (for probably misguided utilitarian reasons, we don't allow all sorts of drugs)." or "We still want something that's bad for us, so (alcohol is the exception for historical reasons, but for probably misguided utilitarian reasons). We don't allow all sorts of drugs." The former suggests we prohibit drugs for utilitarian reasons, misguided but utilitarian nonetheless, the latter seems odd by itself?
philwelch 7y ago
Because in a vast proportion of cases, the prostituted woman is not a consenting partner.
- chantelles 7y ago
  I worked for years as a sex worker advocate and in the vast proportion of cases, sex workers all chose various reasons, depending on context, to work in the sex industry. Not one of them was ever prostituted.
  - petra 7y ago
    After knowing many sex workers, if a poor friend came to ask you to choose a career - in what context would you recommend her to work as an escort ?
    - chantelles 7y ago
      I was a sex worker - a stripper and I highly recommend it to everyone.
  - philwelch 7y ago
    So you’re denying the existence of sex trafficking? To clarify, I personally favor the Swedish model, which outlaws pimping, brothels, and buying sex but does not make it illegal to be a prostitute.
    - chantelles 7y ago
      I'm centering the conversation around sex work from the sex worker perspective. Does everyone who works prefer to be independent? Or do many prefer a boss to deal with the day to day? These are basic sex worker educations I received while working in the community (in Toronto).
      - detcader 7y ago
        Can we say that this counts as "the sex worker perspective?" > Rachel Moran, a former prostitute who considers the purchase of sex an act of violence against women... holds a very different opinion on who the victims of prostitution are: "The acceptance of prostitution makes all women potential prostitutes in the public view since there are only two requirements for a woman to work in a brothel: one is that circumstance has placed her so […] and the other is that she has a vagina, and all women are born meeting at least one of these requirements." [1] https://sarahditum.com/2014/02/24/who-do-you-listen-to/ https://sarahditum.com/2014/02/24/who-do-you-listen-to/
vincent-toups 7y ago
One reasonable principle is that laws ought to reduce harm. That is a bit glib, but so is your bald assertion that states ought to be concerned only with principle. It is neither part of our legal tradition nor even a plausible interpretation of the foundational ideas of most currently constituted governments. I see where you are coming from, but I don't know that, as humans currently understand things, your argument really has traction on reality.
- ralusek 7y ago
  Then consider my examples. If the role of the state is to reduce harm, why is alcohol legal? Why are people allowed to be mean online? Why can cars go over 15mph? Why aren't there facial recognition cameras on every corner? Why isn't everyone on mood stabilizers?
  - vincent-toups 7y ago
    Pretty obviously because the role of the state isn't to reduce harm to the exclusion of everything else. It has multiple goals which it imperfectly pursues. Just like any human institution or individual.
Jare 7y ago
> Why does the state have a role to play in a transaction between two consenting adults? The only sensible argument would be that the state has a role only insofar as consent is in question Because that is fundamentally the purpose of government. Roughly, to intrude in the decisions of individuals in order to generate a safer and more prosperous life for everyone in general. A civilization is more than a collection of individuals. Consent can be coerced, scammed, misinterpreted, hard to prove afterwards, etc. And individual actions have consequences beyond the individual because of human traits like envy and greed. So, government attempts (should attempt) to take all these factors and many more into consideration while creating regulation and enforcement structures that work around those problems.
mensetmanusman 7y ago
People pass laws to produce better results for some people. Most people do not agree with the principles you describe, ergo current situation.

danielbln 7y ago

> we oppose prohibition from a principled position Is that true? There are still many dry counties in the US, and full scale prohibition was an utter and total desaster. Seems more that people learned that alcohol prohibition doesn't work which lead to its abolishment, not a principled position.

aurea 7y ago

> Why does the state have a role to play in a transaction between two consenting adults? What are you advocating here? There are many transactions in which modern states interfere that are between consenting adults. In countries with minimal wage you could consent to being paid below it, but it would remain illegal. You can consent to being scammed in a transaction, but it remains illegal. Etc. These interference are meant to protect citizens. Just because the transaction would involve a sexual exchange doesn’t mean it’s any different.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
yardstick 7y ago
I believe the difference is in both of your examples, the “victim” wouldn’t be committing a crime. Imagine if employees were jailed for accepting sub minimum wage, rather than just the employer.
- petra 7y ago
  That's just an historical artifact, and in some countries it's changing - now the clients get arrested instead of sex workers.
  - chrischen 7y ago
    What are they being protected from? Immorality? A lot of the dangers to sex workers is because of these protections forcing them to go underground and work with shady exploitative dealers and trafficking.
    - speedplane 7y ago
      > A lot of the dangers to sex workers is because of these protections forcing them to go underground and work with shady exploitative dealers and trafficking. This is the older viewpoint. The newer one is that no one would consensually agree to sex work unless they were coerced. I am not in a position to opine on that viewpoint, but if it's true, then every sex worker is being exploited regardless of any laws or regulations.
      - ericd 7y ago
        I don’t know much about this topic, but I would guess that it’s the structure of society doing most of the coercing in most cases. Which the government has at least some power to fix via improved social safety net programs.
      - 7y ago

llamaz 7y ago

Consider the example of a highway robber that holds you up at gunpoint and asks for your wallet on the threat of death. In this situation there is typically consent by the victim in handing over her wallet to the perpetrator - after all he has the _free will_ not to hand over his wallet. In the same way, you have the _free will_ not to work, but the consequences of not working are ending up on the streets. As a special case of this, a prostitute has the free will not to work, on the threat of ending up on the streets. The only difference between a generic worker and a prostitute is that it is the human reproductive act itself that is being commodified. I guess that the question of whether prostitution is exploitative or not, and whether generic work is exploitative or not, depends on what _alternative_ choices are available: Does society guarantee that you will not end up on the streets i.e. (1) is there a scarcity in the basic human needs of society, viz. housing, jobs, the recognition in law of that someone is a citizen etc. (2) does society provide these basic needs to all its members. From this framework it's possibly to argue that _in principle_ prostitution is exploitative. It is no more exploitative than any other form of work, but perhaps has a tendency to attract the most vulnerable in society who do not have a safety net to fall back on. So I don't see anything especially exploitative about a middle class woman becoming a stripper to get through college. But not everyone is middle class. What's undeniable _in practice_, is that legal prostitution leads to less criminal behaviour and exploitation. Hopefully we can work to change the conditions that make prostitution exploitative as opposed to an expression of an individuals creativity.

RomanBob 7y ago
This is an absolute butchering of free will. A person being robbed at gun point is being coerced. He is having a choice forced upon him by another person. Society, being composed of individuals all of whom do not want to be coerced has an interest in preventing coercion. This is not true of having to work. The biological necessity of your body requiring food is not forced onto you by anybody. So nobody can be held responsible for it. A prostitute being given the option to sell her body for money actually makes her life better, because depriving her of having to choose does not improve her life, while depriving a man of having to choose between being shot and giving up his wallet improves his life greatly.

chrischen 7y ago

It’s really just men who don’t like the idea of women doing these things with their bodies.

kjeetgill 7y ago
That is absolutely not true. Do you think mothers, sisters, friends, etc. can't be capable of concern for the "moral well being" (for the lack for a better word)? You don't have to be that conservative to find it at least a little uncomfortable or grimy. I'm not saying that should be the basis of law, but you must understand there's generally stigma associated.
- 413x 7y ago
  There is stigma on many professions. (e.g. delivery boys, cleaners, mc'donalds workers etc.) I guess, legalized prostitution would bring enough money to be respected. (Like dentists, digging rotten teeth)
- chrischen 7y ago
  Yes they can be as a side effect of these morals. But the morals are established by men wanting to control women. There are also women against abortion, heck even women’s rights. A mother or another women still doesn’t have the right to dictate to other women how they choose to take advantage or their own bodies. You have to look at who does it serve to establish this moral standard, and it serves a patriarchal society that overemphasizes the value of purity in women. Somehow if the issue focused on gigolos I doubt it would have as much moral opposition.
  - kaitai 7y ago
    It serves some women, too. Moral Women can cement a higher place in the patriarchal society than Immoral Women and pass a lot of unpleasant tasks to them.
    - chrischen 7y ago
      That is exactly why there are women that are seemingly against women's rights. A sort of Stockholm syndrome thing going on.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

dragonwriter 7y ago

> I'll bring up the point I always bring up regarding sex work: why are so many people focused on whether or not this actually produces better results for people? Because most real world value systems amount, in practice, to rule-bounded utilitarianism, rather than purely non-utilitarian deontology. > Legislation, by and large and particularly in the United States, is driven first and foremost by principle, rather than utilitarian objectives. Utilitarian objectives are a set of principles, and while they are usually qualified rather than pure, they are very widespread set of principles and virtually every advocacy campaign appeals to them for that reason. You are simply wrong if you think most public support for or opposition to legislation, in general or in the US specifically, is based on moral principles that are completely divorced from perception of utilitarian consequences.

wodenokoto 7y ago

> why are so many people focused on whether or not this actually produces better results for people? Legislation, by and large and particularly in the United States, is driven first and foremost by principle, rather than utilitarian objectives. Seatbelts, speed limits, health regulations, heck even labour laws are about utilitarian outcomes - generally keeping people from dying prematurely or going to the hospital. The state generally interferes with transaction that are harmful between the two parties. You can't write whatever you want in a contract, even if it only pertains to first parties. As for alcohol prohibition: That's not a principle stance regarding the freedom to take harmful substance. It is an exception to the prohibition of access to harmful substances. We still want something that's bad for us, so alcohol is the exception for historical reasons, but for (probably misguided) utilitarian reasons, we don't allow all sorts of drugs.

nothrabannosir 7y ago
> We still want something that's bad for us, so alcohol is the exception for historical reasons, but for (probably misguided) utilitarian reasons, we don't allow all sorts of drugs. Our reasons for prohibition of certain drugs over others are far from utilitarian. If anything, they're anti-utilitarian. Compare the motivations for the 18th and for the 21st amendment.
- wodenokoto 7y ago
  That's why alcohol is an exception.
  - nothrabannosir 7y ago
    Ok how is this sentence meant? "(We still want something that's bad for us, so alcohol is the exception for historical reasons), but (for probably misguided utilitarian reasons, we don't allow all sorts of drugs)." or "We still want something that's bad for us, so (alcohol is the exception for historical reasons, but for probably misguided utilitarian reasons). We don't allow all sorts of drugs." The former suggests we prohibit drugs for utilitarian reasons, misguided but utilitarian nonetheless, the latter seems odd by itself?

philwelch 7y ago

Because in a vast proportion of cases, the prostituted woman is not a consenting partner.

chantelles 7y ago
I worked for years as a sex worker advocate and in the vast proportion of cases, sex workers all chose various reasons, depending on context, to work in the sex industry. Not one of them was ever prostituted.
- petra 7y ago
  After knowing many sex workers, if a poor friend came to ask you to choose a career - in what context would you recommend her to work as an escort ?
  - chantelles 7y ago
    I was a sex worker - a stripper and I highly recommend it to everyone.
- philwelch 7y ago
  So you’re denying the existence of sex trafficking? To clarify, I personally favor the Swedish model, which outlaws pimping, brothels, and buying sex but does not make it illegal to be a prostitute.
  - chantelles 7y ago
    I'm centering the conversation around sex work from the sex worker perspective. Does everyone who works prefer to be independent? Or do many prefer a boss to deal with the day to day? These are basic sex worker educations I received while working in the community (in Toronto).
    - detcader 7y ago
      Can we say that this counts as "the sex worker perspective?" > Rachel Moran, a former prostitute who considers the purchase of sex an act of violence against women... holds a very different opinion on who the victims of prostitution are: "The acceptance of prostitution makes all women potential prostitutes in the public view since there are only two requirements for a woman to work in a brothel: one is that circumstance has placed her so […] and the other is that she has a vagina, and all women are born meeting at least one of these requirements." [1] https://sarahditum.com/2014/02/24/who-do-you-listen-to/ https://sarahditum.com/2014/02/24/who-do-you-listen-to/

vincent-toups 7y ago

One reasonable principle is that laws ought to reduce harm. That is a bit glib, but so is your bald assertion that states ought to be concerned only with principle. It is neither part of our legal tradition nor even a plausible interpretation of the foundational ideas of most currently constituted governments. I see where you are coming from, but I don't know that, as humans currently understand things, your argument really has traction on reality.

ralusek 7y ago
Then consider my examples. If the role of the state is to reduce harm, why is alcohol legal? Why are people allowed to be mean online? Why can cars go over 15mph? Why aren't there facial recognition cameras on every corner? Why isn't everyone on mood stabilizers?
- vincent-toups 7y ago
  Pretty obviously because the role of the state isn't to reduce harm to the exclusion of everything else. It has multiple goals which it imperfectly pursues. Just like any human institution or individual.

Jare 7y ago

> Why does the state have a role to play in a transaction between two consenting adults? The only sensible argument would be that the state has a role only insofar as consent is in question Because that is fundamentally the purpose of government. Roughly, to intrude in the decisions of individuals in order to generate a safer and more prosperous life for everyone in general. A civilization is more than a collection of individuals. Consent can be coerced, scammed, misinterpreted, hard to prove afterwards, etc. And individual actions have consequences beyond the individual because of human traits like envy and greed. So, government attempts (should attempt) to take all these factors and many more into consideration while creating regulation and enforcement structures that work around those problems.

mensetmanusman 7y ago

People pass laws to produce better results for some people. Most people do not agree with the principles you describe, ergo current situation.