4 ms·

I'd say that human trafficking happens exactly because prostitution is illegal and pushed underground and that's where real cruel stuff happens. Prostitution s

I'd say that human trafficking happens exactly because prostitution is illegal and pushed underground and that's where real cruel stuff happens. Prostitution should be heavily regulated and taxed, pimps are what needs to disappear from the whole equation. If that were to happen the underground shady prostitution would diminish greatly, not sure if it would disappear completely but customers would think twice about risking their health there since the regulated world would ensure healthier sex workers, up to date on STD tests and so on...

sneak 6y ago
> Prostitution should be heavily regulated and taxed I'm not sure why this always comes back up. Why would you want to stop violent oppression of prostitutes by police and criminals, and then replace it immediately with economic oppression? You have it backwards: There should be tax credits for sex workers; for centuries they plainly have not been getting the protection under the law that tax money is expected to pay for.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  It's very disingenuous to compare taxes to harassment from cops and organized crime alike. Also just restaurants probably tons of stuff will continue to be off the books anyways, heh.
- bradleyjg 6y ago
  There should be tax credits for sex workers; for centuries they plainly have not been getting the protection under the law that tax money is expected to pay for. That’s a strange argument. What does a tax credit for a sex worker today do for a sex worker 150 years ago that paid taxes but didn’t get protection from the state?
  - sneak 6y ago
    Imagine the point I was making if I had said "a decade", and substitute that. Anything that's been happening for centuries has also been happing for decades, months, weeks, days, et c. Sex workers working today are not receiving the same services and protection under the law that non-sex workers receive; our society had failed them and they deserve a refund. (So do their predecessors but that ship has sailed.)
- throwaway823882 6y ago
  If sex work is real work, then sex workers should pay taxes like real workers. But a credit is not going to happen, purely for political reasons. We would tax the purchase of sex work as an extra excise tax, just like for gas, alcohol, tobacco, and coca-cola. We want to encourage people not to spend all their money on these things, because over-indulgence could be detrimental. But you could go the other way and say these are paternalistic sin-taxes.
- godelski 6y ago
  > Why would you want to stop violent oppression of prostitutes by police and criminals, and then replace it immediately with economic oppression? Because right now prostitution is _BOTH_ oppression by police and criminals _AND_ economic oppression (if we're considering low wages economic oppression).
DoreenMichele 6y ago
Dolores French, author of Working: My life as a prostitute, was a political activist (or worker of some sort) before she voluntarily became a sex worker in her late twenties. She continued to be a political activist but her cause was now sex workers rights. She was for decriminalization, not legalization and regulation. (She was against legalization and regulation.)
- pyuser583 6y ago
  Had a really good friend in college who was a feminist activist. Smart, straight A student, good upbringing, had graduate degrees. She became a sex worked as part of the “sex work as liberation” movement. I met her at a college reunion and asked her about how it worked out. She laughed and said: “I’m the only person I know who has never had a Facebook page. I can’t. That stuff follows you forever.” Edit: She used her real name with most clients. This wasn’t a huge issue, because her name was identical to a popular porn star. Everyone assumed it was fake, and Googling it was impossible. Than the porn star quit, and eventually was forgotten. Her clients haven’t forgotten, sadly. Now googling her name brings up actual photos of her from a professional association belongs to.
- gexla 6y ago
  Among the arguments for decriminalization of prostitution is that women should have the right to this path to make money. I don't know the argument against regulation, but I imagine it would still remove that path as an option for many. If you can't comply with regulation, then you're still doing something illegal. There's still people in power who are controlling your options.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    It's been a lot of years since I read the book, but my vague recollection is that Dolores French argued that the problem currently is that abusive men -- pimps -- control the bodies and lives of most female sex workers, very much to the detriment of the women in question, and if you impose regulation, the state more or less takes over that role. In her view, if you valued the rights of the sex workers, decriminalization was the only thing that made sense. She made a compelling argument, in part because she had first-hand experience with both sex work and politics. She had been some kind of political campaign worker, I think, and hated it but was good at it and when she was something like 27 years old, after nearly dying in some accident, she decided to live a little around that time some friend of her asked her to turn a trick in her place because she couldn't make the appointment for some reason. She said the guy paid her with a smile on her face and it was the most money she had ever made for an hour of work. It was the best working experience she ever had, so she began doing that as her profession. She always paid her taxes. She listed herself as an entertainer on her tax returns and she eventually married a lawyer and continued to do sex work. I believe she was arrested at least once and talked in the book about how traumatizing that was and how awful many police officers are to sex workers. It's a great read and I highly recommend it.
austincheney 6y ago
> I'd say that human trafficking happens exactly because prostitution is illegal Is that based on any research or evidence of any kind? I’m also inclined to invent some extremely absurd opinion on a subject I know nothing about in a field where I have never worked.
- tartoran 6y ago
  No, it's based on common sense. Do you not see that criminalizing prostitution did not and continues to not do anything positive for these sex workers? Do I need to have worked in this field to have an opinion? Really? What's your argument for keeping prostitution illegal? And have you worked in the field?
  - bjourne 6y ago
    Sorry, you can't use "common sense" as an argument for hotly contested claims. Here is a paper from 2012 that claims that legalized prostitution significantly increases human trafficking: > This paper investigates the impact of legalized prostitution on human trafficking inflows. According to economic theory, there are two opposing effects of unknown magnitude. The scale effect of legalized prostitution leads to an expansion of the prostitution market,increasing human trafficking, while the substitution effect reduces demand for trafficked women as legal prostitutes are favored over trafficked ones. Our empirical analysis for a cross-section of up to 150 countries shows that the scale effect dominates the substitution effect. On average, countries where prostitution is legal experience larger reported human trafficking inflows. https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.405653.de/diw_econsec0071.pdf https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.40565...
    - tartoran 6y ago
      This does not make much sense to me. Keeping prostitution illegal and criminalising it sends both the sexworkers and their clients onto the black market. There, sex workers have no rights. Sex workers can’t even complain when abused because they’d get punished a second time by authorities. I don’t really know how a study like that can can be conducted with a phenomenon that is hidden from the public view. https://harvardcrcl.org/to-protect-women-legalize-prostitution/ https://harvardcrcl.org/to-protect-women-legalize-prostituti...

sneak 6y ago

> Prostitution should be heavily regulated and taxed I'm not sure why this always comes back up. Why would you want to stop violent oppression of prostitutes by police and criminals, and then replace it immediately with economic oppression? You have it backwards: There should be tax credits for sex workers; for centuries they plainly have not been getting the protection under the law that tax money is expected to pay for.

Ericson2314 6y ago
It's very disingenuous to compare taxes to harassment from cops and organized crime alike. Also just restaurants probably tons of stuff will continue to be off the books anyways, heh.
bradleyjg 6y ago
There should be tax credits for sex workers; for centuries they plainly have not been getting the protection under the law that tax money is expected to pay for. That’s a strange argument. What does a tax credit for a sex worker today do for a sex worker 150 years ago that paid taxes but didn’t get protection from the state?
- sneak 6y ago
  Imagine the point I was making if I had said "a decade", and substitute that. Anything that's been happening for centuries has also been happing for decades, months, weeks, days, et c. Sex workers working today are not receiving the same services and protection under the law that non-sex workers receive; our society had failed them and they deserve a refund. (So do their predecessors but that ship has sailed.)
throwaway823882 6y ago
If sex work is real work, then sex workers should pay taxes like real workers. But a credit is not going to happen, purely for political reasons. We would tax the purchase of sex work as an extra excise tax, just like for gas, alcohol, tobacco, and coca-cola. We want to encourage people not to spend all their money on these things, because over-indulgence could be detrimental. But you could go the other way and say these are paternalistic sin-taxes.
godelski 6y ago
> Why would you want to stop violent oppression of prostitutes by police and criminals, and then replace it immediately with economic oppression? Because right now prostitution is _BOTH_ oppression by police and criminals _AND_ economic oppression (if we're considering low wages economic oppression).

DoreenMichele 6y ago

Dolores French, author of Working: My life as a prostitute, was a political activist (or worker of some sort) before she voluntarily became a sex worker in her late twenties. She continued to be a political activist but her cause was now sex workers rights. She was for decriminalization, not legalization and regulation. (She was against legalization and regulation.)

pyuser583 6y ago
Had a really good friend in college who was a feminist activist. Smart, straight A student, good upbringing, had graduate degrees. She became a sex worked as part of the “sex work as liberation” movement. I met her at a college reunion and asked her about how it worked out. She laughed and said: “I’m the only person I know who has never had a Facebook page. I can’t. That stuff follows you forever.” Edit: She used her real name with most clients. This wasn’t a huge issue, because her name was identical to a popular porn star. Everyone assumed it was fake, and Googling it was impossible. Than the porn star quit, and eventually was forgotten. Her clients haven’t forgotten, sadly. Now googling her name brings up actual photos of her from a professional association belongs to.
gexla 6y ago
Among the arguments for decriminalization of prostitution is that women should have the right to this path to make money. I don't know the argument against regulation, but I imagine it would still remove that path as an option for many. If you can't comply with regulation, then you're still doing something illegal. There's still people in power who are controlling your options.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  It's been a lot of years since I read the book, but my vague recollection is that Dolores French argued that the problem currently is that abusive men -- pimps -- control the bodies and lives of most female sex workers, very much to the detriment of the women in question, and if you impose regulation, the state more or less takes over that role. In her view, if you valued the rights of the sex workers, decriminalization was the only thing that made sense. She made a compelling argument, in part because she had first-hand experience with both sex work and politics. She had been some kind of political campaign worker, I think, and hated it but was good at it and when she was something like 27 years old, after nearly dying in some accident, she decided to live a little around that time some friend of her asked her to turn a trick in her place because she couldn't make the appointment for some reason. She said the guy paid her with a smile on her face and it was the most money she had ever made for an hour of work. It was the best working experience she ever had, so she began doing that as her profession. She always paid her taxes. She listed herself as an entertainer on her tax returns and she eventually married a lawyer and continued to do sex work. I believe she was arrested at least once and talked in the book about how traumatizing that was and how awful many police officers are to sex workers. It's a great read and I highly recommend it.

austincheney 6y ago

> I'd say that human trafficking happens exactly because prostitution is illegal Is that based on any research or evidence of any kind? I’m also inclined to invent some extremely absurd opinion on a subject I know nothing about in a field where I have never worked.

tartoran 6y ago
No, it's based on common sense. Do you not see that criminalizing prostitution did not and continues to not do anything positive for these sex workers? Do I need to have worked in this field to have an opinion? Really? What's your argument for keeping prostitution illegal? And have you worked in the field?
- bjourne 6y ago
  Sorry, you can't use "common sense" as an argument for hotly contested claims. Here is a paper from 2012 that claims that legalized prostitution significantly increases human trafficking: > This paper investigates the impact of legalized prostitution on human trafficking inflows. According to economic theory, there are two opposing effects of unknown magnitude. The scale effect of legalized prostitution leads to an expansion of the prostitution market,increasing human trafficking, while the substitution effect reduces demand for trafficked women as legal prostitutes are favored over trafficked ones. Our empirical analysis for a cross-section of up to 150 countries shows that the scale effect dominates the substitution effect. On average, countries where prostitution is legal experience larger reported human trafficking inflows. https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.405653.de/diw_econsec0071.pdf https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.40565...
  - tartoran 6y ago
    This does not make much sense to me. Keeping prostitution illegal and criminalising it sends both the sexworkers and their clients onto the black market. There, sex workers have no rights. Sex workers can’t even complain when abused because they’d get punished a second time by authorities. I don’t really know how a study like that can can be conducted with a phenomenon that is hidden from the public view. https://harvardcrcl.org/to-protect-women-legalize-prostitution/ https://harvardcrcl.org/to-protect-women-legalize-prostituti...