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>>antiquated laws ...Rejuvenated. These are new. There's a new common ground around puritanism. The philosophical underpinnings have changed. Women's rights ar

>>antiquated laws ...Rejuvenated. These are new. There's a new common ground around puritanism. The philosophical underpinnings have changed. Women's rights are, ostensibly, protected while the client side is criminalalised. The reason for the laws is no longer "public morals," it's consent. However, we arrive at more or less the same place. Increasingly, bishops and feminists find common ground on these issues... Imo, even legalization isn't enough. We need normalisation. While prostition is marginalized and ostrecized, sex workers will be at the bottom of the pyramid.

3np 5y ago
Yup. 1999,to be precise.
yanderekko 5y ago
Bravo. This is the natural product of a culture that paradoxically wants to be sex positive for women but also sex negative for men. The outcomes are surprisingly similar to what happens to a culture that's sex negative for women and sex positive for men.
- wonderwonder 5y ago
  I wonder how much day to day violence would be reduced if prostitution was normalized. How much violence is a result of internalized sexual frustration without an outlet.
  - Y-Bopinator 5y ago
    Implying you can't just masturbate and need to use women like a toilet
  - eloff 5y ago
    I would hazard a guess that it wouldn't improve. The kinds of people involved in violence are overwhelmingly poor, young males. This is not a group that cares about laws or cultural norms. They lack the money to pay for sex workers, they don't have cultural hangups about it. They lack the money, education, and human decency to maintain a girlfriend relationship. Which is to say they're not bad people because they're sexually frustrated. They're sexually frustrated because they're bad people. Which can be a negative feedback cycle.
    - snakeboy 5y ago
      How about those at the margin? I'd guess most policy proposals don't seem productive when you condense a population down to a scalar "model" subject and ask if he would change his behavior in light of the new policy. That doesn't mean that population-level effects won't be observed.
      - eloff 5y ago
        I'm going to guess the effect would be marginal :) If you want to address violence it would be better to focus on reducing poverty, on education, and on rehabilitation. A lot of violence is drug related, providing a legal market for buying and selling illegal drugs would kill that element crime. Prohibition of drugs seems to be playing out the same that prohibition of alcohol did. Those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it. Normalizing prostitution is not likely to move the needle for the reasons I mentioned.
  - emsy 5y ago
    I can’t reply to eloff directly but you are wrong, which is why we should base law on hard numbers and not „guesses“.
    - username90 5y ago
      If prostitution has to be done at places with security guards it wouldn't be a big issue though, she just screams and the guy gets thrown out and possibly charged/arrested.
      - bayesian_horse 5y ago
        Screaming might not be enough...
        username90 5y ago
        For a security guard sitting in the corridor outside to hear you? Definitely it would.
  - bayesian_horse 5y ago
    That is a BS argument. Sexual frustration is the norm, rather than the exception, and if somebody commits a rape to act out sexual desires, then it is not because he didn't have access to prostitutes. I doubt there are a lot of people who frequent prostitutes as much as most couples have sex in a relationship... However, honestly "voluntary" prostitution is also too expensive. Which is a big reason for the famed "management level" to exist. Through drugs, physical and psychological abuse they create a much cheaper supply, and only that way the demand can be met.
    - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
      > if somebody commits a rape to act out sexual desires, then it is not because he didn't have access to prostitutes I'd argue this is precisely the person who should not have access to prostitutes. Their existence, or our inability to adequately police them, is one of the stronger arguments against prostitution.
  - wruza 5y ago
    internalized sexual frustration without an outlet Unless we’re talking about hi-class hi-paid workers here, which are far from common, this “outlet” has the same (or even lower) voltage than your hand-y discharger, if you get the analogy. The more realistic result will be you and your kids living amidst endless brothels and their frustrated clients.
  - watwut 5y ago
    Plenty of violence is commited by men who have sexual partners. Also, violent men do commit violence againta their sexual partners.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Flow 5y ago
  In Sweden there are plenty of "yoni dearmouring" and similar sevices. I get that more women have a harder time orgasming than men usually have. Also more trauma amongst women than men. But if you are a man with these kinds of problems you have nowhere to go.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
An interesting way to test whether it is a victimless crime is to pay prostitutes $100,000 and to see how quickly they return to the profession. One possible theory is that prostitution is a victim of poverty.
- solveit 5y ago
  Sure, but are you willing to apply the same test to every other job and outlaw the ones that fail?
  - jakelazaroff 5y ago
    Maybe not what GP was getting at, but I would like to structure society so that people don't have to spend big chunks of their lives doing menial jobs in order to afford their basic needs!
    - rootusrootus 5y ago
      More automation. Menial jobs still need to get done.
      - danbruc 5y ago
        Pay the menial jobs better. The person cleaning the toilets at Facebook should earn more than the developers there. EDIT: This is not meant literally, I am not talking about toilette cleaning jobs at Facebook, I am talking about paying people for the time they spent working and maybe how physically taxing or unpleasant the work is. This is in contrast to paying people what you can get away with because of the available supply of workers or how much money you have to throw around because you can get it from your customers.
        username90 5y ago
        Then you would have millions of people applying for a few thousand jobs. How would you decide who gets to work there and earn those salaries? Facebook does it by reducing the salary bit by bit until the number of people who wants to work there is roughly as many as they need.
hogFeast 5y ago
Yep, I am in the UK. Prostitution/brothels are nominally legal where I am (and have been for three decades) but they began cracking down recently. Religious groups allied with violence against women charities. This has been with mixed success because legalization was introduced to combat HIV, and the local govt is loathe to turn this back completely because it will cause chaos (lots of job losses, increase in pimping, human trafficking). But there is a new puritanism.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
> Imo, even legalization isn't enough. We need normalisation. Many of the FAANG companies are famous for their perks. One of those is having massage therapists at the office. By normalization, do you mean you would you be ok them also having sex workers (well paid with benefits) as well. Just to be clear, I, and likely most people, would be against that, which shows that I don't think sex work is going to be completely normalized.
- ljp_206 5y ago
  I think one could easily imagine that sex work could be given a similar treatment like legal Marijuana. Obviously there are differences in these (for lack of a more useful word) 'vices,' but "normalization" for marijuana in the US does not mean free weed edibles as part of your comp package. It means it's shunned/controlled/a sort of deal breaker in professional settings, but more and more understood to be a choice people can make with their free time outside of work as long as it's safe, legal, etc...
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
    But you are talking about legalization, not normalization. At many companies, it is pretty normal for there to be alcohol, even at work related events. I doubt, even if marijuana were made legal, that you would see marijuana at work related events. There is a big difference between legalization and normalization. One way you can think of normalization is with regards to its status in a professional setting. If you mentioned around the water cooler that you went to a nail salon and had a pedicure, no one would care. If you mentioned that you went to legal sex worker, you would have an HR complaint filed against you. One is normalized, the other is not. I don't think sex in general will ever really be "normalized". It will always involve taboos of some sort.
- dalbasal 5y ago
  By normalization I mean a social/cultural change, not necessarily a legal one... though the two are linked. I mean a culture where being a sex worker is not something that most people hide or gasp at. Strippers are, in some places, semi-"normal." You can date an ex stripper, in some circles. Ex-prostitute is, generally, a no-go. >>I, and likely most people, would be against that Yes of course. That's what not being normalized currently means. Normalisation would be a change in these opinions. Homosexuality was also "most people against" very recently. Also, I didn't say that I think this change is coming. Quite the opposite. The current trend is in the puritanical direction.

3np 5y ago

Yup. 1999,to be precise.

yanderekko 5y ago

Bravo. This is the natural product of a culture that paradoxically wants to be sex positive for women but also sex negative for men. The outcomes are surprisingly similar to what happens to a culture that's sex negative for women and sex positive for men.

wonderwonder 5y ago
I wonder how much day to day violence would be reduced if prostitution was normalized. How much violence is a result of internalized sexual frustration without an outlet.
- Y-Bopinator 5y ago
  Implying you can't just masturbate and need to use women like a toilet
- eloff 5y ago
  I would hazard a guess that it wouldn't improve. The kinds of people involved in violence are overwhelmingly poor, young males. This is not a group that cares about laws or cultural norms. They lack the money to pay for sex workers, they don't have cultural hangups about it. They lack the money, education, and human decency to maintain a girlfriend relationship. Which is to say they're not bad people because they're sexually frustrated. They're sexually frustrated because they're bad people. Which can be a negative feedback cycle.
  - snakeboy 5y ago
    How about those at the margin? I'd guess most policy proposals don't seem productive when you condense a population down to a scalar "model" subject and ask if he would change his behavior in light of the new policy. That doesn't mean that population-level effects won't be observed.
    - eloff 5y ago
      I'm going to guess the effect would be marginal :) If you want to address violence it would be better to focus on reducing poverty, on education, and on rehabilitation. A lot of violence is drug related, providing a legal market for buying and selling illegal drugs would kill that element crime. Prohibition of drugs seems to be playing out the same that prohibition of alcohol did. Those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it. Normalizing prostitution is not likely to move the needle for the reasons I mentioned.
- emsy 5y ago
  I can’t reply to eloff directly but you are wrong, which is why we should base law on hard numbers and not „guesses“.
  - username90 5y ago
    If prostitution has to be done at places with security guards it wouldn't be a big issue though, she just screams and the guy gets thrown out and possibly charged/arrested.
    - bayesian_horse 5y ago
      Screaming might not be enough...
      - username90 5y ago
        For a security guard sitting in the corridor outside to hear you? Definitely it would.
- bayesian_horse 5y ago
  That is a BS argument. Sexual frustration is the norm, rather than the exception, and if somebody commits a rape to act out sexual desires, then it is not because he didn't have access to prostitutes. I doubt there are a lot of people who frequent prostitutes as much as most couples have sex in a relationship... However, honestly "voluntary" prostitution is also too expensive. Which is a big reason for the famed "management level" to exist. Through drugs, physical and psychological abuse they create a much cheaper supply, and only that way the demand can be met.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > if somebody commits a rape to act out sexual desires, then it is not because he didn't have access to prostitutes I'd argue this is precisely the person who should not have access to prostitutes. Their existence, or our inability to adequately police them, is one of the stronger arguments against prostitution.
- wruza 5y ago
  internalized sexual frustration without an outlet Unless we’re talking about hi-class hi-paid workers here, which are far from common, this “outlet” has the same (or even lower) voltage than your hand-y discharger, if you get the analogy. The more realistic result will be you and your kids living amidst endless brothels and their frustrated clients.
- watwut 5y ago
  Plenty of violence is commited by men who have sexual partners. Also, violent men do commit violence againta their sexual partners.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Flow 5y ago
In Sweden there are plenty of "yoni dearmouring" and similar sevices. I get that more women have a harder time orgasming than men usually have. Also more trauma amongst women than men. But if you are a man with these kinds of problems you have nowhere to go.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

An interesting way to test whether it is a victimless crime is to pay prostitutes $100,000 and to see how quickly they return to the profession. One possible theory is that prostitution is a victim of poverty.

solveit 5y ago
Sure, but are you willing to apply the same test to every other job and outlaw the ones that fail?
- jakelazaroff 5y ago
  Maybe not what GP was getting at, but I would like to structure society so that people don't have to spend big chunks of their lives doing menial jobs in order to afford their basic needs!
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    More automation. Menial jobs still need to get done.
    - danbruc 5y ago
      Pay the menial jobs better. The person cleaning the toilets at Facebook should earn more than the developers there. EDIT: This is not meant literally, I am not talking about toilette cleaning jobs at Facebook, I am talking about paying people for the time they spent working and maybe how physically taxing or unpleasant the work is. This is in contrast to paying people what you can get away with because of the available supply of workers or how much money you have to throw around because you can get it from your customers.
      - username90 5y ago
        Then you would have millions of people applying for a few thousand jobs. How would you decide who gets to work there and earn those salaries? Facebook does it by reducing the salary bit by bit until the number of people who wants to work there is roughly as many as they need.

hogFeast 5y ago

Yep, I am in the UK. Prostitution/brothels are nominally legal where I am (and have been for three decades) but they began cracking down recently. Religious groups allied with violence against women charities. This has been with mixed success because legalization was introduced to combat HIV, and the local govt is loathe to turn this back completely because it will cause chaos (lots of job losses, increase in pimping, human trafficking). But there is a new puritanism.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago

> Imo, even legalization isn't enough. We need normalisation. Many of the FAANG companies are famous for their perks. One of those is having massage therapists at the office. By normalization, do you mean you would you be ok them also having sex workers (well paid with benefits) as well. Just to be clear, I, and likely most people, would be against that, which shows that I don't think sex work is going to be completely normalized.

ljp_206 5y ago
I think one could easily imagine that sex work could be given a similar treatment like legal Marijuana. Obviously there are differences in these (for lack of a more useful word) 'vices,' but "normalization" for marijuana in the US does not mean free weed edibles as part of your comp package. It means it's shunned/controlled/a sort of deal breaker in professional settings, but more and more understood to be a choice people can make with their free time outside of work as long as it's safe, legal, etc...
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
  But you are talking about legalization, not normalization. At many companies, it is pretty normal for there to be alcohol, even at work related events. I doubt, even if marijuana were made legal, that you would see marijuana at work related events. There is a big difference between legalization and normalization. One way you can think of normalization is with regards to its status in a professional setting. If you mentioned around the water cooler that you went to a nail salon and had a pedicure, no one would care. If you mentioned that you went to legal sex worker, you would have an HR complaint filed against you. One is normalized, the other is not. I don't think sex in general will ever really be "normalized". It will always involve taboos of some sort.
dalbasal 5y ago
By normalization I mean a social/cultural change, not necessarily a legal one... though the two are linked. I mean a culture where being a sex worker is not something that most people hide or gasp at. Strippers are, in some places, semi-"normal." You can date an ex stripper, in some circles. Ex-prostitute is, generally, a no-go. >>I, and likely most people, would be against that Yes of course. That's what not being normalized currently means. Normalisation would be a change in these opinions. Homosexuality was also "most people against" very recently. Also, I didn't say that I think this change is coming. Quite the opposite. The current trend is in the puritanical direction.