6 ms·

> I was talking about a person who looks at the options in the job market, and figures all on own their that prostitution is the least shitty option available t

> I was talking about a person who looks at the options in the job market, and figures all on own their that prostitution is the least shitty option available to them. If prostitution, which is heavily stigmatized by the society a person lives in and is illegal, starts looking attractive, then there is something wrong, don't you think? The problem is not decriminalization, the problem is that people don't have anywhere to look at if they want a decent life. > And some prostitutes reportedly even like their job well enough. Which part of it, stigma, having no rights or a fair chance to get degraded/killed/catch STD/highly reducing their chances of having a romantic relationship? >they can join the large group of other people who do not like their jobs either, but do it anyway to provide for themselves and loved ones. You can't provide for yourself and, even more so for you loved ones, by working at McDonalds. You can barely survive. > There is no coerced consent. Sure, if you have 2 choices - prostitution or dying from starvation, then it's not coerced consent. You always had a choice to die.

rndgermandude 5y ago
>If prostitution, which is heavily stigmatized by the society a person lives in and is illegal, starts looking attractive, then there is something wrong, don't you think? I live in a country that doesn't criminalize prostitution. But even in countries where it is criminalized (most of them), it still can be an attractive enough proposition for sure, depending on the circumstances. Not all prostitutes are those "street workers". A lot of prostitutes are living rather normal lives on the outset, at least in my country. There is plenty of part time prostitutes, too, apparently. Your next door neighbor could be a prostitute, and you won't know it. Stigmatization surely is a problem, but that is directly correlated with criminalization too (but of course not entirely caused by it). Media plays a big role for sure too, usually portraying every prostitute as either a drug addict, abused, or both. There is no easy solution, but one can start by stopping to stigmatize prostitutes, starting with ourselves and then with the people we know. Just threat them as well human beings. >Which part of it, stigma, having no rights or a fair chance to get degraded/killed/catch STD/highly reducing their chances of having a romantic relationship? Not every prostitute gets regularly degraded and/or abused, or killed. Most of the prostitutes around here probably do not have a much higher chance of being killed than other groups. STDs are another matter. But sure, some jobs are riskier than others. We as a society should make it less risky. The chances of bad things happening to prostitutes skyrockets when you criminalize prostitution and thus take away their chances of reporting crimes without being harassed or arrested by law enforcement themselves. Or when the police dismiss a prostitute reporting a rape because "how can a prostitute be raped?!". Or some child protective services agency shows up to take away your kid, because you dared report you were beaten and robbed by a John. Then again, I can hardly find any justification for the laws to criminalize prostitution, other than "it leads to more crime". No shit sherlock, it's criminalized, and that brings more crime with it, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point. We have plenty of examples of this happening, like when the US banned alcoholic beverages for a while, and this caused not only speak easys to spring up everywhere, it brought along murder and mayhem, lives destroyed and a vast spike in corruption. >You can't provide for yourself and, even more so for you loved ones, by working at McDonalds. You can barely survive. True, and that needs to change. >Sure, if you have 2 choices - prostitution or dying from starvation, then it's not coerced consent. Correct, that's life being shitty to you. It's not coercion because coercion requires somebody to make threats. Regardless, they are usually either more than two options, and sadly quite often only the one option of starvation. It seems to me you're advocating taking away the prostitution option, which then leaves only starvation? How is this better? In a better world, we would only have people going into prostitution who really want it for some reason, instead of outright, desperate economic need. A world were people do not have to work 14h in some shitty factory and still cannot pay their rent, and cannot even dream of owning a house. A world were nobody starves, and everybody has access to fresh, clean drinking water. We don't have such a world. Making this world we actually got worse for these desperate people by criminalizing them does not help anybody, does it?
- mikevm 5y ago
  It sounds like you are from Germany? I don't think that prostitution will ever get destigmatized. This hasn't much to do with the media, and more to do with human nature. Men are usually wary of sexually promiscuous women, and women know that as well (which is why women "slut shame" other women to take them out of the competition). IIRC most prostitutes in Germany are foreign anyway, so even though the pay is high, most German women would prefer to do some other work :).
  - rndgermandude 5y ago
    > It sounds like you are from Germany? Correct. >I don't think that prostitution will ever get destigmatized. Fully de-stigmatized? Probably not in our life times, or ever. But the stigma has been on a sharp decline, at least in my parents generation and my generation, as far as I can tell. >Men are usually wary of sexually promiscuous women, and women know that as well While this is not entirely wrong, what is considered "sexually promiscuous" has shifted a lot in general. In the "somewhat woker"[0] parts of society you will get shamed for "slut shaming". Moreover, I find with a lot of people the idea that prostitutes are "sexually promiscuous" instead of just doing a job has greatly shifted towards recognizing it's a job and not "sluttiness". Even my late grandma, after watching a few documentaries about prostitution in German, changed her mind[1]. I think visiting a prostitute has a large stigma ("creep"/"perv", "cannot get laid if he does not pay money for it") but the actual prostitution a lot less so now. >IIRC most prostitutes in Germany are foreign anyway, so even though the pay is high, most German women would prefer to do some other work :). There is reportedly a sizable chunk of foreign prostitutes, but not a majority, as far as I am aware. With legalization and the internet, it is rather easy to set up your own one-person operation, and that happened/happens a lot, even for foreigners. No need to walk the streets or work in known brothels or red light districts. You can operate in relative anonymity as a one-person operation from some flat or go to customers, after advertising your services online[2]. This affords both the prostitute and their client some privacy. Or you can work in the larger legal brothels, which then provide security (actual bouncers, not some pimps pretending to provide protection) and other amenities such as that they will advertise their establishment so you don't have to spend time doing that yourself. These legal brothels then charge a flat entrance fee to prostitutes (but do not take a cut of the pay; that would be illegal pimping). The one prostitute I know socially[3], for example, is German and has rented a flat together with another prostitute (also German) one town over from where she lives (to avoid awkwardly running into clients on the street), where they would provide services to clients, usually alternating who gets to use the flat each day. This works out well for them, time-wise, she says. She also goes to regular clients (to their homes or hotels) after there was a certain level of reputation and trust was established. She says in this system they set up, there is no need for hired security (or a "pimp", not that pimps ever actually provided protection), seeing new clients only after vetting them (also vetting them with other prostitutes, who use online forums to do so; not so much the case in the US after SESTA/FOSTA), and only accepting electronic payments for new clients to leave a money trace the police could investigate if something goes bad and telling the clients as much (US sex workers cannot even get banking once it becomes known to the bank they are sex workers, or reasonably go to the police). She isn't a high end escort either, by the way. She mentioned charging something like 100 bucks for half an hour as the base rate. I don't really have a frame of reference, but I believe this is neither particularly cheap nor particularly expensive. [0] And by somewhat "woker" I do not mean the crowd who think antifa is great and tattoo their pronouns on their foreheads, but the section of society which believes e.g. in equal treatment of the genders, that allowing same sex marriage and adoption is not up for debate, or that we have to do something about climate change. I generally would call these people the "sane group", but that's just me. [1] I remember the time at some family function, when the topic somehow got on legalization of prostitution (it had been already legal for years), my 80-something-at-the-time year old grandpa remarked that they are "sluts", and my grandma of roughly the same age, to everybody's amazement, remarked "Leave them alone! They are just doing a hard job to get by. I saw a lot about that on TV". [3] On the flip side, this makes it easier to hide human trafficking, too, as trafficker rings can online advertise and rent normal apartments, too, of course. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21106425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21106425 And yeah, I was curious and/or nosy enough to ask her questions after she revealed what she does for a living, specially about the risks involved and how she mitigates them.

rndgermandude 5y ago

>If prostitution, which is heavily stigmatized by the society a person lives in and is illegal, starts looking attractive, then there is something wrong, don't you think? I live in a country that doesn't criminalize prostitution. But even in countries where it is criminalized (most of them), it still can be an attractive enough proposition for sure, depending on the circumstances. Not all prostitutes are those "street workers". A lot of prostitutes are living rather normal lives on the outset, at least in my country. There is plenty of part time prostitutes, too, apparently. Your next door neighbor could be a prostitute, and you won't know it. Stigmatization surely is a problem, but that is directly correlated with criminalization too (but of course not entirely caused by it). Media plays a big role for sure too, usually portraying every prostitute as either a drug addict, abused, or both. There is no easy solution, but one can start by stopping to stigmatize prostitutes, starting with ourselves and then with the people we know. Just threat them as well human beings. >Which part of it, stigma, having no rights or a fair chance to get degraded/killed/catch STD/highly reducing their chances of having a romantic relationship? Not every prostitute gets regularly degraded and/or abused, or killed. Most of the prostitutes around here probably do not have a much higher chance of being killed than other groups. STDs are another matter. But sure, some jobs are riskier than others. We as a society should make it less risky. The chances of bad things happening to prostitutes skyrockets when you criminalize prostitution and thus take away their chances of reporting crimes without being harassed or arrested by law enforcement themselves. Or when the police dismiss a prostitute reporting a rape because "how can a prostitute be raped?!". Or some child protective services agency shows up to take away your kid, because you dared report you were beaten and robbed by a John. Then again, I can hardly find any justification for the laws to criminalize prostitution, other than "it leads to more crime". No shit sherlock, it's criminalized, and that brings more crime with it, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point. We have plenty of examples of this happening, like when the US banned alcoholic beverages for a while, and this caused not only speak easys to spring up everywhere, it brought along murder and mayhem, lives destroyed and a vast spike in corruption. >You can't provide for yourself and, even more so for you loved ones, by working at McDonalds. You can barely survive. True, and that needs to change. >Sure, if you have 2 choices - prostitution or dying from starvation, then it's not coerced consent. Correct, that's life being shitty to you. It's not coercion because coercion requires somebody to make threats. Regardless, they are usually either more than two options, and sadly quite often only the one option of starvation. It seems to me you're advocating taking away the prostitution option, which then leaves only starvation? How is this better? In a better world, we would only have people going into prostitution who really want it for some reason, instead of outright, desperate economic need. A world were people do not have to work 14h in some shitty factory and still cannot pay their rent, and cannot even dream of owning a house. A world were nobody starves, and everybody has access to fresh, clean drinking water. We don't have such a world. Making this world we actually got worse for these desperate people by criminalizing them does not help anybody, does it?

mikevm 5y ago
It sounds like you are from Germany? I don't think that prostitution will ever get destigmatized. This hasn't much to do with the media, and more to do with human nature. Men are usually wary of sexually promiscuous women, and women know that as well (which is why women "slut shame" other women to take them out of the competition). IIRC most prostitutes in Germany are foreign anyway, so even though the pay is high, most German women would prefer to do some other work :).
- rndgermandude 5y ago
  > It sounds like you are from Germany? Correct. >I don't think that prostitution will ever get destigmatized. Fully de-stigmatized? Probably not in our life times, or ever. But the stigma has been on a sharp decline, at least in my parents generation and my generation, as far as I can tell. >Men are usually wary of sexually promiscuous women, and women know that as well While this is not entirely wrong, what is considered "sexually promiscuous" has shifted a lot in general. In the "somewhat woker"[0] parts of society you will get shamed for "slut shaming". Moreover, I find with a lot of people the idea that prostitutes are "sexually promiscuous" instead of just doing a job has greatly shifted towards recognizing it's a job and not "sluttiness". Even my late grandma, after watching a few documentaries about prostitution in German, changed her mind[1]. I think visiting a prostitute has a large stigma ("creep"/"perv", "cannot get laid if he does not pay money for it") but the actual prostitution a lot less so now. >IIRC most prostitutes in Germany are foreign anyway, so even though the pay is high, most German women would prefer to do some other work :). There is reportedly a sizable chunk of foreign prostitutes, but not a majority, as far as I am aware. With legalization and the internet, it is rather easy to set up your own one-person operation, and that happened/happens a lot, even for foreigners. No need to walk the streets or work in known brothels or red light districts. You can operate in relative anonymity as a one-person operation from some flat or go to customers, after advertising your services online[2]. This affords both the prostitute and their client some privacy. Or you can work in the larger legal brothels, which then provide security (actual bouncers, not some pimps pretending to provide protection) and other amenities such as that they will advertise their establishment so you don't have to spend time doing that yourself. These legal brothels then charge a flat entrance fee to prostitutes (but do not take a cut of the pay; that would be illegal pimping). The one prostitute I know socially[3], for example, is German and has rented a flat together with another prostitute (also German) one town over from where she lives (to avoid awkwardly running into clients on the street), where they would provide services to clients, usually alternating who gets to use the flat each day. This works out well for them, time-wise, she says. She also goes to regular clients (to their homes or hotels) after there was a certain level of reputation and trust was established. She says in this system they set up, there is no need for hired security (or a "pimp", not that pimps ever actually provided protection), seeing new clients only after vetting them (also vetting them with other prostitutes, who use online forums to do so; not so much the case in the US after SESTA/FOSTA), and only accepting electronic payments for new clients to leave a money trace the police could investigate if something goes bad and telling the clients as much (US sex workers cannot even get banking once it becomes known to the bank they are sex workers, or reasonably go to the police). She isn't a high end escort either, by the way. She mentioned charging something like 100 bucks for half an hour as the base rate. I don't really have a frame of reference, but I believe this is neither particularly cheap nor particularly expensive. [0] And by somewhat "woker" I do not mean the crowd who think antifa is great and tattoo their pronouns on their foreheads, but the section of society which believes e.g. in equal treatment of the genders, that allowing same sex marriage and adoption is not up for debate, or that we have to do something about climate change. I generally would call these people the "sane group", but that's just me. [1] I remember the time at some family function, when the topic somehow got on legalization of prostitution (it had been already legal for years), my 80-something-at-the-time year old grandpa remarked that they are "sluts", and my grandma of roughly the same age, to everybody's amazement, remarked "Leave them alone! They are just doing a hard job to get by. I saw a lot about that on TV". [3] On the flip side, this makes it easier to hide human trafficking, too, as trafficker rings can online advertise and rent normal apartments, too, of course. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21106425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21106425 And yeah, I was curious and/or nosy enough to ask her questions after she revealed what she does for a living, specially about the risks involved and how she mitigates them.