8 ms·

California is poised to ban prostitution-related loitering arrests

41 points by thinkingemote 4y ago

grapeskin 4y ago
Great to see Wiener rising to support the human freedom to have sex.
Flatcircle 4y ago
These are the type of moves that are gonna come back to haunt the democratic party over the next few years. This will make the city streets more unsafe.
- markdown 4y ago
  Wouldn't this make it more safe? Given that every interaction with police has the potential for death, telling them to stop harassing citizens means safer streets for those citizens.
  - Flatcircle 4y ago
    wow, sorta unbelievable replies here. You realize this will effectively make the act of loitering for sex acts legal? And this is happening while our cities are being ravaged by a major drug epidemic. This will most likely breed more sex workers which no one needs at a time when most stores have help wanted signs.
    - __alexs 4y ago
      Do you need to take illegally acquired controlled substances when you have sex?
    - khazhoux 4y ago
      If people would rather work street corners than Safeway, maybe we need to fix retail wages?
      - Flatcircle 4y ago
        Oh I'd bet Safeway pays much better than prostitution.
        thaumasiotes 4y ago
        Unskilled prostitution generally pays about four times the going rate for unskilled labor, as far as I've read. This was a cross-cultural finding. Skilled prostitution goes much, much higher than that.
        zthrowaway 4y ago
        Most of the money generated here is going to a pimp. These women are being abused and exploited for their body. You support more of that?
        seanmcdirmid 4y ago
        I didn’t read any support in parent’s comment, just earning estimations.
        yonaguska 4y ago
        Unless you're being sarcastic, you are very wrong. Even on the low end of the pay grade, the benefits of being self employed and able to do drugs on the job outweighs the requirement to show up to work on time and sober at Safeway.
        zthrowaway 4y ago
        I’m amazed how everyone here are acting as if these prostitutes are entrepreneurs of some kind. They are being manhandled by a pimp and forced to do this shit. Most of them are runaways and are being exploited for their body, and end up overdosing on drugs eventually. Holy fuck people here are so out of touch and have no street knowledge.
        4y ago
    - hansbo 4y ago
      In Sweden, prostitution is illegal, but not selling sex. Instead, the buyer is the one breaking the law. I think this makes more sense, because the prostitutes will not need to fear reaching out for help to get out of the situation.
      - iamtheworstdev 4y ago
        we can't do that in the US because then it would make the (congress)men the enemy and not the women selling temptation.
      - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
        In the USA, both buying and selling sex is illegal in most jurisdictions.
      - sharikous 4y ago
        This also makes the whole prostitution business more shady than in fully liberalized models, like Germany. It's basically saying "prostitution is bad and illegal but if you are offering it we won't punish you (wink)". Frankly it seems to me the worst of both worlds. The customer is automatically in a condemned state and can't redeem themselves. Kind of like how sanctions against Russia levied with no clear terms for removing them won't make them stop since you have basically made them your enemy with no honorable agreement possible.
  - spoonjim 4y ago
    Every interaction with everyone has the potential for death. Police officers are not any more dangerous than many other things that are not widely reviled.
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    Not really, the whole ecosystem around prostitution is a nasty element of pimps, street dealers, etc. Not in your backyard I’m sure. It’s easy to say academically in your living room that paying some poor soul for a blowjob hurts nobody. It’s even easier to pivot to some knee jerk about how police are the problem. Reality is more complex. And the political reality is that these poorly implemented policy changes are going to create strong republican majorities all over the place.
  - a4a4a4a4 4y ago
    > Given that every interaction with police has the potential for death Touch grass and stop perpetuating this nonsense, as if interacting with the police is like playing Russian roulette. 2019 had 634 deaths by police in the US [1]. From the Wiki article: "The Washington Post has tracked shootings since 2015, reporting more than 5,000 incidents since their tracking began.[7] The database can also classify people in various categories including race, age, weapon etc. For 2019, it reported a total of 1,004 people shot and killed by police.[8][9] According to the database, 6,600 have been killed since 2015, including 6,303 men and 294 women. Among those killed, 3,878 were armed with a gun, 1,119 were armed with a knife, 218 were armed with a vehicle, 244 had a toy weapon, and 421 were unarmed." So if you're not carrying a weapon (and probably also threatening the officer/someone with it), you're already way less likely to be killed. How many police interactions are there per year in the US? 61.5 Million in 2018 [2]. That's a 0.00017% chance of dying per police interaction (assuming you're unarmed, 421 unarmed deaths over 4 years). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_killings_by_law_enfor... [2] https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cbpp18st.pdf https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cbpp18st.pdf
- dj_mc_merlin 4y ago
  How? Have you ever been attacked by a prostitute on the street? I've been harassed by a lot more cops than prostitutes.
  - __alexs 4y ago
    Sex workers themselves are often victims of violent crime so perhaps more sex workers on the streets means more violent crimes committed against them? Really we need solutions that allow sex workers to get off the streets more. Currently it's illegal for them to organise and operate in ways that would really make them safe.
    - aqme28 4y ago
      On the contrary, sex workers would be a lot safer if they were able to turn to the police without fear of arrest. Decriminalizing their work makes them safer.
      - __alexs 4y ago
        I agree but somehow doubt that "we wont arrest you" will translate into "we will listen to you when you get robbed at gun point."
      - iamtheworstdev 4y ago
        this isn't decriminalizing their work. they still won't be able to go to the police. this just says that cops need another reason to harass them.
  - kilroy123 4y ago
    Not OP, but yes I have actually been physically attacked by a prostitute on the street. We, a small group, and I were on our way back from a wedding. Just minding our business walking down the street to our hotel. This person was clearly on drugs and paranoid or something.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
TapWaterBandit 4y ago
What a stupendously stupid idea. Street-prostitution (street-walking) is the most dangerous form of prostitution by far. If you want to decriminalise sex work, then decriminalise sex work. In Australia (at least in Victoria) brothels are legal but street-walking certainly isn't. It is a magnet for all sorts of crime and just unsightly to have on the streets.
- Swenrekcah 4y ago
  It’s similar to why using drugs shouldn’t be a crime. It is society’s job to make sure people don’t become heroin addicts but we shouldn’t persecute those that do.
  - Flatcircle 4y ago
    Drugs should absolutely be illegal. This concept that some Nordic countries made all drugs legal and everything was great, is so naive. It's so freshman year of college. Making drugs illegal is a major deterrent to doing drugs. Simple as that.
    - Swenrekcah 4y ago
      It’s a deterrent for some people sure, me included. But it doesn’t make them magically disappear, that’s just naive. There will be a demand and there will be people fulfilling the demand. It’s much better to have the fulfillers regulated instead of it being a source of money and power for criminal organisations. Just look at how well prohibition worked in the US.
    - upsidesinclude 4y ago
      Doing drugs isn't really a problem. Having a problem with drugs is a problem made worse by prosecution of the problem. Half of the US is on some form of amphetamine from middle school onwards. We don't have an issue with people taking drugs. We want them to take the right drugs and pay the right companies for them. You might have a problem with 'drugs' but that's politics.
imgabe 4y ago
Remember that story about how trains are constantly getting robbed in LA and the train tracks are littered with discarded packages? It seems like the cops shouldn’t even have time to go around harassing prostitutes. I mean, sure, don’t harass prostitutes. Ok. But how about enforcing some of the other laws?
- heavenlyblue 4y ago
  KPIs? Much easier to catch an escort agent.
  - feet 4y ago
    Basically. Cops don't care about actually stopping or preventing crime only about how arresting the bad poor people makes them look to their higher ups More tickets more arrests more better, you get a promotion!
    - rofo1 4y ago
      It's very similar to not promoting the software engineers that fix bugs, and keep everything stable, but promoting the ones gaming the metrics, when you think about it.
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  They probably don’t have time and aren’t enforcing this law much anyways (this is the case here in Seattle). But the virtue points for repealing the law are still there for legislators who aren’t interested in actual improvements anyways.
mucholove 4y ago
My personal opinion is that prostitution by any person under 25 or maybe even 30 should be illegal. Once your brain is mature—sure, go ahead and do it. My experience with former prostitutes who started out young was that they were unaware of the price they eventually paid for their actions. They were taken advantage of because they were at a disadvantage. If you’re over 25 or 30 go ahead. Before that, it’s just so likely to end up wrong.
- feet 4y ago
  Tbh we should probably reform many of our laws to focus on ages ~25-26
- ipnon 4y ago
  We need one age when a child becomes a an adult. Otherwise we end up with college juniors who can't drink a beer and highschool freshman who receive capital sentences. In both circumstances it seems that the rights of the young were curtailed for the benefit of the old.
  - giterdone 4y ago
  - fritztastic 4y ago
    I've seen a lot of discussions that tend to go with 25 as the age of maturity, based on studies of brain development. It seems to me that the ages for things (weapons, voting, marriage, joining the military, drugs [alcohol, cigarettes, etc], entering a strip club, being charged as an adult, and so on) have been determined/changed over time separately, and there are exceptions to each rule as well as different standards in different parts of the world. I agree that 25 is a good standard generally for many things- although I also think a very important discussion needs to be had about the subject.
  - yardstick 4y ago
    Does that include normalising the minimum age allowed for a US President? (Currently 35 years old) I don’t believe in a one age fits all laws approach. Where I’m from, most things switch to adult at 18 - including drinking, voting, enlisting. Murder/criminal convictions are possible before that. I don’t think a killer should go free just because they were were 10 years old when they abducted, tortured, mutilated and killed a toddler. And then went on to become a pedophile. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Bulger https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Bulger
DoreenMichele 4y ago
TLDR: Senate Bill 357, authored by Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), would revoke the state’s current law which bans loitering in a public place with the intent to commit prostitution—a law that advocates say is “inherently discriminatory and targets people not for any action but simply how they look.” In turn, this has resulted in the disproportionate criminalization of trans, Black and Brown women, and has also perpetuated violence toward sex workers.
sn0w_crash 4y ago
I’m convinced Weiner and the Democratic Party in SF makes its decisions based on likes and retweets. We once had street prostitution in NYC. You should’ve seen Times Square after hours. Oh boy. Real good for the local economy. /s
- refurb 4y ago
  I’m a firm believer we’re in the post-“city revival” period. Cities were the place to be until the 60’s when anyone who could fled to the suburbs to get away from the crime and general decay. SF lost about 1/3 of it population by the 80’s compared to the 50’s peak. Cities started to revive in the 90’s and became the new cultural and business Mecca. Now social unrest, crime, cost, and QOL issues seem to be getting worse and the city government seems to not only unconcerned by also encouraging it. I’m long on suburban real estate.
Blackstone4 4y ago
In the UK protitution is legal as along as you do not advertise which means it is discrete and you do not know it's there really. I was naive and aware of of its existance for many years.
dfee 4y ago
I recommend the autobiographical, category defining book on street work - Pimp: The Story of My Life by Iceberg Slim. [0] It’s dystopian and might be a hard read for some of you, but it might rectify a lot of the idealistic visions of what this work looks like. It’s violence and predation all the way up and down. It’s hard to see how California isn’t failing the people and communities it claims to stand up for. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Pimp-Story-Life-Iceberg-Slim/dp/1451617135 https://www.amazon.com/Pimp-Story-Life-Iceberg-Slim/dp/14516... Read the “popular highlights” for a quick introduction.
- upsidesinclude 4y ago
  That's the facts and of course the comment is getting down voted. People want to talk about their beliefs and feelings without having to know what this stuff looks like in real life. The abstraction makes it all palatable. This might seem like a good idea abstractly, but it means more pimps can make more money and they aren't good folks.
  - rofo1 4y ago
    Why don't people start off with their own sons and daughters, I wonder? I want to see the man here that wants to give his daughter to the world, to be used by all kinds of men for some cash. I've got a hard trouble believing any well adjusted, sane man (or woman) will have no problems with it. Doesn't matter what adjective we use ("you are not progressive enough"). Nobody cares. Well, these "sex workers" are someone's daughter, too. I wish I could grasp just how much % of people exist that actually believe this insanity that is rampant in 2020's. Is it a case of a loud minority, or (majority of) people really believe this is how life should be lived?
  - PickledHotdog 4y ago
    Nice feelings you have there. Why can't we legalise sex work and cut a lot of pimps out of the equation? Maintain a "ban" on street walking, but allow brothels and escorting. What is prostitution anyway? A coal miner sells his body in similar ways to a prostitute. Why can't we legalise drugs and cut cartels and gangs out of the equation? Personal use amounts, manufactured and taxed like other drugs (alcohol, cigarettes etc) Why can't we legalise abortion and cut backyard operators out of the equation? Why should your moral stances take precedence over the safety of others? You can't legislate behaviours away. They're going to happen. We've been taking drugs for 10s of 1000s of years. We've been trading our bodies for benefits for at least a few thousand. These actions are largely harmless. Let's realise that making them illegal is a large part of what makes them dangerous.
PickledHotdog 4y ago
Given the largest English speaking population on the internet is Americans, I'm going to have to assume that the ridiculously puritanical opinions on sex work and drug use in the comments are from Americans.
egeozcan 4y ago
I think we should approach the whole selling-sex thing less emotionally and more logically. We have extensive rules here in Germany to protect the health of workers. In that spirit, any physical and mental health risks taken by people who are doing sex-work should be insured-to-death. This work also entails information inequality: Most young workers do not (cannot) really know what they are getting into. We make training a must for wood-workers, why not sex-workers? Make licensing through training a must, also enforce them yearly perhaps. Make regular health-checks a must as well, pricing that into the insurance. Prosecute people who seek or employ unlicensed sex-workers heavily. This should be seen as bad as abusing children. Following the same logic, the workers should never be afraid to be prosecuted, even when they are not licensed. So I like what California is trying to do too. Also make sure the Police has some members who speak enough foreign languages to cover at least Eastern Europe languages.

41 points by thinkingemote 4y ago

Great to see Wiener rising to support the human freedom to have sex.

These are the type of moves that are gonna come back to haunt the democratic party over the next few years. This will make the city streets more unsafe.

markdown 4y ago
Wouldn't this make it more safe? Given that every interaction with police has the potential for death, telling them to stop harassing citizens means safer streets for those citizens.
- Flatcircle 4y ago
  wow, sorta unbelievable replies here. You realize this will effectively make the act of loitering for sex acts legal? And this is happening while our cities are being ravaged by a major drug epidemic. This will most likely breed more sex workers which no one needs at a time when most stores have help wanted signs.
  - __alexs 4y ago
    Do you need to take illegally acquired controlled substances when you have sex?
  - khazhoux 4y ago
    If people would rather work street corners than Safeway, maybe we need to fix retail wages?
    - Flatcircle 4y ago
      Oh I'd bet Safeway pays much better than prostitution.
      - thaumasiotes 4y ago
        Unskilled prostitution generally pays about four times the going rate for unskilled labor, as far as I've read. This was a cross-cultural finding. Skilled prostitution goes much, much higher than that.
        zthrowaway 4y ago
        Most of the money generated here is going to a pimp. These women are being abused and exploited for their body. You support more of that?
        seanmcdirmid 4y ago
        I didn’t read any support in parent’s comment, just earning estimations.
      - yonaguska 4y ago
        Unless you're being sarcastic, you are very wrong. Even on the low end of the pay grade, the benefits of being self employed and able to do drugs on the job outweighs the requirement to show up to work on time and sober at Safeway.
        zthrowaway 4y ago
        I’m amazed how everyone here are acting as if these prostitutes are entrepreneurs of some kind. They are being manhandled by a pimp and forced to do this shit. Most of them are runaways and are being exploited for their body, and end up overdosing on drugs eventually. Holy fuck people here are so out of touch and have no street knowledge.
        4y ago
  - hansbo 4y ago
    In Sweden, prostitution is illegal, but not selling sex. Instead, the buyer is the one breaking the law. I think this makes more sense, because the prostitutes will not need to fear reaching out for help to get out of the situation.
    - iamtheworstdev 4y ago
      we can't do that in the US because then it would make the (congress)men the enemy and not the women selling temptation.
    - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
      In the USA, both buying and selling sex is illegal in most jurisdictions.
    - sharikous 4y ago
      This also makes the whole prostitution business more shady than in fully liberalized models, like Germany. It's basically saying "prostitution is bad and illegal but if you are offering it we won't punish you (wink)". Frankly it seems to me the worst of both worlds. The customer is automatically in a condemned state and can't redeem themselves. Kind of like how sanctions against Russia levied with no clear terms for removing them won't make them stop since you have basically made them your enemy with no honorable agreement possible.
- spoonjim 4y ago
  Every interaction with everyone has the potential for death. Police officers are not any more dangerous than many other things that are not widely reviled.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  Not really, the whole ecosystem around prostitution is a nasty element of pimps, street dealers, etc. Not in your backyard I’m sure. It’s easy to say academically in your living room that paying some poor soul for a blowjob hurts nobody. It’s even easier to pivot to some knee jerk about how police are the problem. Reality is more complex. And the political reality is that these poorly implemented policy changes are going to create strong republican majorities all over the place.
- a4a4a4a4 4y ago
  > Given that every interaction with police has the potential for death Touch grass and stop perpetuating this nonsense, as if interacting with the police is like playing Russian roulette. 2019 had 634 deaths by police in the US [1]. From the Wiki article: "The Washington Post has tracked shootings since 2015, reporting more than 5,000 incidents since their tracking began.[7] The database can also classify people in various categories including race, age, weapon etc. For 2019, it reported a total of 1,004 people shot and killed by police.[8][9] According to the database, 6,600 have been killed since 2015, including 6,303 men and 294 women. Among those killed, 3,878 were armed with a gun, 1,119 were armed with a knife, 218 were armed with a vehicle, 244 had a toy weapon, and 421 were unarmed." So if you're not carrying a weapon (and probably also threatening the officer/someone with it), you're already way less likely to be killed. How many police interactions are there per year in the US? 61.5 Million in 2018 [2]. That's a 0.00017% chance of dying per police interaction (assuming you're unarmed, 421 unarmed deaths over 4 years). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_killings_by_law_enfor... [2] https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cbpp18st.pdf https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cbpp18st.pdf
dj_mc_merlin 4y ago
How? Have you ever been attacked by a prostitute on the street? I've been harassed by a lot more cops than prostitutes.
- __alexs 4y ago
  Sex workers themselves are often victims of violent crime so perhaps more sex workers on the streets means more violent crimes committed against them? Really we need solutions that allow sex workers to get off the streets more. Currently it's illegal for them to organise and operate in ways that would really make them safe.
  - aqme28 4y ago
    On the contrary, sex workers would be a lot safer if they were able to turn to the police without fear of arrest. Decriminalizing their work makes them safer.
    - __alexs 4y ago
      I agree but somehow doubt that "we wont arrest you" will translate into "we will listen to you when you get robbed at gun point."
    - iamtheworstdev 4y ago
      this isn't decriminalizing their work. they still won't be able to go to the police. this just says that cops need another reason to harass them.
- kilroy123 4y ago
  Not OP, but yes I have actually been physically attacked by a prostitute on the street. We, a small group, and I were on our way back from a wedding. Just minding our business walking down the street to our hotel. This person was clearly on drugs and paranoid or something.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

TapWaterBandit 4y ago

What a stupendously stupid idea. Street-prostitution (street-walking) is the most dangerous form of prostitution by far. If you want to decriminalise sex work, then decriminalise sex work. In Australia (at least in Victoria) brothels are legal but street-walking certainly isn't. It is a magnet for all sorts of crime and just unsightly to have on the streets.

Swenrekcah 4y ago
It’s similar to why using drugs shouldn’t be a crime. It is society’s job to make sure people don’t become heroin addicts but we shouldn’t persecute those that do.
- Flatcircle 4y ago
  Drugs should absolutely be illegal. This concept that some Nordic countries made all drugs legal and everything was great, is so naive. It's so freshman year of college. Making drugs illegal is a major deterrent to doing drugs. Simple as that.
  - Swenrekcah 4y ago
    It’s a deterrent for some people sure, me included. But it doesn’t make them magically disappear, that’s just naive. There will be a demand and there will be people fulfilling the demand. It’s much better to have the fulfillers regulated instead of it being a source of money and power for criminal organisations. Just look at how well prohibition worked in the US.
  - upsidesinclude 4y ago
    Doing drugs isn't really a problem. Having a problem with drugs is a problem made worse by prosecution of the problem. Half of the US is on some form of amphetamine from middle school onwards. We don't have an issue with people taking drugs. We want them to take the right drugs and pay the right companies for them. You might have a problem with 'drugs' but that's politics.

imgabe 4y ago

Remember that story about how trains are constantly getting robbed in LA and the train tracks are littered with discarded packages? It seems like the cops shouldn’t even have time to go around harassing prostitutes. I mean, sure, don’t harass prostitutes. Ok. But how about enforcing some of the other laws?

heavenlyblue 4y ago
KPIs? Much easier to catch an escort agent.
- feet 4y ago
  Basically. Cops don't care about actually stopping or preventing crime only about how arresting the bad poor people makes them look to their higher ups More tickets more arrests more better, you get a promotion!
  - rofo1 4y ago
    It's very similar to not promoting the software engineers that fix bugs, and keep everything stable, but promoting the ones gaming the metrics, when you think about it.
seanmcdirmid 4y ago
They probably don’t have time and aren’t enforcing this law much anyways (this is the case here in Seattle). But the virtue points for repealing the law are still there for legislators who aren’t interested in actual improvements anyways.

mucholove 4y ago

My personal opinion is that prostitution by any person under 25 or maybe even 30 should be illegal. Once your brain is mature—sure, go ahead and do it. My experience with former prostitutes who started out young was that they were unaware of the price they eventually paid for their actions. They were taken advantage of because they were at a disadvantage. If you’re over 25 or 30 go ahead. Before that, it’s just so likely to end up wrong.

feet 4y ago
Tbh we should probably reform many of our laws to focus on ages ~25-26
ipnon 4y ago
We need one age when a child becomes a an adult. Otherwise we end up with college juniors who can't drink a beer and highschool freshman who receive capital sentences. In both circumstances it seems that the rights of the young were curtailed for the benefit of the old.
- giterdone 4y ago
- fritztastic 4y ago
  I've seen a lot of discussions that tend to go with 25 as the age of maturity, based on studies of brain development. It seems to me that the ages for things (weapons, voting, marriage, joining the military, drugs [alcohol, cigarettes, etc], entering a strip club, being charged as an adult, and so on) have been determined/changed over time separately, and there are exceptions to each rule as well as different standards in different parts of the world. I agree that 25 is a good standard generally for many things- although I also think a very important discussion needs to be had about the subject.
- yardstick 4y ago
  Does that include normalising the minimum age allowed for a US President? (Currently 35 years old) I don’t believe in a one age fits all laws approach. Where I’m from, most things switch to adult at 18 - including drinking, voting, enlisting. Murder/criminal convictions are possible before that. I don’t think a killer should go free just because they were were 10 years old when they abducted, tortured, mutilated and killed a toddler. And then went on to become a pedophile. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Bulger https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Bulger

DoreenMichele 4y ago

TLDR: Senate Bill 357, authored by Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), would revoke the state’s current law which bans loitering in a public place with the intent to commit prostitution—a law that advocates say is “inherently discriminatory and targets people not for any action but simply how they look.” In turn, this has resulted in the disproportionate criminalization of trans, Black and Brown women, and has also perpetuated violence toward sex workers.

sn0w_crash 4y ago

I’m convinced Weiner and the Democratic Party in SF makes its decisions based on likes and retweets. We once had street prostitution in NYC. You should’ve seen Times Square after hours. Oh boy. Real good for the local economy. /s

refurb 4y ago
I’m a firm believer we’re in the post-“city revival” period. Cities were the place to be until the 60’s when anyone who could fled to the suburbs to get away from the crime and general decay. SF lost about 1/3 of it population by the 80’s compared to the 50’s peak. Cities started to revive in the 90’s and became the new cultural and business Mecca. Now social unrest, crime, cost, and QOL issues seem to be getting worse and the city government seems to not only unconcerned by also encouraging it. I’m long on suburban real estate.

Blackstone4 4y ago

In the UK protitution is legal as along as you do not advertise which means it is discrete and you do not know it's there really. I was naive and aware of of its existance for many years.

dfee 4y ago

I recommend the autobiographical, category defining book on street work - Pimp: The Story of My Life by Iceberg Slim. [0] It’s dystopian and might be a hard read for some of you, but it might rectify a lot of the idealistic visions of what this work looks like. It’s violence and predation all the way up and down. It’s hard to see how California isn’t failing the people and communities it claims to stand up for. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Pimp-Story-Life-Iceberg-Slim/dp/1451617135 https://www.amazon.com/Pimp-Story-Life-Iceberg-Slim/dp/14516... Read the “popular highlights” for a quick introduction.

upsidesinclude 4y ago
That's the facts and of course the comment is getting down voted. People want to talk about their beliefs and feelings without having to know what this stuff looks like in real life. The abstraction makes it all palatable. This might seem like a good idea abstractly, but it means more pimps can make more money and they aren't good folks.
- rofo1 4y ago
  Why don't people start off with their own sons and daughters, I wonder? I want to see the man here that wants to give his daughter to the world, to be used by all kinds of men for some cash. I've got a hard trouble believing any well adjusted, sane man (or woman) will have no problems with it. Doesn't matter what adjective we use ("you are not progressive enough"). Nobody cares. Well, these "sex workers" are someone's daughter, too. I wish I could grasp just how much % of people exist that actually believe this insanity that is rampant in 2020's. Is it a case of a loud minority, or (majority of) people really believe this is how life should be lived?
- PickledHotdog 4y ago
  Nice feelings you have there. Why can't we legalise sex work and cut a lot of pimps out of the equation? Maintain a "ban" on street walking, but allow brothels and escorting. What is prostitution anyway? A coal miner sells his body in similar ways to a prostitute. Why can't we legalise drugs and cut cartels and gangs out of the equation? Personal use amounts, manufactured and taxed like other drugs (alcohol, cigarettes etc) Why can't we legalise abortion and cut backyard operators out of the equation? Why should your moral stances take precedence over the safety of others? You can't legislate behaviours away. They're going to happen. We've been taking drugs for 10s of 1000s of years. We've been trading our bodies for benefits for at least a few thousand. These actions are largely harmless. Let's realise that making them illegal is a large part of what makes them dangerous.

PickledHotdog 4y ago

Given the largest English speaking population on the internet is Americans, I'm going to have to assume that the ridiculously puritanical opinions on sex work and drug use in the comments are from Americans.

egeozcan 4y ago

I think we should approach the whole selling-sex thing less emotionally and more logically. We have extensive rules here in Germany to protect the health of workers. In that spirit, any physical and mental health risks taken by people who are doing sex-work should be insured-to-death. This work also entails information inequality: Most young workers do not (cannot) really know what they are getting into. We make training a must for wood-workers, why not sex-workers? Make licensing through training a must, also enforce them yearly perhaps. Make regular health-checks a must as well, pricing that into the insurance. Prosecute people who seek or employ unlicensed sex-workers heavily. This should be seen as bad as abusing children. Following the same logic, the workers should never be afraid to be prosecuted, even when they are not licensed. So I like what California is trying to do too. Also make sure the Police has some members who speak enough foreign languages to cover at least Eastern Europe languages.