Blog post on the epidemic of forced celibacy in males

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if you read back a few pages, it was what i had suggested. i didn't mean to imply he could have fixed it without help. just that he didn't ever try to take steps to fix it either.

I don't know. Even the people who've studied this issue closely don't seem to know. Maybe it's because there are more patrons who get off on the idea of doing something illegal, so they reject what's legally available.


But that's my point: unless a woman is kidnapped and held captive (and I know that does happen), a woman who becomes a prostitute to support a drug habit does have a choice about being a sex worker. It's called stop using. The legality of prostitution is not going to impact whether any individual woman decides to stop using drugs - or not. However, legalizing prostitution would make funding her habit carry less risk of jail time.


Again, I think characterizing an act entered into willingly, that is performed as agreed to, as an act of violence against either party is not based in fact. It just smacks of an incredibly patriarchal attitude that implies a woman can't make her own choices - and live with those choices. It's as though you're saying if she makes a choice she later regrets, she automatically becomes a victim (in this case, a victim of the man who paid her to have sex). I don't understand your reasoning.


I agree with all of the above. IMO, if such an environment existed, I think there would still be a risk of psychological damage to women who engage in prostitution: being judged as immoral by non-sex workers. The reality is that while I would never engage in prostitution - because I absolutely can't separate sex from love - I know there are lots and lots of women who are not like me. They enjoy "recreational" sex. While I worry about safety issues for all of us engaging in sex, I don't believe women should be chastised for having sex in the absence of love. By the same token, I don't understand why recreational sex in the absence of love is okay, but recreational sex in the absence of love and including the exchange of money is worthy of condemnation. It really makes no sense to me.

if women are suspected drug abusers, they are not allowed to in the legal system. and there are many women who are forced into prostitution - held captive, as you say, even in the legal system.


you cannot assume that a woman is working willingly, even in a legal system. when women are given social services, counselling, and other career possibilities, they rarely choose to stay in the trade.

we will have to agree to disagree about it being a violent act. it is a completely different perspective, and i do not see any evidence to support the other side either...


you are assuming it is ostracism that leads to psychological damage, but i do not see support for that in the literature.

you have kind of an ideological approach to prostitution, where you are considering it mostly from a perspective of a woman's right, without as much regard for her safety.

in your world, if people have the right to their own bodies without regard for safety, people should have the right to drink themselves to death in bars (where bartenders must limit the service of people who are beyond drunk), people should be allowed to kill themselves without intervention, people should be allowed to buy massive quantities of substances like tylenol with codeine over the counter without the pharmacist tracking purchases, and so on... after all it is their own bodies, right? they should be allowed to do whatever they want as long as it is legal...

I don't know @hyperlexian, your position seems to be that no woman would ever become a sex worker willingly. I disagree.


Agreed.



Umm, whoa there, killer. All of the points you mentioned, and many that I've mentioned, are intended to protect the well-being and safety of the sex worker. Where do you get that I support the idea of legalized prostitution without regard for the sex worker's safety? As far as drugs are concerned, I hope Prop 19 passes in California - with flying colors. The "War on Drugs" in the U.S. is a failure. It's a hole we pour money and lives into - with no return. Honestly, I don't care if anyone wants to smoke weed or not. Frankly, it doesn't seem like California has become any worse off since medical marijuana was legalized, so I'm not sure why they need the pretense of a "prescription." In terms of dram shop law, no I don't think it should be changed. When someone is overserved in a bar, there are potential consequences to innocent people he/she may encounter upon leaving the bar.

But because I have Libertarian views when it comes to the government's rights to an individual's body, it doesn't mean I don't care about people who are addicts, or mentally ill, or being beaten, or anything else. As a matter of fact, if weed were legal (regulated and taxed), we'd probably have the kind of revenue we need to restore all the psych beds we've lost in the last 20 years, and to fund a comprehensive approach to providing mental health and addiction services.

I still don't see how recreational sex without money is different from recreational sex with an exchange of money...

highlighted.

If prostitutes or escorts are a possibility then yes, they should hire the service and problem solved, at least from my perspective it is, if you don't care about the possible fakeness of it or serious relationships, if a guy has more expectations than that then that I would consider it that a problem for him.

Last edited by greenblue on 18 Oct 2010, 11:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

From my moral perspective, I don't see any difference, but other people disagree with it because they have different morals about the issue, a noticable and practical difference is that you profit from the latter.

I think that health risks may not be that much different, although I read statistical claims a while ago about escort services being a bit safer than even recreational sex, but I'm not certain about that.

I think if it's regulated, it tends to be safer... like in the porn industry. That said, it only works if the clients get tested too, to make sure theyre not introducing anything into the system...

this is where you spoke of the freedom of women to make their own choices. so far, you waver between admitting that it is harmful in its current form, yet arguing women should be able to choose for themselves. i don't understand the leap of logic involved, because freedom of choice would involve both legal and illegal prostitution:



i have to go back to this one, because it is bothering me. and this goes for you too, RICKY5:



love comes in many forms. first of all it is possible to have sex without being 'in love', in a friends with benefits situation for example, and it is quite different from selling one's body for sex. if you have any doubt, ask an ex-sex worker who has also had casual sex, and she will characterize the two very differently. (a current sex worker will most likely tell you what you want to hear, because it is her job, just like a clothing salesman will tell you that a dress is slimming).

morally, people have different views about it...

psychologically, casual sex is vastly different from prostitution. prostitution has been shown to have long-term negative consequences on the mental health of the workers. and physically prostitutes have a mortality rate 40 times higher than a woman in the general population. STIs/STDs? maybe more common in non-sex workers, i don't think someone more likely to die from having casual sex.

it is not 'recreational sex' for the workers.

If it's legal to do most of the stuff in "Jackass: the movie", then there isn't exactly a ban on doing self-harmful things. For example, many jurisdictions don't have anything on suicide (which can be considered the ultimate self-harm)...

in most jurisdictions, suicidal persons can be forced into commitment for treatment.

i haven't seen Jackass, but you raise a good question as to whether such stunts should be legal, though i don't know exactly what they do.

my point is that people are selective about what they think should be legislated, and what ways people should be allowed to harm themselves, so the idea that prostitution involves a person's own body to do with as s/he wills is not a strong basis for argument. sometimes, people think the government should have a say, and at other times, they do not. it is too reductionistic to characterize it as a freedom of choice issue.

there is also still the fact that many women and children are performing prostitution entirely against their will, even in the u.s. and canada and australia. and it's not like they wear a sign that will tell you they are being forced against their will. and a foreign accent or different coloured skin is not a universal sign.

interestingly, the brothels in the netherlands had difficulty staffing once illegally trafficked women were removed, which also answers part of the question as to why illegal operations occur alongside legal ones (lack of women willing to do the job of prostitution, perhaps):

CATWA Australian Trafficking (link)

oh i have no doubt that forced prostitution is nothing more than systemized rape (sex against the will of one of the parties involved), and should be prosecuted as such against the party responsible for forcing these women into prostution, and possibly any clients as well if they knowingly and willingly participate.

I wouldn't quite call the porn indistry safe. AIDS and other STDs are rampant and so is drug abuse and suicides.

Perhaps, I really don't have knowledge about the issue, past of having being a client, to really know wether that is always the case or not, in Japan at least (soaplands) which the thing is a bit different, that likely may not be the case, this is just an example, I know this isn't Japan . Advocates for legal prostitution may disagree a bit about the issue in a generalized sense or may argue that the legal aspect is influential to this.


It is a job. I have heard claims about "liking sex too much that I decided to make money out of it", but I don't know.


Why it isn't? Is there a better argument or there is no argument to support legal prostitution?


Yes, and I could say the libertarian position seems to favor the legality of prostitution.


well, the idea with legalizing prostitution seems about the legal protection and benefits for the sex worker that it wouldn't be being ilegal.


The issue is that that seems reductionist, advocates for legal prostitution do recognize the problem of human trafficking and forced prostitution, it is just that they don't look at it as as an exclusive decisive factor to make prostitution ilegal, so "forced prostitution exists therefore it never should be legal" is a position they don't agree with and would find that as a poor argument, and children, that is obviously out of the question, so that really isn't even that relevant to the issue, I mean legal prostitution doesn't give room for minors anyway, so I don't see the relevance.