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this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2023
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Legalize prostitution and get rid of the stigma. It being illegal only hurts the women (mostly) in the long run. With legalization you could get rid of a lot of abuse and make it easy for these women to come forward if there is abuse. I think it would also make underage trafficking harder if prostitution was legalized.
I think we’re a long way from that, but one can hope for society.
Hurting women is the point. By keeping some people's primary form of income illegal they can be superexploited, just like undocumented migrant workers. It's no coincidence that they're also similarly at risk of kidnapping, trafficking, and violence. No work insurance, no safety net, no legal protection, no rights, no dignity, and if you get caught you are the one that gets punished instead of the people who exploit you.
Conservatives need prostitution to be illegal. If anybody with some cash could go out and get laid then the right would quickly run out of incels to recruit.
They need sex to be shameful all around. The more shame they can induce, the more leverage and control they have over everyone.
Also, sometimes prostitution SAVES marriages. Sometimes the wife likes her husband, but she just doesn't want to have sex. Or vice versa.
https://medium.com/eros-ethics/prostitutes-saved-my-marriage-c2ffc07d59b
We do not need to legalize it to get rid of the stigma. Spreading and calling out stories like this for the dreadful, inhumane, closeminded bullshit that they are is how we get rid of the stigma.
You think it's possible for something to be a crime and not be stigmatized?
Yes; smoking weed. Jaywalking. Drinking during prohibition.
A crime is what the law says will be punished, but the law isn't moral.
That has nothing to do with public perception which has everything to do with stigmatization.
The fact that you listed things that have historically been highly stigmatised because of the law is bizarre.
(Except jaywalking, not sure where that one is coming from)
You should look into the history of jaywalking. It's interesting.
Sounds like as good a wikipedia rabbit hole as any
Jay walking was originally a derogatory term for rural people in the 'big city' and supposedly not knowing how to navigate paved streets.
Yeah I guess I'm picturing people walking head on into traffic whereas it can also include simply crossing an empty street.
Where I live the latter is fine but the former is illegal.
It's the exact opposite way around. Early car users were plowing their way through crowded streets, which were designed for and primarily used by human beings. The streets also had their fair shares of carts, horses, trolleys, etc., but they were primarily for people walking around.
The fledgling auto industry was under SERIOUS fire for the HUGE number of people getting killed by reckless, inattentive, unsafe drivers. Serious risk of cars being fully banned from many cities. So they ran a giant PR campaign to flip the blame. The issue wasn't reckless drivers carelessly charging around crowded streets and killing people -- it was actually the peoples' fault for being in the streets (that had ALWAYS been theirs to be in previously and which were built for them by them).
Worked great. Streets rapidly became places people were not allowed to use -- only cars were permitted, and nearly rent-free. A total hostile takeover.
All of those are/were stigmatized specifically because of legal status.
What are you even taking about, my man.
The law usually reflects what people think is moral. Not all people of course, but a critical mass. Smoking weed is still widely considered immoral. Drinking was considered immoral by a lot of people when Prohibition started, and it still is by a smaller but still substantial number of people.
Jaywalking is more complicated, because there was a deliberate campaign to stigmatize it. I can't recall if it was made a crime to promote the stigma or in response to it, but a sigma was definitely involved.
Cheating on taxes is a crime, but in certain circles it's nit stigmatized.
The same goes for ignoring the speed limit in other circles.
A desperate mother shoplifting to feed her child would probably get compassion from many.
On a side note, it is also possible for something to be a crime and not be punished. It is a way for a society to condemn something, but acknowledge that is just necessary under certain conditions.
(Some countries use this trick for contentious topics like abortion and, yes, prostitution.)
All your examples are things you say are stigmatized, just not in certain circles. In other words they're actually counterexamples, unless you're agreeing with me and I'm totally misleading your tone. If the goal is for prostitution to be destigmatized only in certain circles, then we're already there. Mission accomplished!
If there's a difference between society condemning something and that something being stigmatized, I'm falling to see what it is.
I think removing the stigma is the best pathway towards decriminalization.
I think removing the stigma and changing the law are both worthy goals, and that one can facilitate the other, but I don't think the stigma can ever be fully removed. Laws can be changed with a single vote, but cultural values never really go away; at best, they become fringe views, and even that usually takes a very long time.
But, why? This feels about as effective of a strategy as ‘thoughts and prayers’…
Would brothels be allowed to participate in job placement programs at career day in high schools ?
No but these absurd questions show up faster and faster as the government legitimizes sex work.
And so do trafficked immigrants who are kidnapped and coerced into the sex work industry by people threatening to kill their family while using Facebook Live standing in front of that family's home back in their country of birth.
That shit has been happening for a decade. And it is why lots of the liberal western European countries have curtailed their red light districts.
There is no way to save those people without destroying privacy.
https://reddthat.com/post/8968028 - "European Parliament rejects mass scanning of private messages"
Governments can legalize sex work but they can't legitimize it, because governments don't dictate societal attitudes. (Well, they sort of can through propaganda, but they shouldn't. A democratic government should reflect the attitudes of its people, not the other way around.)
I disagree. Legalizing prostitution and fighting the social stigma would prevent many of those crimes.
If you criminalize a service that will always be in demand, you won't kill the market - you'll just turn it into an unregulated black market run by criminals, who are much less inhibited than legal employers to use any means at their disposal (even threats and violence) to maximize their profit.
The exact same thing happened during the prohibition.
But if you have a legalized market... using threats and violence to force people to perform i.e. call center work is much less common.
You act like that's absurd, yet we allow the military to come and recruit children. That's far worse.
Probably not as that would be advertising sex work within an area frequented by minors. I bet it would fall under the same laws as consuming or selling pornography close to schools and parks.
The only problem that I have with legalizing prostitution is that it requires the government enact sane protections and oversight for them. I do not trust the US government to ever do anything for real people, so I believe it would just lead to different abuses.
Well, we should eliminate every government agency then.
Very well you don't trust the government. Can you detail to me how you use this in real life? For example do you conduct your own water testing and inspect the watersheds around waste water treatment plants? Do you take your electronics and subject them to FCC type testing for safety and non-interference? Do you perform your own bacteria culture tests on all food prior to eating?
The government is far from perfect but it can in general regulate industry when the legislative branch allows it too.
Ok, I'm curious. What kind of abuse are you imagining that could possibly be worse than the status quo?
Well in the past, some governmental members have been known to grab em by the pussy
To cut back on the hyperbole that you're receiving for your comment: Even badly managed oversight would be better than none at all.
Amazon warehouse workers are being exploited brutally in a system that needs fixing, but there's much less trafficking and violent coercion involved.
I can trust them to abuse their power, and by keeping it illegal you give them the power to abuse.
"Convicted prostitute" is not the condemnation the article-writer thinks it is... Work is work!