This is a short opinion piece and I welcome any opposing viewpoints
I wanted to write my thoughts on prostitution after recent news broke in the US involving a prostitution sting, ensuring a few big names in the sports industry. I do not care for this story at all hence why I am not posting a link. Just mentioning why I thought of this topic in the first place.
Prostitution is the oldest profession in the world and for some reason, most of the world has made it illegal. I do not know the origins of this decision. Most of them have religious roots that criminalizes sex outside of marriage. But regardless, I think that it should be legalized and regulated.
There will never be a perfect solution to everything, but in this case the pros out weigh the cons immensely making this in my opinion a better solution than the ones currently in place.
When something becomes illegal, that doesn't mean that the supply and demand has been erased, it just means that the market is now compromised by criminals. Considering prostitution's history, it is safe to assume that there will always be a demand for sex. That is just our biology and it is part of who we are. Since the market is now turned over to the criminals, the honest participants are not afforded any protection from the law.
Not only that many of these people are from low income and impoverished environments. Many of them have little to no education and job skills. If we ban prostitution and "save" these sex workers, how will they continue to support themselves? There are 2 possible solutions to this.
They will head back into the streets and instead of offering prostitution, they resort to robbery and murder.
Through social welfare, we may be able to give them free training for job skills. But the market for rank and file cubicle warriors is so oversaturated these days, that even landing the "skilled" job will be difficult let alone one will pay as much as the sex job.
Another reason is that I believe what two consenting adults do behind closed doors is none of anyone's business. The sex worker should be able to do whatever he/she wants to do with their body. The same goes for the customer and his/her money. If they want to spend their money for sexual services then that is their right. Their body, their choice. Their money, their choice.
Lastly this creates a win-win-win situation for everyone. The government wins because it gets additional tax revenue from an industry worth billions. The sex worker win because their work will become legitimate, making them entitled to benefits, protection, and rights they wouldn't have otherwise. The customer wins because....well you know why.
The only losers here are the pimps who exploit sex workers financially, physically and emotionally while having a monopoly on the market.
So there is my argument for legalizing prostitution.
Thanks for reading!
Here it's since they regulated it only worse for them. Many of them don't want to registrate their name as prostitute, but it is necessary to do that when they want to have a window in one of the many red light districts. So, what happened is that many former window prostitutes, and lots of new ones as well, work from (a) home now. The good thing here is mostly that they can earn much more money then when they need to pay rent for a small room. The individual prizes for their services are higher too. They advertise on websites like https://www.kinky.nl where you can find a mixture of clubs and private houses. Well, this all seems to be pretty ok, right? Those that want to work under license can do that, but will earn less and have the annoying tourists at their windows all day making video and photos of them and insult them and those who dont want that can work at (someones) home, where they will earn double for each service. Win win and some choice you would think.
Well here is the reality of it. Those that have a room at the red light districts are with many more of them at the same location. This can help them when they have questions about practical things and stuff. That was before too. They do get some sort of safety from the owner of the rooms and there is always a police team in the area patrolling. At least, in Amsterdam there is. And they need to do health checks periodically. All good you would think. Well because of the big competition there the prizes are low, and the clients want more and more for less. Nowadays they even demand sex without condom, and when they refuse they will see him go to next door where the girl says yes. So many of them give that service to prevent them leaving to another one. Well you can figure out the risk.
Many of the girls working there are not from here and are trafficked from eastern europe, and by far not all of them with consent. Some do though, but its a small amount. So regulation means: privacy gone, some form of safety by police and housing owners, low rewards for their services, high rents, insulting tourists, what i forgot to memtion is they pay tax, and enormous health risk for them and society becsuse they accept non confom clients and it didnt stop trafficking at all. It has some cons and pros, but most of thdm didnt change by regulation, they were there already and it only gave them some bad extras.
Those working at home have because of the higher prizes mostly some classier clients. And they can even ask for pictures so they can decide if ghey accept you. But, there is no checkup on them, so people with bad intentions can make an appointment and abuse them where there is no police patrol near. Its risky. They dont pay taxes. You cant check their age and if they are there working by free will. There are some review sites and that should improve their individual quallity so they will get bettter reviews and thus more attention.
Here the biggest downside of that situation, there isnt any check up on age or consent or anything. There are also many ads online for paid cardates and hotel room sex. Well, those are the worst of them when its about underage girls forced to prostitute so regulation or not, that shit goes on. Next day a different hotel or location and noone will know.
You can see here that this regulation didnt change anything and it only has cons. The biggest problem is that it kills their privacy and it will always be on their job record. So when they want tp apply for a job later, they will check up on her to find out about her past and see this prostitute job there, which wont help them in any way.
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I appreciate your comment. Do you believe that the government can do better to protect prostitutes from abuse and discrimination? You make an excellent argument but the alternative is also bad. Without intervention, we cannot weed out bad actors from both sex workers and customers resulting in abuse. Yes we have review sites, but once they start to get too much attention then it reaches the ears of the police. Numerous sites for sex work have been shut down over the years. Perhaps nothing should be done and we should chalk it up as the price for doing this kind of business? This is a very difficult situation to address.
Thinking about it now, I wonder if a decentralized economy like steem would alleviate the trust issue without having middle men (e.g. government, pimps)take most of the profit.
The argument is good for legalizing prostitution. However, sex is not a bad thing but how people beat prostitutes up and make them feel. It can easily become law very soon just get the Democrats involved. If we can kill babies as New York is doing this is not even a moral issue, just another way we can capitalize on human suffering.
In my country, the Netherlands, they have made it legal and even taxed. I believe somewhere around 1995 or so, they made prostitutes into independent contractors and since 2000 even brothels (hiring sex workers) had become legal. Now, there are always two sides of the story. The government (of course) said it would be to regulate, make it possible for sex workers to report any abuse without getting prosecuted and to fight human traficking and forced prostitution. The reality is though, that the government seldom does something for the people, but much rather for self-interest. The sex industry is a 100's of million dollar industry, if not more, and they wanted a piece of that. The reality is that it hasn't changed who's boss. Of course, there are certain places where women (or men) are actually independent contractors and work in a safe environment. But the nasty pimps, the human trafficking, the forced prostitution (is it ever really voluntarily?)...it still exists, it's just that those criminals hide it better. Another downside: because the women are registered, if they have kids: chances are they'll have some CPS visits and possibly have their children taken from them. They're basically 'marked' and it's hard to even try to get a regular job after a career in prostitution.
Yeah, the Netherlands has legalized the business, but I don't think much has changed other than the tax money that's going into the state reserve's wallet.
That is unfortunate. Do you feel that it is the regulations that are holding sex workers back, or is it the lack of action from the government that promised them a higher quality of living?
I'd say it's the lack of action. Now, there are health services available for them, but they are separated from the rest. I can understand how they would feel like they're even more singled out with that. And they never really did much about those abusing the system. There are still pimps who are not registered and having girls working for them who are forced, they are just more under the radar, like they always used to be. What they should do, with all that tax money they're getting now, is put more men on the streets to prevent and catch those illegal activities. Talk, truly talk, to those women and make sure that if they are in danger, forced or whatever, to get them out and protected...But they don't do that...
You're right. We all need to be better in these kind of situations. If we don't the bad guys will keep winning regardless if they are wearing a badge (police) or not (pimps).
Also, the most important thing here is to be able to support abused or scared people. They are still just humans, which very often need a supportive hand
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