JCC Senate Sex Work: Prostitution, Pornography, etc

I heard an interview with a man who had been a porn director and producer. He was in the business for years and made very good money at it, but then one day he'd had enough and he just quit. It was because he couldn't stand what it did to the girls. They would come to him, young, pretty, full of life and hope, thinking that he would make them rich, famous, and happy. And as they worked for him, the light in their eyes would slowly fade. He couldn't take it anymore. He had no other job lined up, no prospects, not much savings, but he just couldn't stand to watch the light fade from another girl's eyes, so he walked away and never went back.

 

Again, I just think it's much easier for people to be accepting of somebody who is willingly involved in sex work when it isn't a loved one of their own. And even though some people might think and/or say that they would be accepting of a loved one doing it, I think most people would drastically alter that opinion if ever actually faced with that reality. They would certainly still care for that individual and provide whatever support they might need. And if the person is happy doing it, so be it. But I think if people were being truly honest with how they feel about it, they would be opposed to it.

And no, for those who do it willingly, I do not look at sex work as a legitimate profession in the same way I view other professions.

It's a different topic when it comes sex trafficking and forcing people into it, and I'm not trying to get into that. I am speaking only in regards to those who do it willingly.

Whether it is or not, I don't mean to offend anybody. This is merely a difference of opinion if you don't agree.

 

How are we being hypocritical? Saying it should be legal or decriminalized is not an endorsement of it as a profession anyway.

 

I wouldn't be that crazy about my daughter cleaning public toilets for a living, either. I don't see how that changes things.

 

Interesting. I wonder, @MotivateR5D4. Did it not occur to you that the OP (me) might have created this topic precisely because I have a personal stake in the matter and/or personal experience that provides me an avenue to provide insight others might only have in the abstract? Or do you assume that everyone who posts a topic does so because they like to argue for argument's sake?

Be that as it may, I appreciate most of the responses. I'll probably have more to say later.

 

Well . . . why? Because there are health risks? There are health risks to a lot of jobs. Because it doesn't require education? It's not alone in that respect. Because it's exploitative? It's less exploitative if it's legal. I'm not really sure where you're coming from here.

 

Point taken. My apologies.

 

I don't think it's hypocritical to say that something should be accepted, but discouraging your children from pursuing it. One can seek and argue for an ideal while recognising current realities. If I discourage you from walking down dark alleys at night, that doesn't mean that I condone dark alleys being unsafe at night, just recognising that absent ideal conditions, they presently are. I still believe that they should be safe at any time, and that we should work towards fixing the reasons for why they are unsafe.

 

Half-assed legalization/regulation in either industry is what has been the standard at best and done in a vacuum at worst. The older I get the more amazed I am at people's utter inability to see anything past a 5 meter target.

Putting an ordinance on the books and then thinking "Well, that's that" is simply absurd. The Der Spiegel article highlights probably the key failure of regulation in it's utter lack of regulation-A hot dog stand receives more government attention than a brothel.

Where regulation has come into play in either industry they basically create unfunded mandates. Both industries should have capitol funding/SBA pathways open to them so that the industries have the infrastructure to offer proper pre-employment screenings, medical care, fair wages, employee protections and rights/agreements that can be abided by. The governments putting the regulations into place should like wise have the infrastructure to inspect, investigate and enforce compliance with all of the above.

Opening a brothel in a warehouse, tossing your shilling to the tax man and saying "box checked" so long as the check clears is nonsense and does nothing to solve the problem, if not exacerbate it.

 

That's a good point, @firesaber. The only problem is that I totally don't see the political will to do this, at least in the US. Decriminalization maybe, one day, but it would really take a sea change in popular opinion before there was the will to really regulate sex work. Not that it isn't still a good idea.

 

I concur. A friend tried to convince me to view porn back in high school (in 2004), and I didn't like it. I was more interested in encyclopedias back then, anyway, for history. I found it disgusting, and it appeared to be bad acting.

I believe that porn and sex work should be legal and regulated. They cannot completely prevent abuse and STIs in either, but that would be the primary incentive for those two professions to be legalized.

 

I can understand people objecting to these things on a moral basis. That's your decision, don't try it, don't watch it. My beef is when they try to impose their morals on me, or anyone else for that matter. As long as the sexual act is done by consenting adults, there should be no problem, it should be legal.

And besides being illegal, why make prostitution a crime? That's a whole different thing. There's a bunch of things that can be illicit, but not criminal. If the sexual act is done by consenting adults, why are you making it a crime? Who are you trying to protect and from what?

 

I think we should legalize and give proper protections to prostitution. The prudes that scoff at this...uh, what exactly is your issue?

 

Basically, if all prostitutes were escorts with legal protections (i.e. one may not abuse them), under certain supervisors, then I suppose that would be the best option.

I knew one escort in 2015. I was pretty much the only person who never had sex wit her. However, the poor lass became addicted to Xanax (her means of numbing the pain in her life). She became quite rude. I felt sorry for her. She was extremely intelligent, and she could have been a psychologist, a history teacher, etc.

 

Reality television. The vast majority of those shows are all about mocking, ridiculing and endangering their subjects.

 

On prostitution, if it’s legal, it needs to be very heavily regulated. There was article in another German publication (Die Zeit) that focused on one key aspect of the question - there was a very high correlation between legalization and the degree of human trafficking. Iirc, the article made the comparison between Germany and The Netherlands, on the one hand, and Scandinavian countries (where it’s illegal) on the other. Ideally, the regulation would eliminate the problem, but it doesn’t. And the more heavily it’s regulated, the more illegal alternatives pop up.

 

I think you're onto something here. Having recently gone through Narcos, my conclusion from that was legalising drugs wouldn't work 100% as, like with current meds, there'd be limits on how much you could get at one time and there'd always be those willing to supply no questions asked.

I'm suspecting the same might be true here, it'd have an impact in terms of some of it being regulated, but the black market wouldn't go away. Legalising and regulation would still grant more protection, but it wouldn't be a one-hit fix.

 

I can produce porn in my imagination superior to anything found on the internet. The plot and characters tailored precisely to my tastes.

One day I'll write them down. The only thing being exploited would be housewives' and soccer moms' time.

 

What?

What do erotic fiction novels have to do with the our discussion about the practices of actual human beings and their societies?

 

Absolutely nothing. Sorry.

Anakinfansince1983 and Satele shared their opinions about porn, so I thought I would.

 

Oh, sure. That's very reasonable.

I didn't mean to sound off-putting, though in retrospect I think there is a great probability I did. Apologies. I just took it as being a response to one of the larger policy debates that was going, and got a little frustrated at my inability to parse its meaning in that context.

 

I agree. Legalization cannot simply be decriminalization. Rather it needs to be heavily regulated. In a way, I think we have a framework for how to (do this and not do this) in the US from our experience with legal prostitution in Nevada.

For the most part, prostitution in Nevada works fairly well. While certainly there are problems, the sex workers in the brothels there work in far safer environments than any sex worker in the country.

While hardly investigative reports, here are two non-scholarly links on the topic:

http://www.cracked.com/personal-exp...-legal-prostitute-weirder-than-you-think.html

http://www.cracked.com/personal-exp...t-prostitutes-i-believed-until-i-was-one.html

Finally, this report from a UNLV study on the topic was very enlightening and worth perusing.

 

That’s not the point I was trying to make. Quite the opposite, actually. The Swedish view is that prostitution is always coercive, regardless of whether it’s legal or not. It is this outlaws, but on the demand side, so to speak: there is no penalty for working as a prostitute - it’s the Johns who get penalized (as well as the pimps).

 

This raises an important point, which Even was also getting at. Contra the libertarian view, society has not really ever held that all contracts are inherently fair.

There are some relationships modern states don’t allow people to enter into in spite of their wishes. Slavery, for instance. An activity isn’t and shouldn’t be automatically legitimized because someone “chooses” to do it. I’d rather see a positive case that addresses its negative externalities.