I'm not a hard-liner on this, but I have questions about the idea that sex is equivalent to cleaning toilets, operating cash registers, or taking customer service calls. If this is truly the case, then what principle prevents businesses we do not now think of as sexual from requiring sexual acts of their employees? If Burger King decided it was in their business interest, could they do a promotion where every hundredth customer gets a blowjob from the cashier? It's just another form of labor after all. Or maybe a company decides it'd be a good perk for managers to get sexual favors from lower-level employees, the same way they bring them coffee. Would we consider an Amazon Prime brothel no different from an Amazon warehouse? Is it really only puritan squeamishness that makes people recoil at these ideas?
Aside from the obvious legal issues, if you're hired to take drive-through orders and then suddenly find yourself being asked to do things that are both risky and light years outside the job description — whether sexual or not — most people are going to be uncomfortable doing it. To speak nothing of coercion/harassment (e.g. Harvey Weinstein-type situations). The difference with prostitution is that the nature of the work is clear from the outset, and every person voluntarily entering into it knows the deal.
I think you're getting to a deeper question about whether there is anything inherently different about sex from other kinds of activities, something almost spiritually different. Certainly almost all religious people would agree, and many hardcore feminists (and post-feminists) seem to hold quasi-spiritual feelings about the nature of sex. A lot of factors go into it. Culture and religion are definitely big ones, and they pervade everything, even if one isn't religious themselves. I'm sure there are some evolutionary psychology things going on too, and they all interact with each other.
At the end of the day, my argument is about freedom. If consenting adults want to do something together, unless we have really good evidence showing it will be catastrophic, they ought to be free to do so. And if others have no interest, they are free to refrain.
I think the reason you can't find much supporting evidence for legalalization is because "prostitution is a net negative" is something humanity figured out a long time ago and there's little to no reason to circle back around to it. When religious conservatives and feminists agree on an issue that should tell you something.
There are other pathological behaviors that you see manifest on both the left and the right. Leftists and the far right are both protectionists. They are both so anti-war that they end up supporting aggressors in conflict. They are both obsessed with race. That doesn't tell you those positions are right. What it tells you is that there are certain types of madness that infect people on both sides of the aisle.
In this case, it's a weird honor culture thing where both sides think sexual honor and purity is more valuable than human life, happiness, and prosperity. Feminists are supposed to reject that, but in practice they instead cloak in it quasi-Marxist rhetoric where purity becomes something exploited by oppressors.
Do you really think an anti prostitution stance is the result of "madness" or was that just your describing the pathology you mentioned? Does this pathology explain all the other people in between them politically who oppose prostitution as well?
Imo it's more likely that both groups see the negative effects of it and have different methods and reasons for denouncing it.
I was being poetic when I described it as "madness," I consider it closer to a pathological bias. Basically, none of the arguments against prostitution pass the laugh test if you apply them to any other occupation. If someone argued that it was gross, degrading, and harmful to work with human waste, so waste treatment plants need to be banned and everyone has to poop in their back yard, they'd be laughed at.
What's going on is some people are so obsessed with sexual purity that they literally can't imagine someone else not caring much about it. So they insist that prostitutes must be exploited and harmed by their jobs, even when the prostitutes themselves say they aren't. The idea that prostitution is harmful is basically like if someone with a phobia of bugs concludes that beekeeping is harmful and exploitative because being around bees is so traumatizing, and therefore concludes that beekeepers are being harmed by being allowed to do their jobs.
Having weird and conflicted feelings about sexual purity is common in our society, so it isn't hard for the truly mad to get people who are conformist and aren't thinking about the issue much to go along with them.
I'm not sold on sexual purity being the reason people oppose prostitution given how much sex people have been having outside of marriage for decades now. If you want to compare prostitution to anything, porn is probably a better comparison and there are well documented problems with that industry. Do you think the normalization and widespread access to porn has been a net positive or net negative for societies?
I just think most people recognize prostitution as an antisocial behavior much like drug addiction, which, while it may not directly hurt anyone but the addict (although that's not usually the case) is not a behavioral we want to encourage in members of the population. All one has to do is look at cities with high amounts of untreated drug addiction to see the effect of standing by with shrugged shoulders saying "Nothing we can do."
Even where it's legal, prostitution brings with it crime and much like porn, a lot of the people who engage in it wind up having regrets and are opened up to a host of psychological issues as a result. So if we want a healthy population, it's not a behavior we should be encouraging. To be fully honest, I don't care if two consenting people exchange money for sex or if someone decides to nod off on heroin in the privacy of their own home. But legalization removes a stigma that should rightfully be attached to these activities because normalizing them is just encouraging people to carry on with net negative behaviors.
I would definitely say that widespread access to porn has been a huge net positive for our society. Besides the obvious positives, like that it's direct use brings people pleasure, there's a decent amount of evidence that access to it reduces the rate of rape and sexual assault in society. It also helps relationships by giving couples something to enjoy together and spice up their sex lives.
People who regret porn usage tend to be people with toxic and conflicted attitudes about their sexuality. They would be better served if such attitudes were stigmatized and denormalized.
There's no undisputed evidence that I can find that porn usage decreases rape and SA rates; those decreases could be related to myriad things. Much like there's no real convincing case that more porn has been a good thing, if anything, there's loads of evidence to the contrary, much like prostitution. It's tempting to ignore the knock-on effects of normalizing both, but I think outside of a small handful of people, society at large loses by us deciding these things are good and should be destigmatized.
And I'm not talking about people who regret their usage, I'm talking about people who regret being prostitutes or porn performers. There are lots of them and in a lot of cases, these are at-risk people.
Yes, but then where will Americans get their sense of moral superiority? I think that's the unstated ingredient. We need to feel we're better than some disreputable persons. That is the emotional core of the punitive mindset. Having to raise up disreputable people, especially those taking part in "dark matter" like sex work, is anathema to respectable people. Heck, the main reason I respect sex workers is cause I was a sailor; otherwise, I'd still have the generic liberal patronizing attitude.
And sex work (particularly prostitution) cuts through a society value: "love." There's a poem by Margaret Atwood where she talks about how strippers reveal the transactionality at the heart of our relationships. We want to believe that everyone's together for Love, or at least shared values. But how many people (mostly women) are just trading sex for safety? In a society that values exactly one thing about women (two if you count fertility), how comfortable are we with them being mercenary about it? If you've got it, flaunt it.
Bravo. Like George Carlin once said, “fucking is legal, selling is legal - so why isn’t selling fucking legal?!”
I'm not a hard-liner on this, but I have questions about the idea that sex is equivalent to cleaning toilets, operating cash registers, or taking customer service calls. If this is truly the case, then what principle prevents businesses we do not now think of as sexual from requiring sexual acts of their employees? If Burger King decided it was in their business interest, could they do a promotion where every hundredth customer gets a blowjob from the cashier? It's just another form of labor after all. Or maybe a company decides it'd be a good perk for managers to get sexual favors from lower-level employees, the same way they bring them coffee. Would we consider an Amazon Prime brothel no different from an Amazon warehouse? Is it really only puritan squeamishness that makes people recoil at these ideas?
Aside from the obvious legal issues, if you're hired to take drive-through orders and then suddenly find yourself being asked to do things that are both risky and light years outside the job description — whether sexual or not — most people are going to be uncomfortable doing it. To speak nothing of coercion/harassment (e.g. Harvey Weinstein-type situations). The difference with prostitution is that the nature of the work is clear from the outset, and every person voluntarily entering into it knows the deal.
I think you're getting to a deeper question about whether there is anything inherently different about sex from other kinds of activities, something almost spiritually different. Certainly almost all religious people would agree, and many hardcore feminists (and post-feminists) seem to hold quasi-spiritual feelings about the nature of sex. A lot of factors go into it. Culture and religion are definitely big ones, and they pervade everything, even if one isn't religious themselves. I'm sure there are some evolutionary psychology things going on too, and they all interact with each other.
At the end of the day, my argument is about freedom. If consenting adults want to do something together, unless we have really good evidence showing it will be catastrophic, they ought to be free to do so. And if others have no interest, they are free to refrain.
I think the reason you can't find much supporting evidence for legalalization is because "prostitution is a net negative" is something humanity figured out a long time ago and there's little to no reason to circle back around to it. When religious conservatives and feminists agree on an issue that should tell you something.
There are other pathological behaviors that you see manifest on both the left and the right. Leftists and the far right are both protectionists. They are both so anti-war that they end up supporting aggressors in conflict. They are both obsessed with race. That doesn't tell you those positions are right. What it tells you is that there are certain types of madness that infect people on both sides of the aisle.
In this case, it's a weird honor culture thing where both sides think sexual honor and purity is more valuable than human life, happiness, and prosperity. Feminists are supposed to reject that, but in practice they instead cloak in it quasi-Marxist rhetoric where purity becomes something exploited by oppressors.
Do you really think an anti prostitution stance is the result of "madness" or was that just your describing the pathology you mentioned? Does this pathology explain all the other people in between them politically who oppose prostitution as well?
Imo it's more likely that both groups see the negative effects of it and have different methods and reasons for denouncing it.
I was being poetic when I described it as "madness," I consider it closer to a pathological bias. Basically, none of the arguments against prostitution pass the laugh test if you apply them to any other occupation. If someone argued that it was gross, degrading, and harmful to work with human waste, so waste treatment plants need to be banned and everyone has to poop in their back yard, they'd be laughed at.
What's going on is some people are so obsessed with sexual purity that they literally can't imagine someone else not caring much about it. So they insist that prostitutes must be exploited and harmed by their jobs, even when the prostitutes themselves say they aren't. The idea that prostitution is harmful is basically like if someone with a phobia of bugs concludes that beekeeping is harmful and exploitative because being around bees is so traumatizing, and therefore concludes that beekeepers are being harmed by being allowed to do their jobs.
Having weird and conflicted feelings about sexual purity is common in our society, so it isn't hard for the truly mad to get people who are conformist and aren't thinking about the issue much to go along with them.
I'm not sold on sexual purity being the reason people oppose prostitution given how much sex people have been having outside of marriage for decades now. If you want to compare prostitution to anything, porn is probably a better comparison and there are well documented problems with that industry. Do you think the normalization and widespread access to porn has been a net positive or net negative for societies?
I just think most people recognize prostitution as an antisocial behavior much like drug addiction, which, while it may not directly hurt anyone but the addict (although that's not usually the case) is not a behavioral we want to encourage in members of the population. All one has to do is look at cities with high amounts of untreated drug addiction to see the effect of standing by with shrugged shoulders saying "Nothing we can do."
Even where it's legal, prostitution brings with it crime and much like porn, a lot of the people who engage in it wind up having regrets and are opened up to a host of psychological issues as a result. So if we want a healthy population, it's not a behavior we should be encouraging. To be fully honest, I don't care if two consenting people exchange money for sex or if someone decides to nod off on heroin in the privacy of their own home. But legalization removes a stigma that should rightfully be attached to these activities because normalizing them is just encouraging people to carry on with net negative behaviors.
I would definitely say that widespread access to porn has been a huge net positive for our society. Besides the obvious positives, like that it's direct use brings people pleasure, there's a decent amount of evidence that access to it reduces the rate of rape and sexual assault in society. It also helps relationships by giving couples something to enjoy together and spice up their sex lives.
People who regret porn usage tend to be people with toxic and conflicted attitudes about their sexuality. They would be better served if such attitudes were stigmatized and denormalized.
There's no undisputed evidence that I can find that porn usage decreases rape and SA rates; those decreases could be related to myriad things. Much like there's no real convincing case that more porn has been a good thing, if anything, there's loads of evidence to the contrary, much like prostitution. It's tempting to ignore the knock-on effects of normalizing both, but I think outside of a small handful of people, society at large loses by us deciding these things are good and should be destigmatized.
And I'm not talking about people who regret their usage, I'm talking about people who regret being prostitutes or porn performers. There are lots of them and in a lot of cases, these are at-risk people.
Yes, but then where will Americans get their sense of moral superiority? I think that's the unstated ingredient. We need to feel we're better than some disreputable persons. That is the emotional core of the punitive mindset. Having to raise up disreputable people, especially those taking part in "dark matter" like sex work, is anathema to respectable people. Heck, the main reason I respect sex workers is cause I was a sailor; otherwise, I'd still have the generic liberal patronizing attitude.
And sex work (particularly prostitution) cuts through a society value: "love." There's a poem by Margaret Atwood where she talks about how strippers reveal the transactionality at the heart of our relationships. We want to believe that everyone's together for Love, or at least shared values. But how many people (mostly women) are just trading sex for safety? In a society that values exactly one thing about women (two if you count fertility), how comfortable are we with them being mercenary about it? If you've got it, flaunt it.