I've had a few people email me to ask "if prostitution is so great, how come you're not a prostitute?" Huh?
Look, first of all, there are lots of jobs that I would never want to do. I like to shoot a little hoops now and again, but I would never, ever want to be a professional basketball player. Nor would any of my friends--I mean, they might like to be Michael Jordan, but they wouldn't want to do the actual job of spending hours a day running up and down a court, practicing shots, and lifting weights. I do not therefore consider myself qualified to proclaim that no one in the entire world wants to be a professional basketball player.
Second of all, can we all concede that at least part of the reason that women do not want to be prostitutes is that there is a severe social stigma attached to women who are promiscuous, and particularly to women who rent their promiscuity to men--a stigma far, far greater than that which attaches to their clients? This makes any argument from my desires entirely circular. Kerry is arguing for eliminating that stigma. If I'd grown up in a culture that thought of "prostitute" as a job like "CPA" (another job I'd hate), I probably still wouldn't want to be one. But the fact that I am repulsed by the idea of turning tricks, having grown up in a society that thinks there's something deeply wrong with turning tricks, is not actually proof that there is something deeply wrong with turning tricks. White people in the south were also genuinely repulsed by the idea of drinking from a water fountain that a black person had touched. Your gut is not a good replacement for reasoning from first principles.
So I need a better reason than "it's icky" or "there's something wrong with a woman who would do that" to justify either a moral or a cultural ban on the practice. I'm probably more open than Will or Kerry to being convinced, but I'd take some pretty strong convincing that prostitution is so inherently damaging to society that we should declare war on it. I start with the principles that sex has equal moral significance when performed by a man or a woman; that it isn't anyone's business how many or what kind of partners you choose; and that government intrusion on private, voluntary exchange should be sharply limited to a) practices which produce demonstrable harm to third parties, and b) you can reasonably expect to control. This quickly leads me to "don't you have something better to do than poke your nose into someone else's hotel room?"
MM -- So let's reason from first principles:
A) Law and culture tend to reinforce each other. If the law says 'x' is legal, culture tends to more readily accept 'x'.
B) If 'x' is both legal and accepted, it tends to occur more often. When something occurs more often, all consequences, positive and negative, are increased and/or dispersed more broadly in society than they otherwise would be.
C) Any industry dealing in vice (such as gambling and liquor stores) tends to attract large amounts of money and violence, even when legal.
Consequent of things like these, several good arguments and examples have been made/cited in past threads to the effect that legalizing prostitution tends to increase the incidence of sexual slavery, increase the incidence of disease (and that among populations that are often unable to afford the health consequences), work against social constructs designed to protect social order, and increase the overall incidence of violent and violent sexual offense, against women and children in particular.
Interestingly, none of these made the final cut when you wrote this post.
Why?
Prostitution has been legal in the US in times past, is legal in some other western and non-western countries now, and given mankind's general fascination with the purient, plenty of literature has been created to document what kind of social, cultural, and legal consequences arose from these arrangements. Many of them are not so good.
The purist libertarian position would be to let all things come to pass in liberty, then sort out the conflicts as they arise. Unfortunately, this has serious problems in practice. But beyond that, you have previously argued for non-libertarian expansions of the state and presented good arguments that more harm will come from allowing people to move about unchecked than will come from limiting their freedom. Thus, unrestricted freedom is no longer a good fallback option for you if someone else has different priorities for non-libertarian expansions on the same basis.
So, regarding prostitution: Now it comes to pass that your opponents have argued in favor of non-libertarian expansions of the state and presented good arguments that more harm will come from allowing people to move about unchecked than will come from limiting their freedom. Perhaps you could respond to those in like kind, rather than trying to reframe the argument back to the point where you don't have to address those things.
Ignore them. It's the equivalent of the "chickenhawk" pseudo-argument, and just as silly and superficial.
It's the equivalent of the "chickenhawk" pseudo-argument
So Megan should be serving soldiers in Iraq?
start with the principles that sex has equal moral significance when performed by a man or a woman
If that's the kind of first principle you start from, you're not going to come to any worthwhile conclusions.
Do you suppose that there's no moral significance to motherhood, nursing, or pregnancy? To the fact that an average looking 20 year old girl has more social capital in her good looks than an average 45 year old man with a good job, savings, a house, and a pension has in his whole life?
"A) Law and culture tend to reinforce each other. If the law says 'x' is legal, culture tends to more readily accept 'x'."
Agreed.
"B) If 'x' is both legal and accepted, it tends to occur more often. When something occurs more often, all consequences, positive and negative, are increased and/or dispersed more broadly in society than they otherwise would be."
Agreed.
"C) Any industry dealing in vice (such as gambling and liquor stores) tends to attract large amounts of money and violence, even when legal."
Here I think you've dug a hole for yourself. Money and violence do go hand-in-hand, but generally much less so when the activities involved are legal. We do see violence around legal "vice" industries. But refer to point (A). Legalizing prostitution may reduce the stigma that it is, as you imply, a 'vice.' Perhaps it is the stigma surrounding these vices that engenders violence.
Also, your criticism of MM is a bit unfair. Just because she is not an anarchist doesn't mean she can't appeal to the idea that freedom can be a good thing.
I'm with Will and Kerry, I think you need to rethink your career opportunities vis a vis prostitution. I know here at The Atlantic you love shilling for Wall Street and the Republican party, and I hope it pays off for you so you end up at Cato one day. But why not go all the way? If you really have no principles, which you don't, why bother going to all the trouble of writing your hare-brained opinions down--usually full of typos and non sequiturs--and start making money with your body rather than your (feeble) mind?
"if prostitution is so great, how come you're not a prostitute?" has to be one of the lamest arguments I've heard or read about recently, and considering the quality of some arguments on the internet thats saying a lot.
Thinking it should be illegal doesn't equate to thinking its great.
And even thinking its great in some abstract way doesn't mean you think its for you.
Do the people who say this think fighting fires is great? Well then obviously you should only have to listen to them if they are fire fighters...
Second of all, can we all concede that at least part of the reason that women do not want to be prostitutes is that there is a severe social stigma attached to women who are promiscuous, and particularly to women who rent their promiscuity to men--a stigma far, far greater than that which attaches to their clients?
That stigma is not a product merely of arbitrary social conditioning. It is universal across human cultures and while it's stronger in some societies (Iran, India, China) than in others (the Scandinavian countries), it exists everywhere. It is in all likelihood an unchangeable fact of human psychology sculpted by evolution (promiscuous women would not have been reliable mates in the ancestral environment). It therefore strikes me as the sheerest Lockean folly to believe that it can just be conditioned out of existence. Furthermore, I do think there is a stigma attached to men who go to prostitutes - all the guys I know (and I've known some rather promiscuous ones) consider it pretty pathetic to pay for sex.
Also, I'll repeat what I said in an earlier thread - while social stigma may be a determining factor in keeping a small subset of women out of careers in prostitution, it strikes me as extremely unlikely that it's the determining factor for most. It seems to me an equally indisputable biological truth that women just don't inherently like indiscriminate casual sex as much as men do. I fail to see how removing the social stigma, even were it possible, would make that so.
Kerry's argument, like most unconvincing arguments from a libertarian perspective, suffers from an excess of abstract rationality. It's fine to imagine that all prostitution is of the "Pretty Woman" variety - sexually liberated independent women in control of their own destinies, in a position to decide what attractive or intriguing customers they do or don't sell their services to. In this situation, her argument makes sense. However, this is not - even in places where prostitution is totally legal - the reality for any but a tiny minority of women. Very few men who go to prostitutes look like Richard Gere. Many of them are rather nasty, and possibly violent, abusive, or disease-ridden, characters. Most prostitutes are not well-off enough that they can decide who they do or don't want to sleep with - financial necessity insists that they give up their right to make such determinations. All this entails a host of consequences that have been well-noted by a variety of posters in these threads.
I'll concede that there are good arguments to be made in favor of at least partial legalization - more systematic STD testing, legal recourse for prostitutes in cases of violence or abuse, etc. But the libertarian-crystaline-perfect-world argument that you and Kerry are making is not, IMO, a strong one. Given that there are benefits to keeping social stigmas against prostitution, laws that preserve those while also protecting women working as prostitutes (such as Sweden's) strike me as the best course.
C) Any industry dealing in vice (such as gambling and liquor stores) tends to attract large amounts of money and violence, even when legal.
That's not a single point. It should be split up as follows:
C) Any industry dealing in vice will attract large amounts of money
D) The more money an industry makes, the more likely it is to attract violence.
But you missed another point, which is:
E) Attempting to limit supply by making the act of supplying illegal drives up prices, thereby increasing the money that can be made by suppliers.
Prostitutes are, for the most part, not committing violent crimes related to prostitution. It is the pimps and brothel owners who do that. Why? Because each whore is worth a lot of money. The more whores you throw in jail, the more the remaining whores are worth and the more viciously pimps will fight for control of them.
The sensible thing to do is to make prostitution legal but keep pimping and brothels illegal. That's what Rhode Island does, and it has a low crime rate; lower, in fact, than any of the other densely-populated states in the Boston-NY-Philly megalopolis.
I'd also point out that liquor stores "cause" crime not because they sell liquor, but because they are small businesses that stay open late; 7-11s have the same problem. Here in California all the supermarkets sell liquor, but the areas around supermarkets aren't crime-ridden.
It is in all likelihood an unchangeable fact of human psychology sculpted by evolution (promiscuous women would not have been reliable mates in the ancestral environment). It therefore strikes me as the sheerest Lockean folly to believe that it can just be conditioned out of existence.
Racism is also universal, omnipresent, and likely an inherent part of our biology endowed to us by evolution (there are good evolutionary reasons to discriminate against people you aren't related to). That means that laws banning racism are probably unwise -- but it doesn't mean that Jim Crow laws *supporting* racism are a good idea.
The sensible thing to do is to make prostitution legal but keep pimping and brothels illegal
Why? If a woman, knowing she is relatively weak compared to most of her potential customers, seeks to enter into a voluntary relationship with a stronger man or property owner with the money to hire such men, in which she surrenders a part of her her earnings in exchange for both physical protection and assistance with debt collection, why should you stop her? It's a transaction which is beneficial to both sides: she gets protection while practicing her freely chosen trade, and they get money.
Lest anyone think I'm serious, I think that argument is 100% crap. But I also think it's indistinguishable from the pro-legalization arguments made by doctrinare libertarians, so I'd appreciate some of said libertarians to tell me where I went wrong.
The main (moral) reason I see for banning prostitution is that it simply isn't a meaningfully voluntary transaction for many/most of the women involved. They are trapped by a physically and psychologically abusive pimp into a life of material and emotional poverty. It's horrible and exploitive, and looks more like slavery than employment. The girls at the Emperor's club may fit the libertarian image of women chosing a better lifestyle than their other skills would make possible, but the average hooker has it worse than the average battered wife.
An even closer parallel than the 'chickenhawk' argument is the one often used by opponents of capital punishment: "how can you support capital punishment if you would not be willing to do the killing yourself?" (with a hidden corollary "and if you are willing, what kind of beast are you?"). I've always found that one singularly unconvincing, for two reasons:
1. I would in fact be willing to kill some people if they really deserved it and I didn't have to get my hands dirty. For example, I would be willing to pull the lever or push the button or whatever it takes to activate a gas chamber with John Wayne Gacy or Pol Pot inside.
2. More important, there are many jobs that I would not do for any amount of money (or fame, or hot dates with supermodels), that are nevertheless not (in my opinion) immoral: the most obvious example (which few are likely to argue with) is proctology. It amazes me that there are people in the world willing to work as proctologists, but I would not hesitate to avail myself of the services of one should I ever happen to need them. Anyone who thinks that makes me a hypocrite hasn't thought things through. The same goes for anyone who thinks Megan is obligated to become a prostitute if she thinks prostitution should be legal.
Megan, serious question:
If you could make as much as the President of the United States, working less that 2 weeks per year, are you really telling you wouldn't do it?
Why? If a woman, knowing she is relatively weak compared to most of her potential customers, seeks to enter into a voluntary relationship with a stronger man or property owner with the money to hire such men, in which she surrenders a part of her her earnings in exchange for both physical protection and assistance with debt collection, why should you stop her?
From a strictly libertarian perspective you shouldn't. From a pragmatic perspective that setup causes most of the problems associated with the abuse of women within prostitution, as it gives the pimp a powerful motive to coerce the woman into having more sex with more (and riskier, higher-paying) clients.
A legal prostitute concerned for her safety can hire a security guard or rent a room in a secure facility, the same as any other businesswoman would. Why would a woman who wasn't being coerced even *want* to pay for her security as a percentage of her earnings? The guard at the local 7-11 doesn't get a cut of the store's profits, does he?
The main (moral) reason I see for banning prostitution is that it simply isn't a meaningfully voluntary transaction for many/most of the women involved. They are trapped by a physically and psychologically abusive pimp into a life of material and emotional poverty.
You're concerned for the women, so you give them a criminal record and make normal employment even harder to find -- in what world does that make any sense at all? You've got an excellent argument for banning pimping and other attempts to coerce women into prostitution, but you don't seem to realize that your underlying concerns actually support the legalization of prostitution itself.
Megan, here's the thing about places where prostitution is legal.
It mostly stays gross.
In the Netherlands you have a small class of women who find the job reasonably enjoyable and are self-employed or work for agencies that treat them well. As one might hope, there's a certain latitude for "happy hooker" stereotypes to replace the "scheming/yucky whore" stereotypes. Medical insurance has at least on occasion paid for physically handicapped people to hire such sex workers, as if it were massage therapy, which leads to further regularization and acceptance. All of that is the best-case scenario.
The downside is that a substantial legal sex work industry makes it extremely hard to identify women who've been forced into the business non-consensually. It's just as hard to prove you were trafficked as to prove you were raped. Empirically, legalization has not worked very well: trafficking increases, violence against the women involved doesn't decrease noticeably. Large-scale legal sex work in the US would almost certainly lead to an increase in the trafficking of women to the US. I think it's very important to look at the examples of foreign countries that have tried out proposed reforms we're contemplating and then take seriously the conclusions those foreign countries have come to about how well the reforms worked.
at least part of the reason that women do not want to be prostitutes is that there is a severe social stigma attached to women who are promiscuous, and particularly to women who rent their promiscuity to men--a stigma far, far greater than that which attaches to their clients?
There are sex tourism industries with female clients buying the services of male sex workers. That's the picture mainly in the Dominican Republic and certain parts of Africa. The clients are largely middle-aged Euro-American white women. The stigma attaching to the men who work as gigolos is similar to that which attaches to female prostitutes, but not as severe. The industries are nowhere near as large as the male-on-female ones. The clients mainly come and find a single "boyfriend", rather than shopping around, and are unmarried, not cheating.
Your gut is not a good replacement for reasoning from first principles.
"Reasoning from first principles" is not a good way of going about thinking about human sexual relations. I reasoned from first principles about sex when I was 19. It made me an asshole. By the time you're in your thirties, hopefully, you've started to figure out how people work a little better. One of the things you discover is that actually, in this particular arena, men and women are rather different, and being "fair" means trying to accommodate those differences, not treating everyone alike.
I invoke Godwin's Law on this: "White people in the south were also genuinely repulsed by the idea of drinking from a water fountain that a black person had touched."
If you have a point to make, Ms McArdle, then make it. Don't insult us by making Jim Crow comparisons.
Oh, and you're Hitler.
Scrimshander -- thanks for the constructive criticisms. My response:
Money and violence do go hand-in-hand, but generally much less so when the activities involved are legal. We do see violence around legal "vice" industries.
Granted. However, then we get back to the second half of my assertion (B) that "when something occurs more often, all consequences, positive and negative, are increased and/or dispersed more broadly in society than they otherwise would be."
As a purely fictitious example with simple numbers, suppose illegal activity 'x', on average, produces 1 murder, 5 rapes, and violent 10 robberies every 1000 times 'x' occurs, and 'x' occurs an average of 5000 times per month. Each month, there are 5 murders, 25 rapes, and 50 violent robberies as a direct result of 'x' occurring at its typical illegal rate. Now suppose that 'x' is legalized on the premise of reducing crime. It does, sort of: Now there are 1 murder, 2 rapes, 5 violent robberies, and 25 non-violent robberies every 2500 times 'x' occurs. Have we made society at least somewhat better off? Not necessarily, if 'x' increases to 15,000 occurrences per month.
Obviously, that's the doctrine of trade-offs at work. What is the precise level of tradeoffs if prostitution is legalized? I don't know, but it appears MM doesn't, either, because so far she has declined the opportunity to respond to several very serious ones.
But refer to point (A). Legalizing prostitution may reduce the stigma that it is, as you imply, a 'vice.' Perhaps it is the stigma surrounding these vices that engenders violence.
Or, perhaps man really is a moral agent, and that is why as someone else noted, societies across all earth have included prostitution among the activities that, at some level, are stigmatized?
Also, your criticism of MM is a bit unfair. Just because she is not an anarchist doesn't mean she can't appeal to the idea that freedom can be a good thing.
Again, she has repeatedly shown a preference to extend the role of the state into the encroachment of certain liberties when it satisfies the broader good. As such, an appeal to freedom is meaningless unless she is willing to answer the broader good objections of her opponents on this point. As such, I think my criticisms are quite fair.
It is also worth noting that while MM has plenty of haranguing enemies in the blogosphere, it is very rare for her to raise a position in which a large number of her generally-supportive readers simultaneously call on her to either make a better argument or cite better evidence, as seems to have happened in these last few Spitzer-related posts. As such, I hope she's doing the homework for it now, and will post it at some point.
There is no law banning racism at least in the US. And anyway how the hell do you ban a prejudice? There are laws that say that if you plan on running a business or in your professional behavior you can't express racist behavior. I can't flash my dong in public either. But you can be a big a bigot as you'd like in your personal life.
Subtle difference.
This idea of the "hapy hooker" is just a male fantasy. Men like the idea because it relieves them of any guilt for using a woman like a kleenex. The vast majority of women who sell their bodies for sex are indeed miserable slaves; The chains are not visible but are very real just the same. Successful pimps are masters of emotional manipulation. It's easier than violence and doesn't bruise the "fruit"
Meagan: if you authentically require instruction on something so elementary, first spit out the chewing gum
Dan, you're basically falling for the Pretty Woman/Roxanne/Firefly stereotype. Look up hooker statistics in Nevada or Europe, and see how many of those glitz-and-gush types you find, as compared to how many financially destitute and/or meth-addicted single mothers you find, sleeping with anyone who will pay because the money is easy.
Many prostitutes begin in desperation and end in something far worse. As to what I mean, do a little research into the long-term effects of what many STDs will achieve when inadequately treated. Anyone who makes a point of sleeping with all paying takers will usually end up with a small smorgasboard of these. As just one example, open Google, disable safe-search filtering in Preferences, switch to Image search, and then enter HPV (the herpes variant responsible for genital warts and precancerous cervical lesions). The images you get will be from health and medical research & awareness sites, and they will mostly be grotesque, but they will obviously also be semi-explicit, so be certain you are using a private computer with only mature persons present.
This is just one example of what licentious sexual conduct eventually produces, particularly when coupled with limited education and/or poor access to preventive medical care. However, even among promiscuous people engaging in hookups, there is usually some minimal selective judgment exercised in, if nothing else, the total volume of partners. For a prostitute in financial difficulties, especially if a drug habit is accumulating, the only limit is ability to pay.
There is a legal house of prostitution about an hour and a half south of my house; I drive right by it about once and month. It’s one of many in the northern part of Nevada yet for some reason Idaho is not a conduit for "female trafficking" nor is the crime rate especially high around them. In fact, if you don’t know where they are, they’re not especially easy to find. As far as "...violent, abusive, disease-ridden characters" being the customers. A somewhat superficial disease check is done, condom use is enforced, and there are bouncers that would react very, very unkindly to violent or abusive characters. It is a far safer situation for both parties involved than most nightclubs. The local madam also owns a coffee bar and if it’s difficult to tell if any of the prostitutes are being coerced many people I see working at coffee bars look like they’d rather be somewhere else as well. We’re all coerced by the need to make a living. Anyone that claims that legalizing prostitution would create huge problems should come down and point the problems out to me.
Despite their easy and legal availability, the overwhelming majority of men, including myself, don’t partake of their services. Although the prostitutes are nice enough people, I don’t find them particularly attractive.
Come on Meagan, the reason why you aren't a professional basketball player is because you aren't good enough. Even if you wanted to, you couldn't find someone willing to pay you to do this.
So why not a hooker? Because you're better than that, that's why.
Uh, Butt-Head, they're talkin' about buying sedge. huh huh huh.
She does have a point, and she did make it. The point is that cultural norms and attitudes should not be held up as immutable and unquestionable moral laws. Jim Crow laws are actually a pretty damn good example. She made no comparison of the stigma against racially shared facilities to the stigma against prostitution, aside from the fact that both are/were cultural standards that have been enshrined in law.
Maybe there are better reasons for outlawing prostitution than "we find it distasteful", or maybe there aren't. The point is that rather than saying "that's just the way it is", we should question and discuss and argue these reasons, and either decide to legalize it or not. It's hard to believe you find this idea insulting.
You can always tell an 'experienced' prostitute (like the three appearing on a cable show tonight) by the hard, cold, dead eyes.
That 'profession' wrings the humanity out of a woman.
That's why it shouldn't be legal, even if it is consensual (which I doubt it ever really is).
Another excellent argument in favor of a legalization/legitimization that would be laudable were it not a screen masking a a precipitous, slippery slope. Like a Teflon cliff covered in ice cream.
Mmm, ice cream.
No, really, the consequences of a legalization/criminalization of anything are the primary issue for me. Prostitution is illegal. The law, thus far, is not unconstitutional. The issue, then, is not "should prostitution be legal," but "what happens if we made prostitution legal?"
In your water fountain example, Southerners were absolutely right in believing that the consequence of letting blacks share their fountains would be an erosion of segregation. They were wrong, in our opinions, in the morality of the results. Are anti-prostitution arguers wrong about the morality of their scenarios?
I lack the interest in the topic (and the energy at this hour) to create some big scary theoretical construct, but I'll just use, as an extreme example of possible results, the Netherlands; a society with sexually open laws that was conquered first by the hedonists, now by radical Islam.
"The sensible thing to do is to make prostitution legal but keep pimping and brothels illegal. That's what Rhode Island does, and it has a low crime rate;"
TR: Logically I don't see how that would be justifiable, but I'd agree Rhode Island does fairly okay crime-wise. Much better than Nevada for certain. So pragmatically I suppose that could work. Although I don't think Rhode Island exactly advertises that they work that way so that might help.
On the other matter the thing said to Megan is stupid. However I think it might be reasonable to ask "if a friend expressed a desire to be a high-class call girl, and you know her to be type who is unphased by being stigmatized, would you support that desire?"
And on the issue of men part of why men have not been as stigmatized, I think, is they can hide it better. In places where they plaster the John's picture everywhere they do face disapproval. I personally feel far worse about Johns. In part because of moral reasons, but also because paying for it seems like a sign of being a real loser. Even if he has a face like that teen from "Mask" it'd strike me as pitiful. (Although I might be slightly more sympathetic of a John whose face or lower half is deformed in some "monstrous" way)
I like medicine. I'm not a doctor. I have no desire to be a doctor. The question is not "does Megan like prostitution", but "does government interference in prostitution have positive effects". As an example, government interference in the bank-robbing business seems to have positive effects.
Some of these arguments are bordering on the absurd, for example this from anony-mouse:
This is just one example of what licentious sexual conduct eventually produces, particularly when coupled with limited education and/or poor access to preventive medical care.
Are we to believe that as prostitution is illegal in most states of the union, the lives of meth-addicted single mothers has been greatly improved? Is this what you claim?
Are you providing an adequate control experiment?
It looks like you're trying to claim that without limits on prostitution, the desperate will all descend into harlotry - but make it illegal, and the desperate will suddenly find themselves in a world of unconditional love and fluffy bunnies.
That's absurd.
It's hard to not notice that the two groups of people that consistently call for the legalization of prostitution are 1) prostitutes, and 2) men.
In my personal experience, prostitutes tend to consistently exhibit a marked lack of self-discipline. I've never met one who I thought didn't have a 'way out' of their profession.
They simply choose not to do something else because they lack the foresight and discipline to plan their future long-term. It is always easier to watch TV and sleep all day while turning tricks all night than it is to start the long, slow grind up the educational and employment ladder. The fac that they are criminals makes this even harder than for more people.
Most of them aren't bright young gals who are victimized by evil men. They're weak people with no ability to plan or set goals, who fall into the easiest money around by default.
Legalizing it? The girls who are prostitutes now will still be prostitutes. The girls who aren't probably won't start. But, those few hookers who do want to reform and lift themselves out of the work might have a chance if they can be open and communicative about it, and not be shunned by society.
As for reducing the incidence of prostitution, liberalization of sexual attitudes has done more for that than any kind of repression attempted in the last 50 years. There's no need for whores when people in general aren't so goddamned prudish. Hopefully we'll see more people in future who understand that sex isn't something taken from a woman (or given by her), but something shared between two people.
Anyone who describes herself as "Megan McArdle was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and yes, she does enjoy her lattes, as well as the occasional extra dry skim milk cappuccino," is hardly a person who can be taken seriously on the subject of prostitution. Young, smart and a life of privilege do not inform as to what the reality of prostitution is. Travel to the open sewer back alleys in Southeast Asia, or the brothels of Amsterdam, and live there for awhile, and you'll see what prostitution is all about. I have known several retired very high priced 'call girls' from New Orleans. As a young man I went to prostitutes a few times, until I recoiled at what I was doing and to whom. Your arguments about prostitution are simply an intellectual fantasy. Buying sex has nothing to do with 'icky' or 'promiscuity', that you perceive from your perch in NW DC. It is a debasing transactional experience on all sides. You need to spend more time in the back alleys before you pontificate about something you obviously don't know about and with which you have no first hand experience. Assertions do not equal facts. Opinions are not facts.
Ayn Rand used to give it away to every Tom, Dick, Leonard, Alan, Moe, and bum lying in the gutter.
You shouldn't have to hold out for a paying customer. The marketplace has spoken.
Oh my goodness, there are certainly a lot of opinions about prostitution. I can't keep track of them all, but I have some questions:
1. Why do prostitutes need pimps? (Or is it the other way round?)
2. Why is it that female prostitutes come under such heavy criticism, while male prostitutes get a free pass? (There are both, in approximate proportion to the demand.)
3. (Controversial question of the day) Why exactly is it wrong to sell your body for sex? Isn't your body a potential asset? If you have nothing else going for you, why isn't prostitution a sensible choice?
Nothing in this post should be interpreted as supporting Spitzer. I seldom get a chance to enjoy Schadenfreude, so let be have my moment.
I think there is a fallacy when one argues the whole legal/illegal thing and then compares things like drugs and prostitution to alcohol. The thing is, very few people will want to drink bathtub-produced rotgut when there is booze legally availible at reasonable prices in a variety of flavors and strengths at your local bottle shop.
With prostitution on the other hand, even if you have safe, legal, regulated (and STD-tested) brothels there will still be a large underground industry with all the abuse, violence, exploitation, drugs and slavery we have today. Men will want to have sex with underage girls, men will want to have unsafe sex (see Spitzer, Elliot), men will want to have abusive sex and men will want to have less expensive sex. Pimps, kidnappers, runaways and I V Drugusers will provide the supply to meet this demand, so you will have a two-tier system, one based on the Bunny Ranch / Amsterdam model, and then other just like what we have now. Perhaps that will still be a net gain, but it is hardly a comprehensive solution.
I would think pot is the same way - sure the government could make it legal, taxed, tested etc - and some folks would buy it, though mostly those would be the folks that are presently deterred by its illegality. A lot of other folks would buy the illegal home-grown stuff - since it will likely be better, stronger and/or cheaper than the official stuff. Home distilling produces a generally inferior product, whereas home pot cutivation is likely to produce the better splif.
Oh man, I still can't get over the idea of arguing about sexual relations by "reasoning from first principles."
Thanks, Megan, you made me laugh for the first time ever.
The statement is so absurd I assume it's parody. I'm right, aren't I? I mean, you're making fun of the uber-rational, right?
Please, tell me you are, or this is going to go from the funniest night of my life to the most tragic in short order.
Are we to believe that as prostitution is illegal in most states of the union, the lives of meth-addicted single mothers has been greatly improved? Is this what you claim?
No, but making prostitution legal tends to cause it to proliferate, which results in quite a few more meth-addicted mothers and other desperate women falling into it, as well as an expansion of the underground industry, and, as anony-mouse states, increased human trafficking and other assorted evils. This isn't just hot air. Brad Plumer had a post detailing the various negative effects of full legalization in places where it's been legalized. They aren't pretty.
It’s one of many in the northern part of Nevada yet for some reason Idaho is not a conduit for "female trafficking" nor is the crime rate especially high around them.
Idahoguy, you may not see that, but you have to remember that the U.S. is a wealthy country with law enforcement that is on the whole competent and honest, as is Canada. Women and girls have far better options, so there aren't a lot of poor ignorant farm girls to be trafficked, and law and customs officials are legit, so there are far fewer avenues through which to traffick them. Go to Cambodia or South Africa sometime and you'll see that prostitution does, in fact, lead directly to slavery and human trafficking, in societies where economic and social barriers aren't strong enough to prevent it. I'm guessing that if you turned NYC or L.A. upside down and shook it, more than a few women who'd ended up their via human trafficking would fall out as well. This stuff isn't made up.
As for the fact that the presence of brothels increases crime, that's hardly controversial. Even in places where prostitution is fully legal, prostitutes are far likelier than other women to fall victim to violent crime, and crime rates tend to be significantly higher in areas with a lot of sex trade activity.
Hi Megan:
As a small "l" libertarian myself, I have considerable sympathy with your views. The standard for justifying government intervention should certainly be set higher than "because it's just wrong."
However, even in countries where legal prostitution exists, illegal prostitution still flourishes, and exploitation of women by organized crime remains undeterred, or is even perhaps emboldened by their nominal legality.
For reasons unknown to me, a black market for prostitution exists even when prostitution is completely legal. Perhaps the strong social stigma on both parties drives them underground. A smart sociologist should figure this one out.
In a pragmatic, empirical sense, I question whether legalizing prostitution would increase or decrease the exploitation of women.
-------------------------------------------------
I guess it is inevitable that when a female blogger comments about gender issues and arrives at a decidedly politically incorrect conclusion, she exposes herself to a particularly vicious and misogynist line of attack. Hopefully, these attacks will not cause you any hesitation if you feel the urge to blog on similar topics in the future.
Well, about the equal moral significance. If it is of equal significance, then a man should have equal control over the rights to a woman's abortion.
I'd say the greater responsibility must be, for better or worse, on the woman. Only she will risk having a life grow inside of her and risk destroying that life (literally) or potentially damaging that life by bringing it into a world without the proper support of a loving family.
Now that doesn't excuse the man, but I wonder why you choose toss around equality when things clearly are not equal in outcomes. The man can be a scumbag and walk away but the woman has a life created inside of her. That is not equal.
How about this for a moral argument.
You should not have sex until you are married because no means of contraceptive is perfect (unless you plan on destroying the child if one is conceived, an appalling act). It wasn't until after I started having children that I realized with premarital sex you risk bringing a child into the world in far less than ideal circumstances. Marriage is the clear sign of commitment that you are willing to work together to build a family. A child deserves the best environment to be raised in. It doesn't mean it always happens, but I don't think we should throw in the towel and condone behaviors just because it makes people feel uncomfortable if we say otherwise.
It deeply saddening that there are so many suffering kids out there because so many people refuse to control their impulses and think the world must approve of all their sexual desires. It should go without saying that equally saddening is the parents who are already married and neglecting their children in a variety of ways.
You asked I answered. Sex is about relationships and children. Try as you may you can't remove the children aspect of it, and the more you cover your eyes and pretend that aspect doesn't exist the worse of society and millions of innocent kids will be.
anony_mouse_ enter HPV (the herpes variant responsible for genital warts and precancerous cervical lesions).
HPV is in the Papovaviridae family, not Herpesviridae.
Otherwise, I agree. STDs are a huge externality from prostitution that can't be confined to those who choose to go. Herpes, for one, can be shed even when a person isn't showing any visible signs.
I've known far too many people who have said "I've been tested for STDs and came back clean." Sorry, not possible. They can find a few of the worst viruses. They can do cultures, antibody tests and DNA based tests for bacteria capable of finding maybe 90% of the problematic bacteria.
But it simply isn't possible to exhaustively search for all viral pathogens. You have to test individually for each one, and it seems very likely there are quite a few viruses which they don't test for at all, or which are considered too common to test for. They will give you blood with CMV, for instance, unless you're immunocompromised or a baby donor. The stuff is too common for us to maintain the blood supply otherwise.
Likewise, pathogens become more virulent if they can move more quickly from host to host. Inject 1 cc of diluted pathogen into a rabbit. Wait several days, withdraw some blood, dilute it and inject it into rabbit #2. Lather, rinse, repeat. The end result is an incredibly lethal pathogen. Why? Because fluid borne pathogens contain a mix of competing genetic profiles and because the situation described favors pathogens which rapidly use and discard their hosts to increase production.
Ewald's book on this topic, used as a text when I went to college, is only about 16 years old now. It seems like many of the folks at the CDC haven't heard of his ideas and seem to use older models based on airborne disease.
For reasons unknown to me, a black market for prostitution exists even when prostitution is completely legal.
Oh, I think it's fairly easy to think of reasons. Nominal legality, and the ease of hiding criminality, is certainly one. Demand for versions of the product that would be legally off-limits for other reasons (child prostitution and the like). The inability of a legal market to meet demand because there aren't enough women willing to prostitute themselves unless they're under some form of coercion. The greater anonymity and sense of control afforded customers by the black market version. The ability for black market pimps and prostitutes to undercut their legal competitors' prices because of a lack of legally-imposed administrative expenses and wage controls.
You have guys who are married and like to cheat, are addicted to sex, or are not sexually active at home (could be any reason). This is the 'home wrecker' argument.
When a man goes to a prostitute the home is already wrecked. Legal or illegal, the man has chosen.
Of course, I'm single. If I want to give a girl a diamond ring or a 100 dollar bill to get laid, it is none of your God damn business. If she is underage, or some kind of slave, well duh that is illegal. Forcing someone to do anything against their will should always be unlawful.
Sex can be given away for free, or a dinner date, or a ring or new shoes, but don't you dare give that woman money.
I am a man, I like sex, and Uncle Sam can go fuck himself if he is going to regulate adult consensual sex.
Dan, you're basically falling for the Pretty Woman/Roxanne/Firefly stereotype.
Let me know when you have a legitimate response to the arguments I raised
Look up hooker statistics in Nevada or Europe, and see how many of those glitz-and-gush types you find, as compared to how many financially destitute and/or meth-addicted single mothers you find, sleeping with anyone who will pay because the money is easy.
I'm sure the meth-addicted single mothers are much happier as meth-addicted single mothers with rap sheets for prostitution. That probably helps them and their kids out a lot, eh?
STDs are a huge externality from prostitution that can't be confined to those who choose to go
No, it is a huge externality from promiscuity. Unless you favor making sex outside of marriage illegal it is disingenuous to use STDs as an argument against prostitution. At least legal prostitutes are generally licensed and tested for STDs, which is more than can be said for the college girl you're picking up at a bar. :)
I always liked Norma Jean Almodovar's comment to the effect that if prostitution itself was degrading, what did people think that strip-searching and locking its practitioners up in cages was?
Hi Kirsten,
I know Elliot's busy right now and I guess that you're probably tuning-up for your new single but could we have a date?
Bill C.
Hey Mateous,
I'm a man, and I like smacking my wife around. She obviously must like it if she stays with me. Uncle Sam can go fuck himself if he wants to get involved with what happens between consenting adults.
You got a problem with the logic of that paragraph? If so, you'll have to explain. If you want me to by the laissez faire libertarian line on this, you'll have to convince me that prostitution doesn't indirectly entail serious negative externalities to third parties/the rest of society. From my reading of the data, it does.
Hey Mateous,
I'm a man, and I like smacking my wife around. She obviously must like it if she stays with me. Uncle Sam can go fuck himself if he wants to get involved with what happens between consenting adults.
You got a problem with the logic of that paragraph? If so, you'll have to explain. If you want me to buy the laissez faire libertarian line on this, you'll have to convince me that prostitution doesn't indirectly entail serious negative externalities to third parties/the rest of society. From my reading of the data, it does.
I simply do not buy this sex slave argument. There is plenty of prostitutes in eastern europe, Uganda ect. It seems totaly redundat to trick women into prostitution and imprison them when there are plenty of women in prostitution. I simply do not belive in the sex salve argument, it do seems like a lot of work when there is plenty of women wanting to do the job.
The first thing that strikes me about many of the arguments here, is that the are obviously made by people who
(1) were born or raised AFTER the sexual revolution of the 60's (hookers are for losers?)
and
(2) aren't aware of the prior history of the US (prostitution is like drugs, which should also be banned - for "moral" reasons).
In reality, both were pretty much openly available before the First World War. So we've actually been down this road before. In any case, I'm leary of the: "we need to save these people from themselves" and/or "the poor soiled doves were all forced into it" arguments. I'm also don't think comparisons to overseas sex mores are valid.
In reality - just like in the drug trade - the problems associated with prostitution, are a function of its illegality. You get contaminated drugs and diseased, drug addicted prostitutes, with pimps; because both are outside of controls.
One of these days, Americans will finally learn the lessons of Prohibition - are haven't you noticed that there are no longer battles - with tommy guns - on the city streets - over beer?
Dan -At least legal prostitutes are generally licensed and tested for STDs
Granted. But as noted, that provides a false sense of security. They are tested for only some STDs. It would be interesting to see whether legalizing prostitution raised or lowered local lifespan, say, or medical expenses for longtime residents.
No, it is a huge externality from promiscuity. Unless you favor making sex outside of marriage illegal it is disingenuous to use STDs as an argument against prostitution.
Oh, I agree entirely that promiscuity is the problem. I guess the question then is; does legalizing prostitution raise or lower promiscuity? I don't have much of a problem with how things are now. Maybe we could just charge people with assault for spreading STDs? That would at least require one party to press charges.
I'm usually pretty libertarian-ish, but I also think that that tends to break down a bit when the possible creation or infection of children is concerned.
1. Why do prostitutes need pimps? (Or is it the other way round?)
They don't necessarily, I'm pretty sure there's "independents" in this business.
Although in theory pimps could be useful for enforcing the contract. Some prostitutes carry knives in case their John refuses to pay or takes his money back, but some might prefer a guy to enforce things. I would assume pimps take a more active and controlling role in their employees lives rather than just acting as manager/bodyguard. I'd guess that's because some guys like the exploitation and/or some of these women are used to exploitative relationships.
2. Why is it that female prostitutes come under such heavy criticism, while male prostitutes get a free pass?
I'm still wondering what the evidence of this is. Where are these male prostitutes getting "a free pass?" Former call-girls promote their books on Fox News or morning chat shows. The image of the female prostitute is often romantic or sympathetically tragic in everything from De Maupassant and Dostoyefsky to Pretty Woman and Moulin Rouge.
Is there anything similar with male prostitutes? Some things about "gigolos" are maybe similar, but I wouldn't say the image is better. If anything the gigolo is seen as a more shallow or empty person than the prostitute in "Notes from Underground" by Dostoyefsky or that one in the most recent episode of "House."
3. (Controversial question of the day) Why exactly is it wrong to sell your body for sex? Isn't your body a potential asset? If you have nothing else going for you, why isn't prostitution a sensible choice?
Because sex is an intimate biological act and the body is necessary to life. I suppose it could be possible to test water pollution by paying people to drink suspected water samples. I'm going to guess that's not done, but even if it were it'd be seen as an unpleasant or reckless job. Likewise being paid to have possibly suspect people exchange fluids with you is also risky.
The argument that this is no different than any casual sex is flawed. The money makes it where the woman, or man, has an incentive to be less selective. Wal-Mart is likely less selective about who they sell to than the average person is going to be about who they give gifts to. (Unless you buy Christmas gifts for every person that ever steps foot in your house and I really doubt many people would)
Women will never allow prostitution to be legalized. The institution of marriage will dissolve once men figure out that renting is cheaper than buying.
Who needs Penthouse? This post is so hot...
Wow - some amazing comments above. Such as:
I must have missed all the hedge fund violence.
And then-
from Brooksfoe leads to
Thanks, Megan, you made me laugh for the first time ever.
The statement is so absurd I assume it's parody.
Did this get pasted into the wrong thread? The post I read was about a legal or 'cultural' ban on prostitution.
And then there's a couple of you, who probably know who you are, who should just be ashamed, or have probably already crawled back into the sewer you came from. With "Blake."
Prostitution would be legal if the elected prostitutes in congress could figure out how to regulate it and (more importantly) tax it.
I know someone who used to work security in a brothel (they are illegal here, but still sometimes well-run). Many of the girls actually enjoyed both the work and the life it afforded them, he says. Yes, they liked being with punters in a secure environment of a well-run house. I suspect it would have been different on the street, or in a less-reputable house of ill-repute, as it were, but legalising brothels could help that.
I'm all for taking a practical standpoint about prostitution laws, so let's look at the way things really are instead of the way we would like them to be. Despite the fact that prostitution is illegal it is widely available and easily found and obtained. Just go into any major city and check out the local yellow pages for Escort Service or Massage Parlor. The argument for laws prohibiting prostitution basically boil down to "it's immoral and therefore it should be illegal". So, the reality is that the law reflects society's disapproval of prostitution (and I am quite sure that the vast majority of Americans probably support laws against prostitution), but does very little to actually prevent prostitution from actually taking place. How is it that Libertarians are the ones who are thinking too abstractly about this while those supporting laws against prostitution are being realistic?
Just wait until the Japaneses perfect their sex-robots and we hear about all the prostitutes losing their jobs due to automation.
It's not just the social stigma, which can be cast aside as a meaningless abstract in your rather weak argument.
It's the fact that women who sell their bodies objectively ARE LESS desirable in the eyes of the vast majority of men compared to women who have the dignity not to devalue themselves in this way.
Allowing legal prostitution in NY would undermine the hierarchies. For legal prostitution to work lots of powerful institutions would have to change their dogma. Illegal prostitution reinforces the hierarchies.
It seems to me that if we boil down the peanuts past the shell, it comes down to this:
1)Does the state have a legitimate state interest in controlling prostitution?
If so, what is it?
Anecdotal evidence about crimes related to the underbelly of the wide range of "sex for sale" outlets, are mostly conclusory...and filled with fallacies of logic. Sex draws money, money causes violence, ergo...sex causes violence. Um...no.
Start with the premise that consenting adults are committing no other crime, than the moral one of selling and buying sex. Underage girls, slaves trading, force...eliminate any consent.
Lap dancers/strippers sell the "viewing" of their bodies...there is a stigma attached to taking off your clothes for the enjoyment of men, does the state have a legitimate state interest in criminalizing lap dancing based solely upon the stigma?
Or is viewing ok, but not touching? What type of viewing/touching...launches the state's right to intervene? And why?
The state is a road grader, not a hedge trimmer. It does very poorly when asked to enforce strictly moral issues. It lurches and sputters trying to find a balance, some sane equilibrium....and yet, often enacting sweeping pronouncements but with spotty and sporadic enforcement of laws that shoot fleas with bazookas.
The state is good at enacting and enforcing against the crime, not the sin. If we really don't like the sin...increase the stigmas...not the statutes.
"there is a severe social stigma attached to women who are promiscuous"
MM--
You may want to ponder for a moment where the social stigma comes from. All the fully-realized female characters in our past that I can think of come from the frontier (Belle Starr, Annie Oakley, Calamity Jane) or rock (Janis Joplin, Patty Smith). These are male-dominated realms.
Men, apart from a small moralistic band, do not socialize/stigmatize women. It is when the matriarchs move in that that takes place. The stigma is the shunning from failure to heed the matriarchy.
Just as far from all whites in the South were not repulsed by open water fountains, not everybody is busy stigmatizing women.
It seems to me that the main question that needs to be answered before considering the legalization of something that is currently illegal is:
Does legalizing it significantly reduce the overall negative effects on society of the currently illegal activity?
If the answer to this question is "NO," then legalizing the activity has no value-added.
Based on the statistics that many have cited here, legalizing prostitution has almost no chance of reducing the total amount of negative effects that society is currently experiencing and may even increase them. Hence, legalizing prostitution has no real value for our society and should be rejected on that basis alone.
In a society where 25 percent of teenage women have some form of STD, we have bigger problems than prostitution facing us. Therefore, we would be better served if we focused our time and energy on the type of promiscuous behavior that creates this problem rather than wasting our efforts debating legalization of prostitution.
RE: Pimps...
I think it depends on your definition of "pimp." Hookers, especially illegal ones, could certainly benefit from someone who functions as a booking agent, bodyguard, and bailor if/when they get arrested. In a legitimate brothel, a madam serves that role. And in a perfect world, the pimp/ho relationship would be entirely voluntary.
In reality, though, pimps are brutal thugs who take their hoes' money and give them only enough food and shelter to survive, while offering "protection" of the variety that beefy Sicilians offer shopkeepers. A pimp has territory, and if a ho wants to work that block, she has to pay rent in the area of 100% of her ho-cash, or she risks getting a taste of a pimp cane.
" ... TR: Logically I don't see how that would be justifiable, but I'd agree Rhode Island does fairly okay crime-wise. Much better than Nevada for certain. ..."
I don't have any statistics handy, but I would bet that the vast majority of crime in Nevada occurs in the urban counties where prostitution is illegal, rather than in the rural counties where it is legal.
As a personal aside, since I'm (hopefully) anonymous here: I visited the old Mustang Ranch once or twice, back in the 1970's or maybe the early 80's. It was a reasonably pleasant experience, but of course that was before AIDS came along -- or at least before AIDS was recognized as a serious problem. I sure as heck wouldn't try it today, although they used to say that the chance of catching an STD from a licensed Nevada prostitute was less than from the average college girl. Dunno if that is still true or if it ever was.
"A lot of other folks would buy the illegal home-grown stuff - since it will likely be better, stronger and/or cheaper than the official stuff."
Currently, pot is ridiculously expensive for how easy it is to produce it. Unless heavy regulations on strength are put on it and it's heavily taxed the official stuff would be of comparable quality and far cheaper than anything on the street today. I'm sure there would be a few people who'd grow themselves, but this would likely be for their own personal use. What legalization would do is destroy the huge profit margins that drive the drug industry.
"You can always tell an 'experienced' prostitute (like the three appearing on a cable show tonight) by the hard, cold, dead eyes.
That 'profession' wrings the humanity out of a woman.
That's why it shouldn't be legal, even if it is consensual (which I doubt it ever really is).
Posted by RJ | March 14, 2008 12:42 AM"
So are we going to outlaw being an attorney or working on Wall Street as well? How about working at 7-11 or McDonald's? How many jobs don't rob you of your happiness? Why do you think so many people are on Paxil, Zoloft, etc.?
"In a society where 25 percent of teenage women have some form of STD, we have bigger problems than prostitution facing us. Therefore, we would be better served if we focused our time and energy on the type of promiscuous behavior that creates this problem rather than wasting our efforts debating legalization of prostitution.
Posted by Darrell | March 14, 2008 9:23 AM"
Maybe like teaching them to put on condoms instead and admitting the fact that under 10% of people are virgins when they get married? Our entire educational structure on sex is based on a lie. People are going to fuck. Get over it.
"I'm a man, and I like smacking my wife around. She obviously must like it if she stays with me. Uncle Sam can go fuck himself if he wants to get involved with what happens between consenting adults."
If you cannot see where consent flies out of the window here, you are an idiot.
Making prostitution illegal won't make it go away. When does that work for anything?
I do have to wonder to what extent the fact that some type of legalization takes place in small areas, such as the Netherlands, thus make those areas hubs for the resulting criminal activities that could then become more diffused with surrounding areas legalizing it as well. It's also worth remembering that Amsterdam is one of the world's largest shipping hubs, which simply makes it easy to traffic people to there, so we shouldn't overlearn from just their example.
If you want to use social mores to control human behavior to decrease the incidence of prostitution, just switch the stigma more towards demonizing the johns as losers, not the prostitutes. Paying people for sex is just sad.
With this all said, how much difference is there between gold digging and hooking?
For fiction about prostitution & politicians, you might be interested in a book, Naked in Haiti: A Sexy Morality Tale About Tourists, Prostitutes & Politicians. I suspect that Megan McArdle would not disagree with this book, though given her feelings about prostitution, she might not enjoy it, either. But you might. Check it out. You can find is at www.dankingbooks.com.
I think Megan has a reasonable idea of the dehumanizing aspect of prostitution; she writes for Atlantic and has to deal with liberal emotion-based arguments for why taking away people's freedom using the monopoly force of government is somehow less harmful than letting adults decide for themselves based on their internal value system (which, god forbid, may differ from theirs). If reading these comments doesn't bring on cold dead eyes, nothing will.
As for those who are trying to equate prostitution with violence...you do hopefully recognize the argument from the drug czars regarding the relationship between drugs and violence as circular, right? People were only shooting each other over cases of whiskey during Prohibition. Not to say the land of happy hookers lies on the other side of the legalization tracks, but there are plenty of jobs that aren't pleasant to perform (and I'd wager most readers of Atlantic have only a passing familiarity with them, so you can also stop trying to criticize Megan on her privileged upbringing).
"... practices which produce demonstrable harm to third parties"
Ah, that's one of those devils that lurks in the details. There are several others, but let's take a closer look at this one, shall we?
"Demonstrable harm to third parties." To whom must harm be demonstrated? In a country with socialized medicine, being overweight or drinking alcohol causes harm to the taxpayers who must pay extra for the medical bills of the irresponsible. Which third parties should harm be demonstrated against? Freedom of speech caused demonstrable harm to Leona Helmsley, but also to African-American victims of the KKK and Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
Remember, anything you demand the government involve itself in to favor you, it will eventually involve itself in to favor someone you despise. Jimmy Carter created the NSA that Dubya today uses to conduct warrantless wiretapping (and no, he didn't extend its powers any to do so; in fact, its powers have been limited over time).
What is it with middle brow intellectual women like Megan and Kerry Howley that they think hooking is so great? First, prostitution is damaging to women. One need only look at the trail of shattered lives of women who engaged in this kind of business for evidence. Not all of that is due to prohibition. The ones who work in Nevada or Amsterdam where it is legal end up just as damaged.
Megan says that she wouldn't hook but she wouldn't play professional basketball either. Really? My guess is that if Megan had the skills necessary to do so and could make $250K a year or more doing it, she would change her mind and play some ball for a few years. The same is true of hooking. Megan is a decent looking woman and could easily make $250K or more if she put her mind to prostituting herself. But, she is not hooking.
Megan will come back and say that she wouldn't hook because she doesn't like the considerable social stigma with hooking, which is true. Of course, but most hookers operate in private. Unless Megan has the misfortune of seeing a high profile client who is later outed, the chances of anyone knowing she is a hooker and her being outed and suffering social stigma are pretty small. There are presumably 1000s of high end hookers in this country and Kristen is the only one the public at large can name. Megan or Howley could easily hook on the side in private to save for retirement with little chance of anyone ever knowing about it. So, social stigma really isn't much of a deterrent.
Yet, Megan or Howley would never hook in a million years. Why? The answer is that they are talking out of their butts when they say that there is nothing morally wrong with hooking. For whatever reason, be it societal or evolutionary people put emotional investment into sex and it is damaging to them to sell their bodies in that manner. It is not just women because gay male prostitutes suffer much the same damage as female ones.
Megan and Howley are standing on the sidelines cheering other women on to do things they would never do in real life and which will cause significant harm to them. It is frankly disgusting. I guess to have your libertarian female bonifides these days you have to embrace women prostituting themselves.
It is important to note that this is not about legalization. The fact is that no matter damaging and lousy prostitution is the law is never going to stop it and trying to stop it just makes a bad situation worse. But just because it is impractical or unwise to make something legal doesn't mean that is desirable, moral or in any way commendable. Megan and Howley seem to confuse this issue and think that just because something should be legal or should not be the realm of the government that it is necessarily anything but evil. They suffer from the same intellectual sickness of statist liberals only in reverse. Statists think that anything that is immoral or bad should be illegal. Megan and Howley seem to think that anything that should be legal is necessarily good. Both sides make the same mistake of not separating the government from the moral spheres.
Ultimately, I don't think Megan or Howley believe a word of what they are saying. If the stigma of being a prostitute were magically to disappear tomorrow, they would no more want their mother or daughter doing it they would want to do it themselves. Their thoughts on the subject are the equivalent of a 14 year old trying to shock her mother. I have come to expect that from Howley, but I am really disappointed in Megan because she usually is much better than that.
Reality Man:
An attitude like yours is what brought us the 25 percent statistic that I quoted. I have raised several children through their teen years and have at least been successful in helping them to act more responsibly in their sexual choices. Most of them have waited until marriage to explore sexual intimacy. They have happy marriages and children that are loved, cared for, and taught good principles to live by.
I stand by my opinion that spending time on legalizing prostitution is a waste. It solves nothing and provides no tangible overall benefits to society.
If parents in our society would begin to take their jobs more seriously and be parents rather than enablers of poor behavior, I think that many of our societal problems like those associated with prostitution would diminish over time. Many of the growing problems in our society are simply reflections of the decline of the family unit.
It is often overlooked that illegalizing an activity has costs as well as benefits. In this case and many others, one of the costs is that poorly enforced laws tend to engender disrespect for the law. The founders of this country wanted to create a country of laws, not of men, but it's hard to see how this is possible when the law is widely disrespected. Here's a short list of notable people who have disrespected the law: Eliot Spitzer (prostitution), Marion Barry (drugs), Bill Bennett (gambling). Anyone care to add to this?
To the fact that an average looking 20 year old girl has more social capital in her good looks than an average 45 year old man with a good job, savings, a house, and a pension has in his whole life?
wow...I never thought about it that way. I am totally depressed. lol.
Amusingly, many of the people who make the "if prostitution is so great, why aren't you a prostitute?" argument are the same ones who vehently object to the "if higher taxes are so great, why aren't you voluntarily paying them?" argument.
"Amusingly, many of the people who make the "if prostitution is so great, why aren't you a prostitute?" argument are the same ones who vehently object to the "if higher taxes are so great, why aren't you voluntarily paying them?" argument."
Doesn't that go the other way to? Megan would certainly make that argument to people who advocate high taxes. The answer is that there is truth to both arguements.
Doesn't that go the other way to?
Not really, since there's no social stigma to paying more taxes and the state doesn't force you to be a prostitute.
It solves nothing and provides no tangible overall benefits to society.
We could have said the same for ending Prohibition.
Sex is a service some people want and other people are willing to provide. Music, movies, plays, books, and TV entertainment provide "no tangible benefit to society" either. They're wasteful and therefore immoral. Let's outlaw them too! While we're at it, let's make selling abortion and guns illegal as well, since people find them morally objectionable.
The problem with outlawing consensual transactions is that it simply drives those activities into illegal channels, where contracts cannot be enforced via the state's monopoly on violence under the rule of law. Instead, as in lawless societies, the most ruthless and violent are the most successful, and the beneficiaries of hugely inflated profit margins due to the restricted supply.
There is another angle to this. What does being a whore do to your brain? We could ask about your soul as well, but I think it is best to stick with neurology in this context.
Orgasm is a huge neural event. Now I am not so naive as to think that prostitutes have lots of orgasms while at work, but I wonder what all the sexual activity does in terms of activating the brain in ways that are similar. We are hardwired to be sexual responsive in a number of ways. Sex stirs us up, and I bet it does even when it is your job.
Most of the time this is wonderful! It makes couples closer and strengthens their emotional bond by activating and strengthening the attachment pathways of the brain. There are neurological changes from repeated sexual encounters. As those encounters are positive, good things happen!
But what about when they are negative? What happens to the orbitalfrontal cortex during repeated business sex? What does that do to the ability to attach to other people? How does it affect the brain's ability to self-soothe?
I don't know, but I do know that sex is a complex and powerful neurological event, and that it is treated as if it were not in our culture. Decades ago, physicians did not know that they could reduce the spread of germs by washing their hands. What will we learn about sexual encounters affect on the brain in the next 20 years?
Again, I do not know, but I am not so naive as to think that sexual encounters are anything other than one of the most powerful neurological events this side of a traumatic brain injury.
Trey
But reasoning is the only way to figure out what laws we should force our fellow citizens to live by. The alternative, as Megan pointed out, is going with "your gut" - i.e. not thinking at all. That's the exact distinction she drew - thinking vs. not thinking - no more and no less. To imply anything further - as in "ha ha, Megan is a glibertarian robot who thinks human relations boil down to logic and equations" - is to mischaracterize her words for the sake of being argumentative.
You must have lead a remarkably uneventful life.
Rob-
Nice parody of a moron without reading comprehension skills.
brooksfoe wrote "reasoning from first principles", which is a qualified form of the general concept of "reasoning." brooksfoe wasn't saying we shouldn't reason at all--although by your post, its quite obvious that you took (what you perceived to be) his advice.
If prostitution is so terrible, how many prostitutes want it banned?
Not “how many former prostitutes, or people who work with prostitutes”, but how many of the people who are supposed to benefit from this ban, want it.
"Why aren't you a prostitute?"
"Because I'm an economist."
Heh, giving a one-line answer to anything would be very un-economist-like, though, wouldn't it?
Moral corruption is one reason prostitution is so terrible. Sex becomes just an pleasure center, another device with no thought about long term consequences to the persons physical as well as psychological health.
Add to that the fact sex is also about making babies, and babies are the lifeblood of society (no children, no society.)The debasement as to what one of the most major reasons for sex leads to such as abortion.
Sex can (and mucho does) transmit STDs. These not only are distructive to the individual who aquires them during promiscuous sex, but can be handed down to any babies that are conceived (unless you are also for abortion, which goes hand and hand with prostitution.)
If one can rationalize prostitution, then the notion of pedophile behavior being ok is not far behind. After all, sex is sex.
Paul-
The discussion is about prostitution---you seem to be vomiting up arguments against promiscuity. Fine. I don't think many people are going to stop their bumpin' n' grindin' to hear your pontifications, but I may be wrong.
bee tee dub. If you can't discriminate between two adults exchanging money for sexual favors, and one adult raping a child, then I suggest you seek some psychological help.
"You must have lead a remarkably uneventful life."
Quite the contrary, my dear, assumption making moron.
PS, there are other options between "thinking" and "not-thinking" it's what those of us with a brain call NOT REDUCING THE COMPLEX TO OVER SIMPLISTIC LIBERTARIAN DRIVEL BECAUSE WE'RE TOO STUPID TO UNDERSTAND NUANCE, COMPLEXITY, SHADES OF GRAY, OR AMBIVALENCE.
PPS Goddamn it, blogging is like drugs. I just can't get away. I think it should be banned.
Nobody wants a whorehouse in their neighborhood, or in their apartment building. You set up a red light district, and they'll be plenty of men who won't want to go to that red light district for various reasons. So you'll still have illegal whorehouses outside of the red light district.
I wonder how many people who are in favor of legalizing prostitution wouldn't mind having a whorehouse right next door to them.
The Fop wrote
If "set up a red light district, and they'll be plenty of men who won't want to go to that red light district for various reasons."
Maybe, just maybe, one of those 'various reason's that men don't go to the red light district littered with whorehouses is.... THEY DON'T WANT TO VISIT A WHOREHOUSE!!!!!!!!1
What did Megan mean by "Your gut is not a good replacement for reasoning from first principles"? Well, she told us: "I need a better reason than 'it's icky' or 'there's something wrong with a woman who would do that' to justify either a moral or a cultural ban on the practice". That's all. It isn't as if she's claiming that our prostitution laws should be derived from quantum mechanics or something. Harping on her use of the phrase "reasoning from first principles" is being overly literal and deliberately argumentative.
Enjoy the weekend, angry people. Try not to waste it seething over simplistic morons like me. :)
"but I would bet that the vast majority of crime in Nevada occurs in the urban counties where prostitution is illegal, rather than in the rural counties where it is legal."
Yes because more people live in urban areas than rural ones. A small town can't get the same number of crimes as a big city unless maybe everyone is at war with everyone else. I was thinking more in per-capita terms.
And as for the prostitutes from what I remember many Dutch prostitutes did not favor the greater legalization. If prostitution is illegal there's less chance of it being taxed or regulated. I would gather even in the Netherlands many prostitutes aren't exactly brilliant at managing taxes and government regs.
Sorry, saying that you want other commenters to die still verboten. Happy Friday! ~M
Nobody wants a whorehouse in their neighborhood, or in their apartment building.
Fop, they don't want a sewage farm nearby either. That is not much of an argument against the construction of sewage farms.
If one can rationalize prostitution, then the notion of pedophile behavior being ok is not far behind. After all, sex is sex.
Paul, I imagine someone used that argument against the legalisation of homosexual acts. After all, sex is sex.
TallDave:
Like I said before, until there is a good reason to believe that legalizing prostitution will be a good thing rather than a neutral or bad thing, efforts to legalize it are a waste of time. Under prohibition, we had very bad things going on in society that convinced us that prohibition needed to be abolished. I currently don't see a clear basis right now that would support the same arguments for legalizing prostitution.
MMcA's answer is a lot better than my answer ("knee injury").
"An attitude like yours is what brought us the 25 percent statistic that I quoted. I have raised several children through their teen years and have at least been successful in helping them to act more responsibly in their sexual choices. Most of them have waited until marriage to explore sexual intimacy. They have happy marriages and children that are loved, cared for, and taught good principles to live by.
I stand by my opinion that spending time on legalizing prostitution is a waste. It solves nothing and provides no tangible overall benefits to society.
If parents in our society would begin to take their jobs more seriously and be parents rather than enablers of poor behavior, I think that many of our societal problems like those associated with prostitution would diminish over time. Many of the growing problems in our society are simply reflections of the decline of the family unit.
Posted by Darrell | March 14, 2008 11:29 AM"
Teens who sign virginity pledges have the same rate of STD's as teens who don't. Hell, I didn't wait and I'm STD free. Guess what, considering that like 5% of Americans actually do wait, chances are your kids were just shoveling you the shit you wanted to eat. My ex-girlfriend whom I lost my virginity with was from an old upper-class Spanish Catholic family. Last I heard, her parents still think she's still a virgin too. "The decline of the family unit" is jut the newest bogeyman to scare impressionable people. In fact, if you look at the numbers, you'll see a secular drop over in in the teen pregnancy rate.
States like MA have the highest percentage of their population married, have the lowest divorce rate and have a population that gets married later in life than the average American. Guess what, most of them don't wait and they have nowhere near the teen pregnancy problem of many Southern states and Texas. Not teaching kids about safe sex doesn't lead to less sex, but more unprotected sex, more teen pregnancies and just as many STD's. In fact, signers if virginity pledges are 4 times more likely to try anal sex. Put that in you pipe and smoke it. All that's changed is that in the old days there was a sharp virgin/whore social divide (and since everyone only married locally, the "whores" never got married) and if one of the "virgins" got pregnant, she went to visit her grandparents for nine months and returned with her new baby "sibling." (This happened to Jack Nicholson and his mother. He was raised to think his mother was his sister.) This bullshit theater isn't done anymore because nobody believed it back then anyway. Besides, read up on what WWII Baby Boomer vets were up to once they got back to the US. They were trying all types of sexual shit with any girl who would have them.
We get it Darrell, your default position is to believe a monopoly agency of force can ban any activity, and the onus of proof is on those trying to justify freedom. It's like the anti-Constitution.
Also, nowhere in their posts have McArdle or Howley says that being a prostitute is awesome. It just seems like if people don't constantly condemn prostitutes with "OMG DEM WHORES ARE TEH SATAN!!!!" that they think being a prostitute is all fun and games and candy and gumdrops and unicorn kisses.
"Under prohibition, we had very bad things going on in society that convinced us that prohibition needed to be abolished. I currently don't see a clear basis right now that would support the same arguments for legalizing prostitution.
Posted by Darrell | March 14, 2008 4:00 PM"
It's seems to me that it would lower the ability of cops to rape prostitutes by using the threat of arrest to force them into sex.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39100
Reality Man-
I loved this: "In fact, signers if virginity pledges are 4 times more likely to try anal sex. Put that in you pipe and smoke it."
Why did you have to bring up felching?
Prostitution and promiscuity in general bear a stigma because they are risky. There are the risks of getting an STD or starting a pregnancy. There are also the risks of damage from the emotions wrapped up in such primal acts.
The stigma is greater for a woman because her risks are greater. She has a greater risk of getting an STD than a man does. The consequences of starting a pregnancy are greater for the woman. It's smart to arrange for help in child rearing before the child is conceived.
Promiscuity demonstrates an inability to defer immediate gratification for long term benefit.
A prostitute at least gets paid, but the retirement plan sucks.
It makes sense for a woman to be more conservative about sex than a man.
"Guess what, considering that like 5% of Americans actually do wait, chances are your kids were just shoveling you the shit you wanted to eat."
Statistics don't necessarily work like that. (And I'm not sure I believe the 95% statistic anyway) The 5% might include a disproportionate amount of people whose parents are like him.
Besides that it's not that unusual to lose virginity after 18. My parents were strict on no pre-marital sex and I'd agree it didn't achieve that goal. (I'm the only one of the six to not have pre-marital sex, but I'm disabled so maybe don't count) However I think only one of my siblings did it in their teens. And my siblings are willing to tell me things they did that they wouldn't tell the folks. Half of them had little or no experience before they got enganged. None of us had STDs, got pregnant in our teens, or got anyone pregnant in our teens. Only two of us got pregnant, or got someone pregnant, outside of wedlock. In the case of my brother he was enganged to the woman he got pregnant.
So possibly by starting with a strict premise my siblings "compromised." They didn't reject pre-marital sex in general, but saw it as something to do after they move out of the house and only with someone they care about. Whereas one of my sisters started with the premise that teens, particularly boys, are probably going to do it anyway. Two of her three kids had children out of wedlock. Her son had two kids before he turned 20 and is as yet unmarried.
Darrell:
I stand by my opinion that spending time on legalizing prostitution is a waste. It solves nothing and provides no tangible overall benefits to society.
So everything should be illegal, until it can be proven to be beneficial?
I think eating in a restaurant is disgusting. Who knows who handled your food. There is a lot of food poisoning from restaurants. Restaurant food is by and large very unhealthy. And expensive. And, waitresses are REALLY exploited.
Let's outlaw restaurants. That will save money and bring families closer together.
There was a study a while back about carriage rates of HPV (virus that causes cervical dysplasia). It was higher prevalence among college coeds than sex workers. Shall we ban premarital sex?
Gay men have much higher rates of HIV than sex workers. 1/4th of gay men in Baltimore are HIV positive. Shall we ban homosexuality?
Like a person who works in this industry said, We are like anybody else, just better looking.
The real reason women hate prostitution is because it allows men to engage in sex (which all man crave. They really do) on their own terms. They don't have to depend on some woman to donate sex to them. The donation is usually very expensive and time consuming and comes with many, many strings attached. This of course gives women great bargaining power with men. Prostitution prevents the exploitation of men by woman.
To hear women who campaign against prostitution complaining about male hypocrisy is just a joke.
Someone who makes such a big issue over my reading comprehension, and picks nits over the exact meaning of phrases like "reasons from first principles", should be careful to distinguish between "me" and "morons like me". While I doubt that you will be thinking of me for days, perhaps you'll be sent into a sputtering rage of sarcasm by some other moron with the temerity to disagree with you.
Someone who makes such a big issue over my reading comprehension might want to read a little more carefully. I don't think she said that "she's thought about things" and that others haven't. I think she said that we SHOULD think about things, rather than just accept our culturally-ingrained attitudes about them.
Rob, you astound.
you're right, I SHOULD think about things. I hadn't thought of that before. I will commence thinking abouts things on your advice.
Also, I was planning on being angry with 'people like you' all weekend long. You caught me. I was really hoping I could pull a bit of intellectual dishonesty there by naming you in particular rather than your cohorts.
Dan: if you're still reading, I don't really favor putting prostitutes in prison. It's stupid on several levels. The only justification for arresting and charging actual prostitutes is to scare them into ratting out their pimp, which many of them are reluctant to do otherwise. Whether jailing those who don't rat him out to scare the others is justified is another question.
On the flip side, incarceration has benefits as well as costs; most prisons have a drug treatment program, job training programs, a GED program, etc. Prison isn't a nice place, but it is a potential path upward for addicts who decide they really, really do want out. So it's not impossible that our meth-addicted single mother hooker could benefit from a year in the pokey.
"I loved this: "In fact, signers if virginity pledges are 4 times more likely to try anal sex. Put that in you pipe and smoke it.""
If Silda had been willing to try this, we might not be having this discussion...
I still stand by my earlier point - legalizing prostitution will bring some portion of the industry into the light, and that is the fairly high-end portion which is already fairly self-regulated and the least dangerous for the girls. The teenagers, the runaways, the IV druggies, the women imported as slaves - I presume that they will not be eligible to take part in the legal prostitution regime? So the worst parts of the industry will still be illegal, but since there will be legal portions, it will actually be harder to prosecute the illegal part. It's sort of like the Ivory Trade ban.
RICKM,
Once you get to rationalize sex for money (and yes there are male prostitutes for both males and females) then it gets easier to rationalize other pleasures. There are such organizations as NAMBL for example and I won't even go into SM or other avenues.
I notice you didn't even mention what such does to any conception of children (or should we use the PC 'fetus'.) Nor STDs, as we all know what the major transmission method of AIDs is.
One thing about debased sex, once you enter that realm, you will want more and more 'varieties'.
People think when you go to a prostitute it ends there, but it's only the beginning. And it's all downhill.
Wow, the comments sure aren't getting any more reasonable. I'm guessing that Megan, like myself, holds to the general view that we shouldn't try to shove our preferences down the throats of others.
There is a good reason why prostitution is called the oldest profession. It is not only preposterous, it is in fact invidious to try to eliminate it. It can't be done. Politicians who campaign on the platform of eliminating vices should be boiled in oil, before they can do any further harm to us. Look at what we've got from them. Eliot Spitzer made a career (!) out of demonizing those whom he regarded as weaker than him, yet he was, and according to credible reports has been, for many years a consumer of vice. Is this your role model? You are free to disavow him, but the Jimmy Swaggarts of the world aren't much better. A pox on all your houses.
Re: Law and culture tend to reinforce each other. If the law says 'x' is legal, culture tends to more readily accept 'x'.
This is not necessarily true. It is perfectly legal to use the "n" word, in fact it's constitutionally protected. But our culture has come to regard the use of that word (except in slang by the very people it denigrates) as more obscene and unacceptable than any number of sex and bodily function terms. Culture can indeed maintain strong and successful taboos without legal backing.
"Prostitution prevents the exploitation of men by woman."
Comments like this make me think there are men more angry at women than I expected.
Does being turned down really grate on your ego that much? Is the male libido and ego that ravenous? Do you really see women as these manipulative c***teasers? If you find the idea of a woman having to agree as exploitation this is only a stones throw away from justifying rape.
If men are this well, pathetic we probably need to think about phasing them/us out. It's not something I feel good about it, but look at the prisons. Look at the crime rate, particularly violent crime, in any nation on Earth. Possibly sex-selective abortion of males is an idea that's time has sadly come.
Now obviously I don't believe that. Obviously most men have control of themselves, are decent, and contribute unique services to society. Still threads like this kind of make me consider my traditional view that we are morally and spiritually inferior. (Which relates to why I believe in a male priesthood oddly enough. Men need guidance way more than women because we're clearly more screwed up and amoral)
Just a quick note without reading all the rest of the comments: in Sudhir Venkatesh's books about the projects & inner city ghettos, he interviews a lot of prostitutes; it turns out that those who work for pimps ARE much less likely to be abused by their customers, earn more, are less likely to be arrested, and are less likely to get STDs.
Obviously, there aren't statistical controls nor do we know if this would change when the criminal emphases were changed, but somebody made this argument in ironic jest early in the comments, and I think it's worth at least a bit more than that.
Re: Consequences of outlawing prostitution, it's also worth looking at the video in a newer post with the Atlantic "table discussion". One of the participants talks about how selective enforcement of the prostitution laws - and realistically, given limited police resources, could we do anything more? - can have particularly perverse consequences. For instance, it essentially gives license for police officers to extort prostitutes for sex any time they want, pretty much akin to rape. Interesting point, and one Venkatesh also mentions as actually happening.
One step that would seem to make sense regardless of other measures would be to have a policy (and preferably a law) of never prosecuting, imprisoning, or investigating prostitutes who come to the police to report abusive johns, pimps, or other crimes, nor prostitutes who seek help from health services on STDs.
I think there are arguments on both sides, but these are worth throwing out there.
RICKM - Paul-The discussion is about prostitution---you seem to be vomiting up arguments against promiscuity.
If you're still reading; do you honestly believe that legalizing prostitution would decrease promiscuity? Or even hold it level? I'd be willing to wager that fewer people drank during prohibition.
What about the fact that God calls it a sin in the Bible?
Timeless, changeless truth trumps man's rationalization.
There is a huge point that every one is missing: let's look at prostitutions causes. 1. someone wants sex 2. someone wants control.
Wanting sex isn't bad. Sex, just sex by itself, is healthy. People who want sex, wherein they aren't breaking a vow to be sexually monogamous, and if they are careful about STD's and birth control, isn't bad. If it's negotiated over money, then where is the harm.
So the points in the above to refute are that sex for the sake of sex is good, and that simply bypassing courtship with money isn't bad. All arguments about child rearing, promiscuity, The-Inevitable-Slide-Into-Pederasty do not apply.
Now, control sex, sex where the act of paying for it is the transgressive buzz, is a form of sadism. That can easily turn into the type of sex that is coersive, because the coersion is what you want. THAT IS ENTIRELY DIFFERENT FROM SEX. THAT IS SADISM AND POWER. IF POT WERE LEGAL, HE'D USE COKE.
So, why doesn't legalizing prostitution automatically get rid of the crime? Because some of the clients are looking for the crime in the first place.
So why aren't all prostitutes unhappy basket cases with a Sam's Club membership for the bulk meth in the countries where prostitution is legal? A reasonable hypothesis is that, for the most part, they are dealing with people who just want sex.
What is the libertarians do to eliminate people who are into sexual transgression, and sexual sweat shops arranged by importing women for the task?
Wow. I suppose I should take off my boxing gloves when I type. Or use that preview option.
So what is the libertarian solution to the ...