Topic: Prostitution
Progress for New Zealand's Sex Workers When will prohibitionists learn?by RS Davis
(Libertarian)
Friday, May 30, 2008
George Carlin once famously quipped that prostitution is the only instance where it is illegal to charge for something that it is perfectly legal to give away for free.
When looked at that way, puritanical laws against money for sex seem absurd, but on closer inspection, we find they are patently absurd.
The arguments against prostitution are varied, except in their stupidity. They'll say it's to protect the women from being taken advantage of or harmed by violence and disease, while ignoring that it is the black market nature of prostitution that forces girls to work with pimps, get into unsafe situations with complete strangers (occassionally serial killers), and provides no protection from disease for sex workers or their clientele.
One particularly infuriating argument removes all free will from women and condescendingly assumes that no one would choose this for themselves. It has made the rounds numerous times, with incindiary phrasing like "white slavery," describing situations where women were held captive and forced to service numerous men a night.
But the facts belie that assumption:"after spending $150 million on task forces and grants since 2000, the federal government had identified only 1,362 victims of sex trafficking in the U.S."
The truth is, many women choose to be prostitutes for many reasons, and this is supported by recent news out of New Zealand, who decriminalized prostitution five years ago:
Around 93 per cent of sex workers cited money as the reason for getting into and staying in the sex industry.
"The most significant barriers to exiting are loss of income, reluctance to lose the flexible working hours available in the sex industry and the camaraderie and sense of belonging that some sex workers describe."
Victims? Naah. Capitalists.
Prohibitionists of every stripe like to say that legalizing consensual behaviors like the sale of sex and drugs will lead to an explosion in people selling and buying these products. Leaving aside the obvious "So what?", let's concentrate on the data, and see if that is true. From the same article:
The Prostitution Law Review Committee was set up to report on the Prostitution Reform Act 2003 three to five years after the act came into force.
Its report, just published, was based on work carried out by the Christchurch School of Medicine and Victoria University's Crime and Justice Research Centre....
...a comparison between the number of sex workers in Christchurch in 1999, before decriminalisation, and 2006 - after the act was passed - showed the total had stayed about the same.
A 2007 estimate in five centres - Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Hawkes Bay and Nelson - found a total of 2332 sex workers, the committee said.
Now, New Zealand only decriminalized prostitution, which is a good step, but it doesn't remove all of the negative aspects of the black market. Things are a little safer now than they used to be, but without the ability to set up a store front and have legal protections and contracts, they won't make the kind of real progress they are hoping for. But they are trying:
"The committee recommends that the sex industry, with the help of the Department of Labour and others, moves towards written, best-practice employment contracts ... becoming standard for sex workers working in brothels."
The best thing New Zealand can do is look to Nevada as an example - their experiment with legal prostitution has been an amazing success.
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2008 RS Davis, all rights reserved.
Published: Friday, May 30, 2008
Last modified: Friday, May 30, 2008
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Well done. And it is indeed true that some women choose that life-an ex-girlfriend of mine did for a couple of years, made a ludicrious amount of money, and is somehow still not a drug addict. Gee whizz.
There are times I wish I was born a women....or cute..;)
We are all prostitutes! If the sex-police were to enforce the prostitution laws they could theoretically arrest any one of us. For example, if I pay of a dinner and some drinks to a date and then have sex with her, that is a barter which is also some form of payment If the dinner bill was split in half, then I gave her a ride (another barter). If somebody gets married he and she are exchanging their entire present and future net worth (or lack thereof) for each other. Also a form of payment (excesive sometimes). If they get divorce, then they have to pay to NOT get sex anymore so the divorce settlement is a payment for the married years (years of sexual transactions). If you don't get married and if you live together with your girlfriend, the rent or utilities is aslo some form of barter for sex.
Bottom line: We would all need to be arrested, WE ARE ALL PROSTITUTES
The only real way of not commit the crime of prostitution would to be abstinence and use artificial insemination. But who wants to do that? Even then, the doctor who introduces the semen into the PAYING woman's vagina, ist he also a prostitute?
How about my Urologist? I paid him to touch my scrotum (which was very uncomfortable). Is't he a prostitute?
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2008 RS Davis, all rights reserved.