

Myths about prostitution - jseliger
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/10/AR2010091002670.html

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beilabs
Prostitution is 100% legal here in Australia so long as a number of rules are
followed. No soliciting near churches / residential areas.

It's safe, the workers are protected by law, they declare and pay their taxes.
The brothels pay their taxes, local services are improved as a result.

It's a no-brainer, those who want the service can get it in a safe manner,
those who do not still benefit from the taxes that are paid.

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stretchwithme
people trade all kinds of things for all kinds of things. We need to leave
people be.

should prostitution be regulated at all? I think that should be left at the
local level. And I mean very local. It should be possibile for neighborhoods
to ban it when most people don't want it and keep it legal where people are ok
with it, right in the same city.

I believe many people try to control things like prostitution, drugs and
gambling because they do not wish to be around it or have it devaluing their
property, not because they wish to control what everyone else is doing. We
need to find ways to let them do this and still preserve the freedom of
others.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I'm all for requiring sex workers to test themselves for STDs, and requiring
them to disclose any that they do have. Kind of hard to dismiss that with
"caveat emptor" - I know there are instant HIV tests, but what about
everything else?

~~~
stretchwithme
And I support the right of you and your neighbors to do exactly that in your
neighborhood.

~~~
flatline
Wait - you're saying that a district could legalize prositution and claim to
screen for STDs without centralized regulation and oversight? Caveat emptor
indeed...

~~~
mseebach
Wait - you're saying that a man should be able to pick up a random street-
walker and be right to expect that congress has made sure she's properly
tested for STDs? /sarcasm

Such schemes would likely come as "labels" that the district or individual sex
workers buy into, provided that they comply with the regulations set up by the
label. Some labels might gain a reputation for being stricter and cleaner then
others, other might be cheaper and "good enough".

~~~
hugh3
In many places where prostitution is legal, there are certain health-and-
safety conditions associated with running a brothel (the same way there are
certain health-and-safety conditions involved with running a restaurant) and
they include mandatory STD tests.

It's too hard to regulate individual prostitutes, but quite easy to regulate
brothels under the banner of existing local planning authorities. There will
still be individual prostitutes working outside the legal brothels, but you're
ensured much more safety if you go to one of the legit places.

/not from personal experience

~~~
mseebach
I'm not saying that public health and safety couldn't do this - I'm not even
saying they shouldn't. I just find it incredibly disingenuous to assume that
_only_ a public institution could conceivably perform this function.

Btw. regarding your argument that brothels could be regulated under local
planning authorities - I'm pretty sure that's _exactly_ what the OP was
talking about. We just got side-tracked by the minor point of who gets to do
the H&S.

~~~
stretchwithme
can you imagine if businesses never tested their own products, instead relying
solely on government to do all testing?

------
knowtheory
It's worth noting that this op-ed is by Sudhir Venkatesh, who is also
mentioned prominently in a chapter of Freakonomics. So, given his background
he probably actually does know what he's talking about!

~~~
jseliger
Yeah -- his book _Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor_ is
pretty good: [http://www.amazon.com/Off-Books-Underground-Economy-
Urban/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Off-Books-Underground-Economy-
Urban/dp/0674030710?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957)
. He's a very interesting guy, and I'm not surprised that he's decided to look
at prostitution more carefully because it's pretty hard to argue that high-end
prostitutes are being exploited or whatever. When I say high-end, think Belle
de Jour: <http://belledejour-uk.blogspot.com/> , who is compulsively readable
and hilarious.

------
sahillavingia
As an anecdote prostitution is legal in Singapore - a country recognized as
being very strict - and it works well.

People trade things for other things. Guys pay for dinner. That's not
considered immoral.

In general, prostitution will happen anyways, so no matter what you believe
you might as well make it regulated and as safe as possible - and taxed!

~~~
sudonim
Interesting wikipedia article
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Singapore>

Singapore gets a bad rap for being extremely strict. I grew up there and was
aware of prostitution but never realized it was legal.

~~~
sahillavingia
It definitely does, but I absolutely love it. A lot of people complain about
ridiculous fines for things like littering, but really the fines are never
going to effect you (you don't litter, right?! - at least in Singapore where
trash cans are every five feet), so the higher the fine the less violations =
awesome, safe, clean streets.

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Mz
When I decided to get divorced, I had a number of women tell me I could not do
that, I was too sick and I needed his money. I felt that said more about their
lives than mine, but it also anecdotally agreed with a remark I read once that
"there is more prostitution in marriage than outside of it". Unless/until
society finds a way for men and women to have financial parity of some sort,
quite a lot of women will continue to trade sex for money on some level,
whether it fits the legal definition of prostitution or not. To me, the
attention prostitution gets really just misses the mark.

~~~
wheaties
Even if there were as many women as men who were homeless or broke and
conversely fantastically wealthy you're still going to have women trading sex
for money. If there's a demand for something, someone, somewhere will figure
out a way to monetize it.

~~~
Mz
Um, I don't quite understand. Is that supposed to be a rebuttal? I don't
really care if people trade sex for money. I think if a woman freely chooses
that route, so what? If a woman makes a conscious decision that she would
rather take cash in hand from many men instead of a roof over her head and
food on the table from one man, so what? As I said, I think that focus really
misses the mark.

~~~
sliverstorm
Parity with men financially would mean the highs AND the lows. There are more
broke, destitute men than women.

If your ideal was realized- parity financially- you'd still have PLENTY of
women forced by their financial situation to 'prostitute' themselves into
marriage. You'd also have plenty with livable wages who'd try to marry up and
STILL 'prostitute' themselves into marriage.

The real difference as I see it is currently more men are willing to 'pay' for
such services than women. The way to equalize things is more likely to
equalize the demand.

~~~
gaius
Yes, this is the nasty little secret at the heart of feminism. They want to be
CEOs and who wouldn't? But men are also the vast majority of the homeless, the
prison population, the people doing dirty, dangerous jobs, the people getting
killed at work. There are more men than women denied the right to see their
kids, yet financially crippled supporting them - and their ex-wife - anyway.

Can't have it both ways.

~~~
alxp
> Yes, this is the nasty little secret at the heart of feminism.

The straw man version of feminism you hold in your head is not the one that
exists in real life. Google "patriarchy hurts men, too".

~~~
mseebach
There's a big slice of the feminist segment outside the intelligentsia for
whom feminism is pointing to a stat that says that X% of all Fortune 500
C-level execs or some such are men, and being outraged.

------
hugh3
One myth I've heard a bunch of times from anti-prostitution campaigners is
that something like two thirds of prostitutes enter the industry before the
age of 14, or something equally ludicrous-sounding. I don't know where that
number comes from, but it surely can't be right.

~~~
matwood
The problem with illegal prostitution and drugs for that matter is that since
they are illegal a lot of other illegal activities come along with it. In the
case of prostitution you have kidnapping, violence, and forcing people into
underage sex (and from what I've read most prostitutes start very very early
by being forced into it). If the girl is already doing something illegal and
gets beat by her pimp what is she going to do? Pimps prey on this thought that
there is nothing she can do.

Drugs are similar in that by making them illegal you bring in gangs, guns, and
even move violence. If someones pot dealer screws them over what is their only
recourse? Violence. You also have the violence of territory to sell on, etc...

IMHO, the illegality of things like drugs and prostitution actually causes the
social effects to be worse then if they were legal.

~~~
GFischer
I agree that social effects are probably worse, but making prostitution legal
doesn't solve all of them - after all, underage prostitution will always be
illegal (I hope) and probably rightly so, and that's one way into all those
illegal activities.

Here in Uruguay, prostitution is legal, yet we do have problems with minors
being pressed into prostitution, and also the sex export trade, where women
are more or less kidnapped and sent to Europe (Italy and Spain mostly)

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bediger
And none of these myths were about the economic side of that business, which
is what I half-expected from that author.

~~~
jakarta
But the author is a sociologist.

