
Regulating Sex Work in Medieval Europe - gotocake
https://daily.jstor.org/regulating-sex-work-in-medieval-europe/
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Aegaeus10111
I have never understood the concept of victimless crime. If two (or more)
people are free to choose to have sex together _and_ such parties are free to
enter into a commercial / labor agreement how can the combination of the two
be a problem?

It seems to me that it's a way to keep women from capitalizing on the area in
which they have unique value over men.

Obviously I'm not talking about forced sex - or forced anything. Kidnapping,
slavery, and rape are illegal and certainly apply in forced prostitution.

But in cases when it's a choice freely made by all parties concerned legal
status can only help make it safer for all.

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ex3ndr
Selling weapons to ISIS is not a crime then?

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gumby
That’s a great example, but consider the framing of the last sentence of the
gp’s post:

> But in cases when it's a choice freely made by all parties concerned ...

Presumably the targets of isis’s weapons are “parties” and don’t want to be
shot at.

Then again, what about hiring police: the robber is a “party” too and
presumably does _not_ consent to being caught!

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Aegaeus10111
"...the robber is a “party”..." yes, but by definition a party that has
already broken the law and mutual consent - the interaction with police would
be a direct result, or an extension of that non-consensual act.

:-)

I can imagine lots of extreme edge cases and semantic word play on this - and
I guess phrasing things to take in every conceivable situation is why lawyers
make so much.

I'll stick with "the spirit of the notion".

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walrus01
Sex work was sufficiently centralized in medieval red light districts that a
number of places in the UK have a street named "gropecunt lane". Which is
exactly what it sounds like.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gropecunt_Lane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gropecunt_Lane)

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the_mitsuhiko
> A 1393 London ordinance limiting the parts of the city where sex workers
> could operate attributed problems with the trade specifically to “Flemish
> women, who profess and follow such shameful and dolorous life.”

This is pretty common even today. There are many parts in Vienna for instance
where working girls are not allowed to advertise their services.

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CPLX
Why are they using medieval Europe as some kind of tool for speculation about
legal sex work in the U.S.?

It’s a bizarre line of discussion given that for the most part sex work is
legal _today_ in Europe.

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leoh
It's just an interesting historical perspective, they don't have a heavy-
handed agenda or anything. Augustine's perspective is interesting:

> Remove prostitutes from human affairs and you will destroy everything with
> lust.

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licebmi__at__
It's an interesting topic but I also find bizarre the relation with modern
policy.

I'm both amused and horrified with the idea on the full sentence where your
quote is portrayed: >Theologians followed the teachings of Saint Augustine,
who wrote that it was better for sinful men to frequent brothels than to
“corrupt” their wives or other respectable women with nonprocreative sex:
“Remove prostitutes from human affairs and you will destroy everything with
lust.”

It's kinda silly to imagine a group of "celibate" men suggesting the
practicals of prostitution instead of corrupting virtuous women with non
procreative sex, and at the same time horrible to consider that in the context
of bad contraceptive methods, the advice was to subject some of the women to
be second class citizens.

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mobilefriendly
Given how dangerous child-birth was, there's a something of a tradition going
back to at least the Romans of protecting a wife by using prostitutes for base
sex

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watwut
It was less dangerous for those prostitutes? The chilbirth and childcare was
more disastrous and difficult for them as they were single mothers and
breadwinners as a result.

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mirimir
True, but they were considered ~disposable.

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watwut
Yes, and that is why the "both amused and horrified" comment makes perfect
sense. Other thing that makes perfect sense is the characterization of it all
as "the advice was to subject some of the women to be second class citizens"
\- yes, in exchange of other women being more protected.

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glitchc
What is unclear from this document are the mechanisms for conferring legal
status. I came away curiously disappointed. Anyone have thoughts?

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TheSpiceIsLife
I’d like to see the industry regulated and that it’s practioners are required
to obtain certification, or at least optionally so.

This would not resolve all issues, but you could at least have the option to
see a practioner who has done a senior first aid course and knows how to
identify STDs.

More widely, I believe sex work should be absorbed in to the _healing_
modalities and professions.

We drastically need to take a different approach to sexual wellbeing, because
whatever we have been doing has lead to a sexually violent culture.

I believe the dishonoured / unregulated / unintegrated / unlawful practice of
sex work is both a cause and a symptom of our culture’s worst aspects.

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keypusher
I am fascinated by all the 3-legged furniture in the painting. The design
guarantees stability due to all legs being on the same plane, solving the
wobbling/instability problem so common in 4-legged tables and chairs. However,
quadripedal tables and chairs are nearly universal in the modern day, with
tripedal pieces being mostly reserved for eccentric art. I wonder at what
point the trend changed, did it have to do with manufacturing techniques or
simply aesthetics?

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asteli
Stability is a big issue for chairs especially. Rolling office chairs are
afaict all 5 legged these days, unless you happen to find an old one. OSHA
mandate.

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mikeash
I think that’s for failure tolerance. Five isn’t much more stable than four,
but if a wheel falls off then five remains stable.

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gotocake
From experience, if you lose a caster the chair won’t balance on the
remainder, it will thud down on the leg. What more legs does however is more
evenly distribute the load, which is important when rolling around, leaning
back and all, of the other things we do in office chairs.

