I respect orders but I respect myself too and I do not obey to foolish rules made especially to humiliate me. – Jean-Paul Sartre
When pouring something out of a bottle, it’s important to hold the container at such an angle that the contents reach the mouth in a steady stream and thus flow out smoothly; when done correctly, this can be achieved from a great height without splashing (I often do it when pouring drinks to amuse myself). See, it’s not the velocity of the liquid which creates turbulence, but rather the size of the opening relative to the volume of fluid moving through it. If the bottle is tilted too far from the horizontal for the degree of fullness, the liquid trying to escape the bottle blocks the smooth flow of air into it, thus creating the turbulence which makes the familiar “glug-glug” sound and leads to splashing. And if the mouth of a bottle is very narrow and the container very full, it’s difficult to get the liquid to pour out without making a mess no matter how low the angle of elevation.
No, this isn’t a lesson in fluid dynamics, but rather the setup for a metaphor. We’ve all seen this principle in action, but apparently prohibitionists and politicians are unable to recognize that it works the same way with people. Whenever a government uses law or procedure to restrict the natural actions of human beings, the result is a situation exactly like that I described. As long as the regulatory “mouth” is wide enough and the number of people desiring to move through it small and gradual enough, there is no problem; for example, every student can graduate from school as soon as he completes the required course of study. There is no arbitrary cap on the number of graduates per year, nor a waiting period for entering school in the first place, nor a shortage of desks: the mouth of the jar is wide enough to allow a smooth and even flow. But as the “opening” is narrowed by restrictions such as licenses, quotas, partial prohibitions and other such measures, the fewer the number of people who can make it through in any given time period; if a very large number of people want to engage in the restricted activity, turbulence is generated just as it is in the highly-angled or narrow-necked bottle.
This is a major problem with “legalized” prostitution; it creates a bottleneck which is always smaller than the number of women who wish to engage in harlotry. Licensing impedes any woman who is unwilling or unable to secure such a license due to a criminal record or lack of a proper visa; registration impedes any woman who does not wish to be on a public “known prostitute” list; restricting the number of positions (such as Amsterdam-style windows) impedes any woman over that number; legalizing only brothels impedes those who are temperamentally unable to dance to someone else’s tune or practically unable to keep the required schedule, etc. But as in the case of the liquid, inability to flow through smoothly does not mean total stoppage; rather, it leads to a chaotic, uneven situation which results not only in the marginalization of a large fraction of the hooker population (80% of Nevada whores and 95% of Greek ones work illegally), but also establishes the opportunity for official corruption, enables exploitation of the sort fashionably labeled “sex trafficking”, and creates an underclass who are ripe targets for violence because they dare not report it for fear of being arrested themselves.
Prohibitionists are fond of pointing to such problems in legalization schemes in order to argue that the “neck” should be made smaller still by criminalization, which as the experiences of the United States and Norway have demonstrated is rather like trying to stop the flow from a garden hose by putting one’s thumb over the end. The recent report by the Kirby Institute on the sex industry in New South Wales points out the superiority of decriminalization over legalization:
…reforms that decriminalized adult sex work have improved human rights; removed police corruption; netted savings for the criminal justice system; and enhanced the surveillance, health promotion, and safety of the NSW sex industry. International authorities regard the NSW regulatory framework as best practice…Licensing of sex work (‘legalisation’) should not be regarded as a viable legislative response. For over a century systems that require licensing of sex workers or brothels have consistently failed – most jurisdictions that once had licensing systems have abandoned them. As most sex workers remain unlicensed criminal codes remain in force, leaving the potential for police corruption. Licensing systems are expensive and difficult to administer, and they always generate an unlicensed underclass…[which] is wary of and avoids surveillance systems and public health services: the current systems in Queensland and Victoria confirm this fact. Thus, licensing is a threat to public health…
Unfortunately, politicians are always happy to ignore facts if they think it will make them political coin:
The state government will take over the licensing of brothels from councils and establish a new authority to oversee the entire sex industry in a bid to rein in corruption and threats to workers. A new squad will clamp down on the running of brothels by organised crime groups, shut down illegal brothels and prevent the exploitation of workers as sex slaves in NSW. The Brothel Licensing Authority would also look at strip clubs, massage parlours and escort services, some of which “have functioned as pseudo-brothels”, Special Minister for State Chris Hartcher said yesterday… “One of the biggest issues is the exploitation of women, particularly Asian women”…
This is despite the total lack of any credible evidence for “organized crime”, “sex slaves” or anything else; as the Kirby report stated, “Some individuals…contend that hundreds of Asian women are trafficked to brothels in Australia but present little evidence. The Federal Government…found no evidence of recent trafficking of female sex workers in the Sydney brothel survey…” Luckily, not all legislators are lining up behind those who intend to cut off their noses to spite their faces:
…Greens MP Cate Faehrmann says a brothel licensing scheme will be a public health disaster for NSW, and could lead to increased rates of HIV infection and other sexually transmitted diseases. “The evidence against licensing is overwhelming. It will lead to poorer health and public safety outcomes, not just for sex workers but for the entire community…Licensing schemes have been a dismal failure in other states. Where they exist they are extremely expensive and have the opposite effect of what is intended, creating a more dangerous environment for sex workers and their clients. In contrast, NSW has an enviable record on HIV prevention, and this is partly down to the decriminalisation model…In Queensland, where brothel licensing scheme operates, around 90% of the industry has been forced underground. That means the majority of sex work is unregulated, illegal and therefore more dangerous. Workers and clients simply don’t have the kind of access to health services and law enforcement that is necessary. The timing of this announcement is typical. This isn’t about protecting women and cleaning up the sex industry, this is a cynical attempt to politicise another controversial issue for political gain…”
Alas, most politicians don’t care how many people get hurt if they think they can profit by it; they are willing to lie, to ignore well-supported findings and the experience of other governments, and to completely abandon common sense and basic human decency in order to gain some advantage, however small and fleeting, over their competitors. In this they are exactly like the “big box” retailers who hold “Black Friday” or Boxing Day sales with ridiculously low prices only available for one day, thereby creating a very narrow bottleneck in time and space which is virtually guaranteed to result in chaos.
Under a decriminalization regime would prostitutes still pay taxes on the money they make?
See – that’s the biggest issue I think. I think, for moralists, that decriminalization is best because they can say they don’t support prostitution in any way. Under a legalization scheme – they would because their tax dollars would be going to policing it. So, in my opinion, decriminalization works best but the taxes, I think, are going to have to be accounted for.
I don’t understand why people are so confused about decriminalization; all it means is that prostitution is no longer treated as a “special case”. That’s it. It becomes like any other thing a person might do for money, from babysitting to cleaning your house to giving you a massage. So solo practitioners working out of their houses are essentially ignored (just as my grandmother’s sewing for money was), and large multi-employee businesses have to abide by the same restrictions (real or bullshit) as every other business. By law, ALL income in the United States is taxed; you’re even supposed to report money that a buddy gives you for gas if you take him someplace, or money you make from your garage sale. So a whore who didn’t report her income would be persecuted exactly the same as anyone else who didn’t report that same level of income, i.e. ignored if it’s just a pittance but treated like an international gangster if it’s a lot. Income tax reform is another cause I support, but it’s a different one from decriminalization (except in the bigger “government should not interfere in people’s lives” sense).
Decriminalization does NOT give whores special status like cops (i.e, immune to all laws); it simply puts us with everyone else (i.e. not treated as though sex was some radioactive mutogen from which “the public” needs to be “protected”).
I know I’ve been confused by the Dutch cannabis “decriminalisation” – where they just tell the police not to enforce the law, rather than taking it off the books.
Well, simpletons (like me apparently) get confused because “decriminalization” is a legalistic term to us. We tend to think of things as either LEGAL or ILLEGAL. I don’t have to wear underwear because it’s LEGAL for me not to (as long as I’m not exposing something). “Decriminalized” is not a word that’s in most people’s vocabulary. Wouldn’t you agree? I mean, it may not be a good thing – but it is what it is.
And it used to BE that way, until just over a century ago when governments started to make private behaviors which hurt nobody illegal; now many things are “criminalized”, in other words TURNED INTO criminal activities when they are not actually criminal. You can’t “criminalize” something which is already wrong by every legal code in history; it is, to use the Latin phrase, malum in se (wrong because it is wrong). “Criminalized” activities, by contrast, are malum prohibitum (wrong because they are prohibited by some “authority”). To “decriminalize” a thing is to reverse the process of “criminalizing” it.
Part of the confusion derives from the fact that marijuana policy advocates use the word “decriminalize” to mean removing criminal penalties without removing the ban; penalties become civil instead of criminal (e.g. the cops steal your weed, smoke or sell it it themselves and hit you with a fine). It’s not nearly as desirable as legalization (removing the laws against the drug). So in drug policy usage, “legalization” is the desirable outcome and “decriminalization” the compromise, whereas in sex work policy usage it’s the other way around.
You’re preaching to the choir here, skipper. I was just confused as to the language used here – as I usually am.
It’s with noting that criminalisation of things is not always wrong. A thing may not be wrong in itself, but be wrong because of the knock-on effects. Traffic regulations, for instance. Parking in a taxi zone. Arbitrary lines in the sand like driving at 81k being illegal when it’s perfectly fine to drive at 79.
So you think people should be able to be arrested and jailed for those things? Because that’s what “criminalization” means. It’a a wholly different thing from an administrative fine or a cop saying “move along”.
Ok – you are right about this. The whole point of criminalty is that a criminal act is morally reprehensible in and of itself. Acts which are not, ought not be criminal.
We agree that drunk driving is sufficiently wrong in itself that it ought to be criminal?
What is “drunk”? I believe that there should be NO laws criminalizing intoxicant use, but that the penalties for doing something under the influence should be the same as doing it straight. If someone’s weaving all over the road, give him a ticket for reckless driving; I don’t care if the reason is alcohol, fiddling with the radio or just plain incompetence. And if he kills someone, he should be tried just as he would if he killed ’em sober. So no, I don’t believe driving with a certain blood alcohol level should be itself criminal; some people can drive better with that level than others can who are still “legal”. Look at what the cops have used drunk driving laws to accomplish, then ask yourself if you really think they’re such a good idea.
Driving drunk is a specific case of knowingly endangering the lives of other people, and is criminal for that reason.
Only it isn’t, because some people can drive safely above the legal limit while some people cannot drive safely below it.
Yeah, and everyone thinks that they personally are one of those “I can handle it” people, until they personally swerve off the road drunk and kill someone.
The question is what *risks* are ok to take, when those risks have dire consequences for other people? Some risks are so risky, and the dire consequences so dire, that taking them is morally reprehensible.
Some people can drive safely when they are a point or so above the legal limit, while some people are just plain lousy drivers, no matter how sober they are. Nobody is a good driver when sloppy falling down drunk.
In some jurisdictions, the legal limit is lower for teenagers than for legal adults. Do teenagers get drunker on the same amount of alcohol?
Paul, the government should NOT be in the business of enforcing morality. The ONLY things that should have criminal penalties are those which ACTUALLY result in harm to others or the obvious, observable and imminent risk of harm (in this case, swerving all over the road). Otherwise what do we get? Civil rights-destroying police tactics like DUI checkpoints and forcible assault on citizens such as blood drawn without consent. No, thanks; the word “checkpoint” has no place in a free society, and I remind you of Franklin’s words about liberty and safety.
I completely disagree. The essence of why murder is illegal is that it is morally wrong to murder people, and that for that reason it’s bad people – morally bad people – that do it. It is the moral wrongness of crimes that justifies, for instance, locking people up for extended periods of time. What else would justify putting someone away for 20 years, if that person is not a bad person who has done a bad thing?
I would be satisfied with getting rid of DUI checkpoints, and pulling somebody over for swerving, speeding, etc. AND THEN increasing the fine or other punishment if the person is over the legal limit. If he’s at 0.2% and is driving fine, he isn’t getting pulled over, and so he isn’t getting in any trouble.* But if you are driving dangerously and it turns out that you are driving dangerously because you decided to risk other people’s lives for your own pleasure, then hells yeah up the fine, and if you do it again, bye bye license.
* Unless there’s checkpoints or random pull-overs or some such, which I’m fine with getting rid of.
It is NOT the “moral wrong” by some abstract code that induces societies to imprison murderers, but rather the fact that citizens are HARMED by the actions of a murderer. Societies need to move away from judging morality and toward an approach that force is only justified to prevent harm to others, NOT harm to oneself or violation of arbitrary precepts that many or most members of society don’t even agree with.
Ok, so we are using “harm” as our yardstick. What about earlier, when you said it was ok to stop someone driving who was “weaving all over the road”? They haven’t actually harmed anyone … yet. Is it ok to protect yourself from someone doing something *very likely* to harm you? Is it ok to get together in groups and protect one another? How harmful does the harm have to be? How iminient? How likely? The answer is: there is no easy answer. It’s a judgment call.
Who judges? Who has the right to make the call on behalf of all the people possibly being harmed by other people’s behaviour, vs all the people who have rights to basic freedoms? Well – hopefully a democratically elected set of representatives makes the call. That’s what democracy is, after all.
And so we come to commercial cooks with unsafe food storage practices, and people engaging in unsafe sex while providing commercial sex services.
In other words, you want to restrict those responsible for 3% of the problem rather than those responsible for 97% of the problem. Does that make sense to you?
Aha, I now understand your objection to “legalisation”. You don’t mean the same thing by it as I do.
“Legalisation”, for me, would mean repealing the laws banning it.
Whereas “decriminalisation” would be instructing the police to cease to enforce the laws – which is what has happened to brothels here in Greater Manchester, and is terrible because the police will still raid the occasional brothel, but only when they (claim to) think there’s some other crime going on (usually drugs) – but they don’t hesitate to enforce the “decriminalised” laws against prostitution when they can’t find the drugs they (say they) were looking for. Of course, the result is that the brothels run by the gangsters who pay off the police stay open, and the police shut down the competition.
It’s regulation that you object to. That makes sense; unless the overwhelming majority of people doing a job are doing so legally, the benefits of legalisation will not be felt.
No. Directing the police to ignore the laws, but leaving them on the books, is “tolerance”, and it’s no better than legalization because any future government can simply change its mind (as the Dutch have done with marijuana for foreigners). Decriminalization is the removal of the childish pretense that sex is a magical thing that needs special laws, and the acknowledgment that since nearly all women accept compensation for sex it’s moronic to “register” or “supervise” or persecute those who do so honestly (i.e. whores) rather than those who do so dishonestly (i.e. most other women).
I like to say that “Legalization is the beautician model, and decriminalization is the baby sitter model.” If you open a beauty shop in my state, and you aren’t board certified, your beauty shop can be forcibly shut down by the authorities. To be a baby sitter, on the other hand, all someone has to do is hire you.
I’ve always believed that if women want the freedom to be as promiscuous as they want to, prostitution has to be decriminalize. I don’t see a clean bright line between a promiscuous woman and a prostitute. (Women can be arrested as prostitutes for having too many condoms on them, for example.)
With legalization, they could be arrested for being unlicensed prostitutes.
Most places have a distinction between what in the US are called “felonies” and “misdemeanours”. Decriminalisation refers to making something no longer a felony. It may still be illegal – but no longer cause for a criminal indictment.
Yeah Krulac posits an interesting point at least from a fiscal and labor perspective. I’d like to ask Maggie what her view is on the tax aspect and employee-employer relationship of sex industry legalization?
In her opinion what would be the best taxation and labor benefits scheme for sex workers? I’d like to qualify though that I’m not approaching this question from a sin issue, that the tax is a compensation to the state for a perpetuation of a social ill, merely as an income issue because any money a person makes regardless of source is taxable.
Last few days I’ve been in a German FKK and I’ve been talking to the girls here about subjects anywhere from taxes to trafficking.
They all pay taxes over here on the money they make. When I asked them … “Oh yeah but you don’t declare it all do you?” They scoffed and said … “The government here can see every penny you deposit into your checking account”. Basically, they believe that “big brother” can see everything they do so they stay honest. Since most of them come from Easter European countries with recovering economies – they don’t want to run afoul of German tax law and get deported and banned from working here.
So I think that is what Maggie is saying here for the most part.
On the subject of trafficking … I asked the girls why they just didn’t stay in their home country to work. They answered that they would if prostitution was legal in countries like Romania and Moldavia – but it isn’t … so they “traffic” themselves to Germany where it is legal. I asked them if they needed help getting immigration and work papers and they all said “Yes, but you need to be careful who you ask for help.” Because some of the “helpers” will demand punitive prices for their services. It’s been fascinating talking to these girls this week, among other things. 😀
Why would sex workers exist under different taxing and regulatory regimes than any other worker (just or nonsensical, as most labor regulations are)? The “sex” in “sex worker” is legally irrelevant under decriminalization, other than as a simple descriptor of what the job entails.
Why is the sky blue? Yet it is.
Rayleigh scattering.
Maggie – A lot of times the bottleneck you describe isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. The demand for licensing and regulation is often instigated by the people being regulated. They do this in order to keep the “unqualified” people out, thereby limiting supply and raising prices.
I mean, who do you think was behind the requirement here in California that you need to go to an approved school and get a license to work on someone’s hair?
Oh, I totally understand that. But when businesses get in bed with the government, they become an (unelected, unaccountable) part of the government. There’s a word for that: fascism. And it’s one of the worst, most oppressive forms of government.
I would say that, given the generally abysmal record of providing a safe environment for prostitutes in today’s world, legalization would still be such a huge improvement that I wouldn’t really care over whether it was that or decriminalization, as long as SOMETHING was done.
Take whatever you can get, I say.
This is my first post and I admit I don’t have any credentials, so I apologize in advance if I’m wrong about anything and am open to being corrected.
From reading Maggie’s blog, I believe the below describes how Legalization and Decriminalization differ.
Legalization = Lawful and regulated by the government.
Decriminalization = Lawful with minimal or no government regulation. That could mean local governments are allowed to use zoning laws to regulate street walkers and brothels, but whores working discretely and privately (e.g. escorts) would not be regulated by the government.
I also believe Maggie meant that decriminalization would prevent the government from creating barriers to entry that make it difficult to enter the trade in practice. For example, only brothels are lawful in Nevada, and local governments are allowed to decide if and where they will have them. That means the supply of brothels are not necessarily able to accommodate the number of whores (hence the bottleneck), and the numbers provided by Maggie suggest they can’t. Add that to the absurd frequency of STI checks, travel limitations, and the costs to rent the brothel’s services, the outcome is higher prices in legalized prostitution. In response, many whores will work illegally to evade the unnecessary privacy intrusions and costs associated with a brothel middleman, and clients will seek illegal whores to avoid the costs of long-distance travel and inflated prices. Alternatively, a government can effectively outlaw prostitution even where it is regulated by denying whores a license to work.
However, decriminalization would not mean that the trade would be unregulated. Even in the present-day United States, the trade regulates itself where it is illegal, enabling participants to access services that minimize their risks. The majority of these services are available on the internet, which has resulted in the disintermediation (cutting out the middle men) and free flow of information in the trade.
Although the government has a legitimate reason to regulate some industries to keep out unqualified individuals, for example, I don’t believe the government can regulate prostitution better than the market’s own participants. Moreover, legalization risks inviting corruption. For example, brothels will have an incentive to lobby against decriminalization, since private contractors would seriously threaten their profits (I think). Then politicians would have an incentive to reward brothel owners with legal barriers to entry, and the politicians would be rewarded with campaign donations by the brothel owners. Furthermore, and I hate thinking about it, but there would also be an incentive for brothel owners to reward their favorite politicians with brothel discounts…
As far as taxes are concerned, whores who work independently would be taxed as independent contractors. Although I don’t have any statistics on this, a whore working illegally still has a powerful incentive to pay her taxes. The is because tax evasion typically has greater penalties, and police notify the IRS of a prostitution arrest. That makes the status of U.S. criminalization, at least, even more despicable. Not only are whores risking arrest for renting out access to their bodies, many are coerced in to paying for public services that the government denies them!
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2009/09/how_do_prostitutes_pay_their_taxes.html
Right on 100%, and well-stated. An excellent first post! 🙂
Peltast wrote:
“Although the government has a legitimate reason to regulate some industries to keep out unqualified individuals, for example, I don’t believe the government can regulate prostitution better than the market’s own participants. Moreover, legalization risks inviting corruption. For example, brothels will have an incentive to lobby against decriminalization, since private contractors would seriously threaten their profits (I think). Then politicians would have an incentive to reward brothel owners with legal barriers to entry, and the politicians would be rewarded with campaign donations by the brothel owners. Furthermore, and I hate thinking about it, but there would also be an incentive for brothel owners to reward their favorite politicians with brothel discounts…”
All true. Also true of virtually every other occupation or industry.
Ahh, occupational licensing. To protect the public from those twin scourges of competitive pricing and voluntary interactions is indeed a noble thing.
[Bows 3 times to politicians]
We’re not worthy
We’re not worthy
We’re not worthy
Now, all snark aside, one of the reasons I like this blog is that not only is the mistress of it superb in her content generation but that a large majority of the commenters bring valuable insight to the discussion as well. And that is a very nice and rather rare combination.
Well, it’s more to protect the public from the scourges of working girls with AIDS and Hep-C. Health checks are usually a part of licensing. Would you eat meat from an unlicensed butcher?
Working girls somehow manage not to spread those in the US even though we don’t have health checks, and some countries (Germany) which used to have them realized they were unnecessary. Furthermore, unless you’re going to criminalize all unpaid sex without “health checks”, I call bullshit.
Only unpaid sex where a person will have sex with (say) a dozen or so different persons whom they do not know each month. When it comes to public health and STDs, a worker is an entirely different category of person to a person who isn’t, for this reason.
No. Amateurs in the developed world have far higher rates of VD. What you’re proposing is the equivalent of forcing licensed drivers to be tested every year, but to allow unlicensed ones the right to drive as they please without any restriction or hindrance.
The question isn’t just how likely they are to *have* a VD, but how likely they are to *spread* it. The number of different partners acts as a multiplier.
Sex workers seem to want to run a business, but not to be subject to the kinds of regulations that businesses are normally subject to. Why yes: one of the reasons we have governments is to regulate trade and commercial behaviour.
That’s a common accusation, and totally untrue: I don’t see cooks being forced to take intrusive blood tests to work, even though some terrible epidemics have been spread by cooks. Why? Because our culture allows cooks agency, but denies it to sex workers. Fact: Nearly every legalization regime which once required health checks has dropped them as a waste of time and money.
Commercial cooks absolutely do have to be licensed and are subject to their workplace being checked by the health dept (or its equivalent). Sure – it isn’t a blood test – but is that the point? Are you trying to say that commercial food preparers ought not to have to be licensed at all, or are you just complaining that the licensing requirements for sex workers (blood test) are onerous (compared to, say, restauranteurs)?
Precisely. It’s all about the comparability. Sex workers are willing to be subject to the same restrictions as other comparable businesses, NOT extra ones which quickly evolve into bottlenecks and create public health nightmares.
Ok, so you are not opposed to mandatory licensing/registration, fines for noncompliance with licensing and so on. I mean – licensing is meaningless if you don’t penalise people for not complying. (actually, I thought you *were* opposed to any sort of licensing or even mandatory registration).
Obviously, some clients will want unsafe sex, and some stupid/greedy girls will comply if there’s extra money to be had. There isn’t a demand for unhygenic cooks, but there *is* a demand for bareback. Can you agree that sex work is not the same as cookery in that respect? That there is a specific demand for risky behaviour?
As long as there are amateurs giving bareback away for free, there will be STI’s; you really need to read my column on the subject to see how much of a pretend issue disease in sex work is. In the developed world, the fraction of STI cases involving a sex worker as either victim or vector is so small as to be negligible.
As for licensing, yes I’m against it for both libertarian and harm reduction reasons. Professions can generally police themselves far more effectively than governments can, and in the vast majority of cases licensing is nothing but a fascist scheme to keep new businesses out so an established cartel can flourish. In sex work, licensing does nothing but create an unlicensed underclass in which criminality can flourish and, in areas where there are desperately poor women, promote the exact health hazard (STIs) you seem so concerned about. In other words, you can’t have your cake and eat it, too; either you get your spiffy little licenses or you get a healthy, STI-free sex worker population, but never both.
Paul,
Until I left home, ALL the beef we ate came from an unlicensed butcher. I’ve never had better beef since. Of course, it was grass fed, finished on corn.
Now you have to be a USDA licensed abattoir in order to be a butcher because the completely legal CAFE operations today that increase the risk of drug resistant bacterial strains and dangerous E. Coli make incidental fecal contamination potentially lethal. Yet, even if you operate in an environment that does not contain those pathogenic indicators, you still have to be ‘certified’ to that standard.
Legality does not correspond to safety.
Oooh, I’d say there was some sort of correlation. Anecdotes are not data.
(this is also known as the “My grandad smoked a pack a day and lived to be 90!” argument)
It is the market that determines the extent of prostitution, not the bureaucracy. Hence the attempt to control the numbers involved is doomed to failure.
We see this in the West, where the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s led to a decline in professional sex, both in countries where it was legal and in countries where it was not; and also in China today, where criminalization is powerless to stop the continual increase in prostitution.
AIUI, China defines all premarital and extramarital sex as “prostitution”, making their numbers useless for comparison with countries that ban only the actual trade.
The number of brothels in main streets is massively up compared to 10 years ago, particularly in Shanghai. Every commercial street appears to have at least one, even in the smaller towns; and there is also the recent development of huge, multi-story brothels like the one in Dongguan.
The streetwalkers are more noticeable, any unaccompanied male walking the Nanjing Road will get propositioned; some prostitutes (ding dongs) will just call on the hotel rooms of single foreign males.
All this amidst the raids conducted by the authoritarian state, and not counting the plausible denial of the hostess bars, barber shops, and spas..
It took me a while to wrap my brain around the differences between LEGALIZED, DECRIMINALIZED, and TOLERATED. This isn’t helped by the fact that different groups use these terms in different ways, so that the guy calling for legalization of marijuana and the guy calling for legalization of prostitution are NOT calling for the same thing.
IMO, toleration is better than criminalization (whether talking hookers, porn, weed, or a few other things), legalization is better than toleration, and for prostitution at least, decriminalization is better than legalization. For the plant, I’d have to ask some more questions of some more people.
I’m not as regulation-adverse in general as Maggie, but I can’t think of a lot of regs prostitution needs. We can try straight decriminalization, and if some problem crops up which is best addressed through a new regulation, then fine, pass a new regulation. But let’s not just load it up with a lot of regs from the beginning because, because, well because it’s prostitution, for Pete Squeaks!
“Professions can generally police themselves far more effectively than governments can”
Absolute poppycock. An offense against common sense and reason, and for which there isn’t a skerrick of evidence. Quite the opposite. Sheer libertarian … libertarian … *faith statement*. This is a creed, an article of belief amongst the Cato Institute crowd, and nothing more.
If you belive that, I have a bridge to sell you – going cheap because saved a bundle on using grade D rivets! I also have some beachfront property in Alaska for you. Just don’t dig down more than a few inches in the sand, is all.
I mean, the sheer wilful ignoring of practicalities here is mind-boggling. Lets say a girl has (and knows she has) hep c, or aids, or just a nasty headcold and says “fuck, rent’s due on Tuesday, I’ll just do a couple of jobs”. According to you, in a industry self-policing situation, this girl would not be able to, or would choose not to proceed with this plan. I mean – that’s the whole point: we want this girl to not see clients while she is infectious with a fatal disease.
Now, the situation with legal policing is straightforward. If they catch her at it, she’ll go to jail or be fined or face some sort of penalty which (hopefully) makes it not with proceeding with this plan of action. She will be – in a word – deterred.
By what mechanism, exactly, in an “industry self-=policing” scenario, will this person be deterred or restrained from infecting a number of clients?
Paul: What I find mind-boggling is the claim that a girl who is immoral enough to see clients when she knows she is infectious would be deterred by a one in a thousand (and probably less) chance of getting caught by government inspectors.
Well, that makes quite a difference, doesn’t it? Whether the chance of getting caught is one in a thousand or one in ten.
In any case, it doesn’t seem that it is happening that often now, so if there must be some governmental system, it has to be a better one than what is being done currently.
I still think that the sort of “Underwriters Laboratory for Harlots” system I described on one of these posts somewhere or other would work well: the girl uses her own doctor, and the government’s role is limited to dealing with fraud (i.e., she displays a counterfeit certification or bribes her doctor). Since harlots are doing rather well at holding down disease even in the absence of such a system, there’s no reason to think that they would need anything more.
The idea that sex workers care so little about our own health that we have to be forced by the government to keep ourselves disease-free is based in the “whore as monster” myth; i.e. we’re like some kind of stupid savages or damaged children who don’t know any better so “normal” people have to control us.
It also fits the “whore as victim” myth; i.e. you’re like some kind of broken-down cult victim zombie or damaged child with so little self esteem that you don’t care if you live or die, or how many others you take with you. You can easily be talked into working condomless because even you think, “I’m just a whore; who cares if I catch something?”
Anybody who’s talked to a whore about, well, much of anything will know that this isn’t a true picture, but it’s a picture that’s out there. This is why something beyond “but that’s not true!” may be needed.
Paul, if you’ve been reading here for very long at all, you know that not only am I not a Market Fundamentalist, but that I don’t have a lot of patience with this particular breed of faith. But the stats are what they are: hookers are not carrying diseases around. They are being careful. I don’t think that this is because of the “invisible hand of the Market” (an invisible hand which makes everything better is an attribute of a God), but rather what Maggie just pointed out: why the hell would any working girl want to catch some horrid disease?
Sure, the inspectors will always be playing catch-up. That doesn’t mean “Hey! Let’s let the free market sort it out!” is a better option.
Do you know what the word “profession” means? And you do realize that amateurs are responsible for 95-97% of STIs, right? And you are familiar with the opinion of health officials (including those from the UN) that licensing is a bad idea, right?
[…] For one thing, harsh legalization requirements simply discourage sex workers from compliance. It is estimated that over 80% of sex workers in Nevada, 90% of those in Queensland, 95% of those in Greece and 97% of those […]
[…] McNeil M. (2012, September 03). Bottleneck. Retrieved March 04, 2016, from https://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/bottleneck/ […]