I’m optimistic that I’ve found it: an issue about which all of my 23 regular readers can agree! Feminists and Christian conservatives alike (not that those are mutually exclusive categories in Hugo’s world) can come together on the subject of punishing U.S. servicemen who visit overseas prostitutes. (Hat tip for all of this to Stuart Buck).
According to a Yahoo news blurb:
In recent years, “women and girls are being forced into prostitution for a clientele consisting largely of military services members, government contractors and international peacekeepers” in places like South Korea and the Balkans, Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J), said Tuesday at a Capitol Hill forum on Pentagon anti-trafficking efforts.
Defense officials have drafted an amendment to the manual on courts-martial that would make it an offense for U.S. troops to use the services of prostitutes, said Charles Abell, a Pentagon undersecretary for personnel and readiness.
If approved, that would make it a military offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice to have contact with a prostitute, Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, an Abell spokeswoman said later. The draft rule is open to 60 days public comment after being published in the Federal Register, she said.
Calloo callay, o frabjous day! I love it when I get a chance to cross party lines and stand with my Republican brethren like Chris Smith. On this issue, I’m with him 100%.
There’s a terrific longer piece on the subject in this week’s Christianity Today. Entitled “We’re Still Supporting Slavery”, it’s by Preston Jones, a retired Navy man and now a college prof. Here are some key excerpts:
I went to South Korea with the U.S. Navy. All I heard about before arriving there was that it had great and inexpensive hookers, many of whom (I learned) were transported to Pusan from Seoul to accommodate an aircraft carrier’s thousands. That’s called trafficking.
Trafficking in humans is not new, though it is evil, and in a just world the leaders who have let it go on decade after decade would be put on trial. The drunken deeds of America’s unwitting freckle-faces in the brothels of Bangkok are bad enough. The willful refusal among the powerful to acknowledge that each year American troops pump millions of dollars into Asia’s vicious skin trade is criminal.
Readers might have noticed that anti-Americanism is on the rise. One of the causes of this in Asia—in Thailand, the Philippines, Korea, and Okinawa—is that up to now the U.S. military has done almost nothing to prevent or slow the growth of an industry that treats poor Asian girls (and some boys) as expendable.
Preach it, brother Jones! He laments:
For the law to be effective, a fundamental shift in the moral culture of the Navy would be necessary. That may be possible, though the long-standing eye-winks of high-ranking officers, the open encouragement of senior enlisted men, and the silence of chaplains have over the years created a sense that, by right, young men in uniform from Nebraska, Maine, and California should have easy access to the bodies of girls and young women from Korea, Thailand, and the Philippines.
Somewhere I have a file of notes I have received from editors at conservative political magazines, from military officers, and from spokesmen at family values organizations. The notes make for depressing reading and usually revolve around a few themes: American troops did not invent prostitution and this kind of thing exists elsewhere in the world. Boys will be boys. Six months at sea is a long time. Japanese men are worse. Criticizing the military is un-American. We don’t really care.
The bold emphasis is mine.
While it is possible to construct feminist arguments for legalizing prostitution in wealthy countries (where prostitutes could have legal and medical protections), no one I know in the feminist community believes prostitution in the Third World to be anything other than profoundly exploitative. As a feminist, the sexual trafficking of women and young girls outrages me because it involves such profound degradation of the human person. Prostitution is an extreme form of objectification and degradation, and is incompatible with seeing girls and women as people.
As someone who is an advocate for men, I am always enraged by the “boys will be boys” defense. (Also known as the “all men are dogs” defense). I know what it is to live as a man, and I know damn well that even young men in all-male environments are biologically and psychologically capable of sufficient self-restraint so as not to abuse their sisters! The fact that so many young men are encouraged not to exhibit that self-restraint (and the compassion that must undergird it) is a tragedy for men and for women. Real men never exploit other human beings for their own pleasure. Real manhood — not puerilty — is accompanied by a mature sexuality that doesn’t wound.
As a Christian, I am deeply saddened by what this means for everyone involved. Prostitution is the furthest thing from a victimless crime. The women involved are psychologically brutalized. Their families frequently ostracize them or humiliate them. Meanwhile, the men involved are deeply affected, usually by having their humanity blunted. The wives and girlfriends of these “johns” are betrayed in a deeply intimate way that cannot help but leave lasting and painful scars. Prostitution represents a profound failure of our obligation to see Christ in one another.
As an American (you’ll almost never see me write that), it’s a terrible embarrassment. “To whom much is given, of whom much is expected.” Our service personnel abroad represent us; the lowliest PFC or sailor is an ambassador for the rest of us. There is no question that any claims we make of moral superiority as a nation will be, in the eyes of the world, tied to the personal behavior of our young folks in uniform. Young American men who visit hookers abroad are providing Al-Qaeda with a PR bonanza.
I assume the best thing to do is to write your congressperson, your senator, and the Defense Department, voicing strong support for this new measure. And for those who have friends and sons and brothers and lovers and husbands abroad — ask them the questions you don’t want to ask. Push them. Hold them accountable. Every man has it within him to see women as human beings, no matter his environment or his libido.
Surely, we can all agree on this.
UPDATE: I ought to have linked to the fine folks at ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography, and Trafficking of Children). Here’s their statement on the military issue:
ECPAT-USA’s military campaign aims to end the U.S. military’s role in sustaining the prostitution industry worldwide. ECPAT-USA is working in coalition with women’s organizations and churches on this issue.
Although ECPAT-USA generally focuses on child prostitution, the military campaign seeks to end the commercial sexual exploitation of both women and children around military bases because the same factors that victimize children also contribute to women’s involvement in the sex industry.
All forms of military prostitution–whether with women or children, with trafficked persons or voluntary migrants–are exploitative and endanger the health, safety and morale of all involved parties, including the military personnel who purchase sex.
Bless their work.
Oh, and for the record: I have to admit that “prostitution” is one of the most difficult words for me to spell. Too many vowels mingling with too many “t”s.
I am still mystified by the continued attempts to restrict individuals from using services offered willingly by others. I agree that forced prositution is bad. But that doesn’t make all prostitution bad. If a person (man or woman) seeks, willingly, to sell their body for sex, why do so many object and seek to prohibit their actions? Purely for reasons of religious moralism? Why do those of us who find said moralism ridiculous have to live by those standards? I believe that religion is supposed to be seperate from governance, at least in the US, after all.
Offered willingly? In a world of grinding poverty, tell me how any woman (or child) offers her body “willingly”? This is not about legalizing prostitution in the wealthy west - it’s about protecting women and girls from economic exploitation, trafficking, slavery and degradation.
In a world of grinding poverty, tell me how any woman (or child) offers her body “willingly”?
Er, well…what about those members of the military posted in Germany, where prostitution is legal and regulated? (Are there other countries with US military presence where the situation is similar?) Seems a little overboard for those instances.
I came over from Alas, A Blog to read the conversation about women who smile/don’t smile at bossy strangers, so I’m not a regular reader and you can feel free to discount my disagreement. I think I’ll be reading more regularly from now on, though. Thanks!
I’ve taught the children of Prostitutes, so I have five words for you. Throw the book at them. Scumbags! Grrr!
Oops, my pronouns are out of whack. I meant the men, not the prostitutes or their children. These men are vultures and predators, and they need a good thrashing.
well, i agree with you. however i have a tiny problem with a pacifist referring to soldiers as ambassadors.
While I totally agree on forced prostitution and in particular, the use of children, this song below shows a different viewpoint, from that of a prostitute during war time. Made sad and poignant, it is still worth consideration:
(sorry for the long comment)
“51917†by David Olney
(Sung by Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt on “Western Wall†CDâ€
The strange young man who comes to me/A soldier on a three-day spree/Who needs one night’s cheap ecstasy/and a woman’s arms to hide in/He greets me with a courtly bow/And hides his pain by acting proud/He drinks too much and he laughs too loud/How can I deny him?/Let us dance beneath the moon/I’ll sing to you “Claire de Luneâ€/The morning always comes too soon/But tonight the war is over/He speaks to me in schoolboy French/Of a soldier’s life inside a trench/Of the look of death and the ghastly stench/I do my best to please him/He puts two roses in a vase/Two roses sadly out of place/Like the gallant smile on his haggard face/Playfully I tease him/Hold me ‘neath the Paris sky/Let’s not talk of how or why/Tomorrow’s soon enough to die/But tonight the war is over/We make love too hard, too fast/He falls asleep, his face a mask/He wakes with the shakes and drinks from his flask/I put my arms around him/They die in the trenches and they die in the air/In Belgium and France the dead are everywhere/They die so fast there’s no time to prepare/A decent grave to surround them/Old world glory, old world fame/The old world’s gone, gone up in flames/Nothing will ever be the same/And nothing lasts forever/Oh, I’d pray for him but I’ve forgotten how/and there’s nothing, nothing that can save him now/There’s always another with the same funny bow/And who am I to deny them/Lux aeterna Luce-at e-is/Domine cum sanctis tu-is in aeternum/qui-a pius es/Requiem aeternaum dona e-is Domine/qui-a-pius es/et lux perpetua luce-at-e-is Cum sanctis tu-is in aeternum qui-a pi-us es/Tonight the war is over.
Well, dear Hugo, I’m not sure you found THE topic that would unite your diverse readership (it must be more than 23 regular readers what with all the comments you get these days!) given what is already posted thus far. :)
But, I agree with your thoughts. My understanding is that the vast majority of people involved with prostitution in the 3/4th world would be considered children in the 1/4th world, are forced, conjoled, and/or pressured into it, are at far higher risk for STD’s particularly HIV, and often find themselves stigmatized by society for the majority of their typically shorter lives. Seems like just the right kind of work to defend to me!
Nice post, H.
Hugo, I’m in nominal agreement with you. I’m pretty firmly in support of the legalization of prostitution in countries like the US and Germany for a slew of reasons that have nothing to do with a libertarian style freedom of contract (Hint: prostitutes lives are much safer when they can safely call on police for protection).
On the German case, I’m not sure. I can certainly see some good arguments for making prostitution against military policy even if it’s not against local law. In both Germany and the horrible world of prostitution in much of SE Asia, any provision to really punish violators will require an instrusive, morale-lowering, expensive and very difficult investigatory effort. In places like SE Asia, I say it’s pretty clearly worth it. In Germany, I my suspicion is that such an effort can’t really be justified, but feel free to convince me otherwise.
Plug: My co-blogger’s left/feminist case for legalizing prostitution, with which I am in 97% agreement:
http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2004/09/score-one-for-nozick.html
I think if nothing else, this is a good measure because by punishing johns as well as prostitutes we are acknowledging that there would be no whores if there weren’t customers.
Sorry Susan, it pains me to say it, as I am a fan of Emmylou’s and Linda’s, but that is the most absurd and overly-romanticized justification for prostitution i’ve ever heard. The way I understood the song it was this womans duty to sleep with the soldiers because their life was so hard and depressing? She was doing her wartime effort? That she there is some kind of honor in servicing these men? Whatever! These women, of whom Hugo is speaking of, aren’t Edith Piaf type prostitutues, pining away for the boys who have been lost at war. For one alot of them aren’t even women, but little girls, those that survive prostituting themselves are likely to die of AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases. Their lives are horrible, horrible, horrible, I doubt that for them there is little honor in what they do, they don’t do it for fun, they don’t do it for duty and often they don’t even do it for money as they don’t see a dime from unscrupulous madams/pimps. Take of the rose colored glasses people, this is hardly “Ma Vie En Rose”…
Gosh, I’m with Kelly on this one, Susan, and I love Emmylou too.
Let’s remember we are talking not about German women in a socially democratic, liberal society, but women in Korea, in the Phillipines, Thailand and so forth. They are far more likely to be the targets of sexual exploitation than western women. The vast majority of them enter prostitution before the age of consent, and receive little renumeration for their efforts.
I’ve always supported going after johns only. Put their photos in the paper. Don’t put the sex workers in jail, only their clients.
Glad to hear it, Hugo–if prostitution is to be criminal, that’s the most defensible way to go about it.
And, of course, their “business managers” as well, but that goes without saying.
Let’s not forget that most western women in the sex trade have been sexually and/or physically abused as children. Most are also addicted to drugs, and prostitution is the only way left to feed their addiction. The sex trade isn’t a picnic anywhere. And as for the “six months is a long time”….well damn! is six months long enough to make one forget how to masturbate?!
I certainly agree that the song presents an overly romanticized version of prostitition, and fails rather completely in “justifying” the institution (was that the aim?), but let me defend it for a minute. I turn to art for beauty, and one place beauty can be found is in human connection in the most unlikely places and circumstances. A tender moment between prostitute and john is certainly not the historical norm, nor should it ever be presented as evidence of a case for prostitution, but it is certainly a potentially appropriate as the subject of a work of art.
As another example: I strongly disapprove of sexual relationships between octogenarians and teenagers, but I still think Harold and Maude is a touching a beautiful movie.
The drunken deeds of America’s unwitting freckle-faces in the brothels of Bangkok are bad enough. The willful refusal among the powerful to acknowledge that each year American troops pump millions of dollars into Asia’s vicious skin trade is criminal.
This line’s poetic. I likes.
Prostitution is really bad stuff all the way around.
I’m an activist who has been working on issues of prostitution and sexual exploitation for some time now. In fact, I just returned from a conference in Toledo, OH focused on prostitution and the sex industry and will be attending another one focused on human trafficking in Portland, OR on Monday October 4th.
I used to think that it was possible to legalize and regulate prostitution so that less harm is inflicted. I no longer hold that position. I have come to believe the Swedish model of decriminalized women but very criminalized johns is the most effective one for addressing the severe physical and mental trauma of prostitution and ending the exploitation of women by sexual predators.
There’s no longer any need to wonder if legalized prostitution would benefit women because evidence collected from places around the world where it has been legalized demonstrate the complete lack of meeting harm reduction goals. In Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and a few other places the legalization of prostitution has:
- increased illegal prostitution
- increased human trafficking
- increased gang activity
- increased child prostitution
- increased the transmission of sexual diseases (most notably gonorrhea and genital warts, a leading cause of cervical cancer)
In all my time studying this issue I have not come across one legalization model that actually reduces the harms of prostitution besides the 1999 Swedish model. Sweden had legalized prostitution for almost 30 years and through that came to the conclusion that prostitution is organized violence against women and children and should not be tolerated in a democracy.
Please investigate more at http://www.prostitutionresearch.com or email me if you would like further references on this subject. A few years ago I never would have thought my life would focus on this issue in the way it has, but there’s a passion for justice that burns in me and I can’t turn my back on my fellow citizens when too many people ignore the devastation that prostitution brings to people, communities, relationships and health.
Sam
Sam, as one who has long suspected what you are saying is true, I am eager for the evidence. Thanks for the info and the links.
I’m sorry, but I can’t get on the bandwagon with this. I am entirely sympathetic to the idea of reducing the incidence and harm of prostitution, but this does not represent, to me, a principled way of doing so. Mostly as a jurisdictional issue: I think military regulations regarding private sexual behavior (including adultery and homosexuality) should be scrapped not expanded; I think the idea of extending US law to cover punitively the actions of US citizens outside of US jurisdiction is a dangerous model.
The Swedish model cited here, decriminalizing prostitutes while increasingly criminalizing their customers is highly problematic for me as well on similar grounds: it may be practical, but it is not just.
Jonathan, you and I have been on the same page many times. But on this one, buddy, I’m flabbergasted. How can you compare adultery and consensual homosexuality to purchasing sex from impoverished Third World women, many of whom are underage? I’m mystified. Please clarify.
Wow. I’m floored! It sounds like many of the people responding are perhaps not aware of the conditions of prostitution in say, Thailand, where…
Young girls are offered jobs as maids, and leave home to help their families, and then find themselves locked in a room for days, drugged and molested until their spirit is broken. They then go on to “service” 50+ customers a day! If they try to leave, they are severely punished. This happens to young boys too. Sometimes the children are kidnapped; sometimes they are sold by their desparate parents, who really want to believe that their child is actually going someplace where there is legit economic opportunity. AIDS is epidemic among these very young people.
What is particularly sickening is that there are American travel agencies who will set up Asian “sex tours” for creeps who want to have sex with young girls or boys. Many, many people in the US support this industry, not only the military.
*Where* is there room for debate here???
And…if my husband ever did such a thing, he would not only betray my trust in our relationship, but also betray every value that I hold dear. The poison that this action spreads is a most lethal type…
As I understand the rule, it would prohibit servicemen from using any prostitutes, not just underaged, impoverished ones.
That said, I’d be pretty hard pressed to come up with any credible justification for a policy that prohibits adultery and homosexuality while allowing prostitution. So while I generally lean in favor of abolishing victimless crime laws, I agree that as a military policy, the ban would be appropriate. In fact, I’m a little surprised it’s not in place already, and hasn’t been for decades.
Do you really think, XRLQ, that prostitution involving Third World women of any age is a victimless crime?
I certainly find the situation abhorable, my aim was not to glorify prostititution in any of its forms, or at any period of time. And no, even the song does not find “honor” in it. Just the knowledge of a woman who knows she can reach out to temporarily ease the shock and horror of war for the soldier.
This is a far cry from what you are discussing here, and I’m sorry I brought it up. It happened to be playing at the time I read the post. Sorry.
The Swedish model cited here, decriminalizing prostitutes while increasingly criminalizing their customers is highly problematic for me as well on similar grounds: it may be practical, but it is not just.
It’s not altogether just, since at least some prostitute/john transactions are equally free commercial transactions on both sides. But the alternative of keeping prostitution illegal, and even, apparently, more frequently punishing the prostitutes than the johns, seems to me more unjust, since at least some prostitute/john transactions are considerably less free on the prostitute side than on the john side (and I’m not aware of any where the prostitute is free and the john is under duress).
Hugo - not sure, but I maybe one of your few readers who has been to Thailand, Korea, Malaysia, the Balkans, Panama, and some other memorable destinations courtesy of Uncle Sam. It’s often been the policy of commanders to make some establishments “off limits”, but it’s often difficult to enforce. From a command perspective, it would be nice to have legal top cover. There’s always tension on deployments/operations between the moral aspect of allowing your personnel to engage in something you know is just not right combined with a practical concern of the welfare and conduct of the folks in your command with the desire not to “kill morale” by placing strip bars, etc. off limits.
Jonathan - Trying to look at this objectively, I can see your point - but I can’t look at it objectively. This is on a card I keep with me:
Army Values:
Loyalty: Bear true faith and allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, the Army, your unit, and other soldiers.
Duty: Fulfill your obligations.
Respect: Treat people as they should be treated.
Selfless-Service: Put the welfare of the nation, the Army, and your subordinates before your own.
Honor: Live up to all the Army values.
Integrity: Do what’s right, legally and morally.
Personal Courage: Face fear, danger, or adversity (Physical or Moral).
Soldier’s Code
I. I am an American soldier — a protector of the greatest nation on earth — sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States.
II. I will treat others with dignity and respect and expect others to do the same.
III. I will honor my Country, the Army, my unit and my fellow soldiers by living the Army Values.
IV. No matter what situation I am in, I will never do anything for pleasure, profit, or personal safety which will disgrace my uniform, my unit, or my Country.
V. Lastly, I am proud of my Country and its flag. I want to look back and say that I am proud to have served my Country as a soldier.
I can’t condone adultry as merely private behavior. How can I ask my soldiers for their loyalty when they know I can even be faithful to my spouse? I’m fairly certain prostitution doesn’t fit in with these values or code of conduct either.
(I’m avoiding sodomy - which is really the UCMJ offense - because I do think that as a sexual act, there is a case to remove it from the UCMJ)
Spot on Hugo about our military (and other folks - State Dept, etc.) folks setting the example for the rest of the world. I’ll never forget being in a tiny rural town in Thailand that had a billboard of the “Marlboro man” and coca-cola machine - that’s what America was to those folks - and now my actions and conduct with them would serve as a powerful statement about Americans. In an era of 24 hour all news networks, many of our young military personnel are indeed ambassadors for this nation.
Sam, I applaud your efforts and this sentence “Sweden had legalized prostitution for almost 30 years and through that came to the conclusion that prostitution is organized violence against women and children and should not be tolerated in a democracy.” validates what my common sense and experience working with sexual abuse victims tells me. Thanks for the FACTS.
Hugo, sometimes the fates are unjust. Sorry the post did not work out as you planned, still a great post though.
Colonel Steve, you bring a moral and personal authority to this discussion that no one else has. Thanks.
Sorry, but as a poor white trash woman who lived in a neighborhood full of prostitutes, I have to ask the people in favor of legalizing it: ARE YOU NUTS? Hey, way to go on legitmizing the double standard of sex, that men NEED sex, and that a class of women should be provided to do so. I’m sure girls will be lining up in droves to do so—and I’m sure all the nice rich white families won’t be checking out the options for that particular future for their daughter. Furthermore, if you legalize the idea that you can buy sex, what about just taking it?
I wish some of the legalizers would come to my neighborhood and see what it’s like to have any female get harassed by men who think that any female is a potential prostitute, a sexual servent.
There’s a class bias here that just doesn’t get talked about. Legalizing prostitution is basically saying, “This is the most sexist thing of all, and we’re giving up.”
Thank you, Ginmar. I currently live in a neighborhood that has prostitutes, and the pimps who beat the crap out of them. The prostitutes are, for the most part, high school dropouts, were physically and/or sexually abused from an early age, most were runaways as preteens or young teenagers, and all (according to the local prostitute outreach clinic in the city, which keeps track of such things) are addicted to drugs…sometimes alcohol too. Many need help with basics like literacy, math skills, and independent living skills (like how to find and keep an apartment) as they go through the program offered by the outreach clinic to get out of “the life”. Some have STDs. Some are mentally ill. Some are HIV+. These are women who have been thrown away by their own families, at an early age. Heidi Fleiss and her kin are rarities. They are the exception, not the rule.
This is not a victimless crime. Prostitutes are at high risk of being killed “on the job”. Police don’t often respond to calls about a pimp beating up “his girl”; charges are not likely to be filed. Many prostitutes have children. What kind of life do you think they have? Tell me again about victimless crime.
Spouses of johns aren’t likely to think it’s a victimless crime, either, especially after finding out they’ve contracted an STD because of their partner’s “indiscretion”.
Neighborhoods that have prostitution often have drugs and gang violence to go with it. And break-ins. And home invasions. Vandalism. Tell me again about victimless crimes. Tell me after you find used syringes in your neighborhood. Customers tend to be more well-off than the residents of the neighborhood where prostitution is. Call it a “neighborhood sacrifice zone” sorta like the “national sacrifice zones” for energy development (and rape of the environment).
Prostitution thrives on sexual repression. And sexism. And a class of throwaway people, women, children, young men. If the idea of human beings as garbage is repugnant to you, you will not think of sex slavery—whether in the third world or the western world—-as a good idea.
Ginmar, la lubu, no offense, but I don’t think you get the argument for legalizing prostitution. I support it not because I think it’s OK or a good idea or I want to legitimize it (for some reason, those in favor of the prohibition of X almost always argue that making such activity non-criminal implies some sort of endorsement. This doesn’t wash. There are lots of perfectly legal things I can do that no one would endorse or consider legitimate in any meaningful sense, just because I can’t go to jail for it).
The deplorable state of affairs in your neighborhoods is the product of the criminalization of prostitution, not the legalization of it. And with legalization comes regulation, which can set strict limits on prostitution, probably outlaw it’s street form, and provide protection against this sort of neighborhood dynamic.
You’re worried about the “throw-away society” implications of prostitution. So am I. But branding prostitutes for life with criminal records that will significantly reduce their ability get out of this lifestyle down the road, and supporting this sort of branding adds to the ways in which we treat prostitutes as ‘throw-away people.’
As for the associated violence, drugs, etc–that’s never going to go away entirely, but it can certainly be reduced, and legalizating and regulating prostitution could help reduce it. Think about drugs as an analogy: there’s lots of violence connected to alcohol, but one thing we don’t see is the CEOs of Miller and Coors shooting at each other in our inner cities. That’s a harm that’s reduced by legalization, even if many harms associated with alcohol remain.
My support for legalization has nothing to do with the absurd claim that prostitution is a victimless crime, or some sort of libertarian freedom of contract, or anything like that. It’s based on the following assumption: Prostitution is part of our (patriarchal) society. Sadly, it doesn’t look likely that it’s going away any time soon. Given that, how best can we contain and reduce the harm of the practice, and how best can we decrease participation in the practice? I think there are good reasons to believe that legalization, if done right, could lead to a better approach to the first goal above, without much lost in the second goal. I think this is within the power of rational, compassionate and wise policy-makers. Note that I say “if done right”–I would not support any old scheme to legalize.
Of course, I should make a more careful study of the evidence coming out of Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Nevada, and other places that have experimented with decriminalization models, before I pretend to speak to this too authoritatively. But I get the sense that Ginmar and la lubu were responding to the worst of the arguments for legalization rather than the more serious ones.
I’m ruminating on a post on prostitution; maybe I’ll have time to write it this weekend, but I don’t know. In any case, just in case I wasn’t clear, when questioning “alternative of keeping prostitution illegal,” I’m only for decriminalizing the prostitutes (so they’re freer to turn to police for protection from abuse), not interested in legalizing the actions of the johns or pimps.
not interested in legalizing the actions of the johns or pimps.
Why?
There seems to be little empirical support for the claim that decriminalizing prostitution increases the level of exploitation or other kinds of harm to prostitutes.
Even if it does, the magnitude of the harm would have to very substantial before I would agree that it would justify criminalizing the sale or purchase of sex or other sexual services. The strong presumption should be against criminalization, for either buyers or sellers.
Do you also favor the criminalization of commercial pornography, internet sex sites, phone sex, “titty” bars, etc.? They also involve people being paid to have sex, or to provide other sexual services. Isn’t that also exploitative?
And more broadly, any kind of commercial transaction between parties of very different socioeconomic status could be seen as exploitative. Employment of poor immigrants, or illegal immigrants, for example. Or globalization and free trade between first world nations and third world nations. Do you seek to criminalize most or all transactions of this kind?
And by the way, Sweden, like the United States, is an anomaly. In most of what is generally regarded as the civilized world, laws relating to prostitution are much more liberal than those in the United States, and prostitution itself is not a crime, for either buyer or seller, or is only a minor crime. The most common legal framework is to criminalize exploitative activities related to prostitution, such as living off the earnings of a prostitute, or recruiting prostitutes, or trafficking in prostitutes. But the acts of having sex for money and paying money to have sex are not crimes or are only minor crimes. This is the situation in most of Western Europe. A number of countries, including Canada, Denmark and the Netherlands, have even less restrictive laws.
The rhetoric of most American prohibitionists, both liberal and conservative, is about explotation and harm. But I think this is less a matter of rational and informed analysis than simply old prejudices, often religious ones, about sex.
The strong presumption should be against criminalization, for either buyers or sellers.
That’s your strong presumption, Fred; it isn’t mine. I neither hold a strong belief that the government has to keep criminal every sexual transaction I hold to be immoral (in principle, given enough evidence that it’s better pragmatic policy, I could accept legalization of prostitution, as well as the fact of all the existing legal sex for pay activities which you list), nor do I hold a libertarian belief that the presumption of harm has to be really strong to keep it illegal. Rather, in principle, given the right evidence, I could go either way on pragmatic grounds (whichever best mitigates harm and exploitation in the real world).
I do hold a presumption against government prohibitions on very private consensual sexual activity, since such laws are either intrusive to enforce, or so rarely enforced as to be liable to highly selective prosecution, and some of them are even in themselves an undue burden on privacy (so I approve of both Lawrence vs. Texas and the earlier Griswold vs. Connecticut). I don’t see commercial sexual activity, with its more public nature, as being under the same sort of presumption.
So, given that I don’t presume as strong a burden of proof as you do, given that I hear plausible arguments of potential harm in legalization, such as those put forward by ginmar and LaLubu, and given that my main motive for legalization, if I did support it, would be the same as DJW’s - not a libertarian concern for freedom of contract, but a hope that legalization could allow for regulation that would contain and reduce the harm of the practice - given all these things, I’m inclined to go for the most modest, cautious change in the law that would advance my goals.
So, since my main goal is not to have exploited prostitutes vulnerable to abuse by pimps and unable to get help from the police, the most modest change that would achieve my goal seems to be decriminalizing the prostitutes, but not the johns or pimps. It seems unlikely to me that making that change would lead to an increase in the kinds of problems reported by ginmar and LaLubu, and likely that it would mitigate the harm to prostitutes; for me, that seems like a win-win arrangement.
And yes, my religious beliefs (which you’re free to consider prejudices if you like) would bind me not to use prostitutes, or porn videos, or any of those other services you mention. I don’t consider them the overriding concern here, though; what kinds of sexual mores a church should encourage and what a government should enforce are, for various reasons, two very different things.
Incidentally, are you suggesting, instead, keeping pimping criminal and legalizing the activities of both prostitutes and johns, or are you suggesting legalizing the activities of all three sets of people?
No, YOU’RE not getting it. Legalizing it sends the implicit message that it’s okay, that women can be exploited legally. What the fuck is the problem here? It’s not that it’s criminalized: it’s that it exploits women on the basest level. Legalize it: it’s still not going to be in your neighborhood, and it’s still going to exploit women. They just won’t get arrested. The men will still go after the girls and women in the neighborhood, and then everyone can talk about how progressive they are. Meanwhile, the word ‘whore’ will still be an insult, and sexists will have a whole new weapon in their arsenal: “It’s legal!” Yeah, it’s legalized descrimation and useage. It’s setting off one class of women to service men because hey, why fight it? It’s not like it’s college girls after all.
Brava! ginmar, that’s how I feel about it. In fact, I thought of exactly that phrase…that “whore” would still be an insult.
Within the confines of patriarchy, sexual expression is still thought of as “dirty”, especially women’s sexual expression. Prostitution thrives on the demonizing of both sex and women.
You don’t think women’s sexual expression is demonized? You should be a fly on the wall when a bunch of men are talking about “pussy”. I’ve been that fly on the wall for the almost seventeen years I’ve been working construction. Many men have internalized the idea of female genitalia as being somehow unclean (yes, the same way many women have internalized that attitude!), even as they really, really enjoy it(!)….cognitive dissonance, anyone?
Think about what drives the market for prostitution.
Look. Stripping is legal. Has the stigma society places on strippers eased up? Not from what I’ve seen. Strippers have bouncers in the club to keep prying hands off their bodies, but they still get to listen to all kinds of invective, while keeping that ’smile’ on their faces….part of the job, don’t'cha know. And sometimes, customers get just a little too damn ‘friendly’ after hours, and start stalking. It’s a helluva way to make a living…
One of my union brothers sorta accused me of being a ‘prude’ when,after hearing about his strip-club tour through Florida during breaktime (he and his wife took the kids to Disneyworld; in the evenings he went by himself to strip clubs…madre mia….). He challenged me with a glare, and insisted there was “nothing wrong with it; it’s perfectly legal!” I agreed that there was nothing wrong with nakedness, and there was nothing wrong with him feeling sexual attraction toward naked women…perfectly natural. I then asked him if he wanted his daughters to grow up and become strippers. “After all, it’s a well-paid job for an attractive young woman—a good way to pay her way through college.” (He had brought up the old “college education” canard.)
He sputtered, and said, “well…that’s different…” and I landed on him with both feet; that no, it’s not different. If you wouldn’t want that for your daughters, why in the hell would you want that for any other woman! See, he (and we) recognize that it is a grueling, demeaning job.
Yes, demeaning. A couple of women I went to high school with (they were two years ahead of me) left the neighborhood and went on the road as strippers (most strippers travel more than construction workers. It’s part of the job. Can’t have the ‘regulars’ getting bored with the same ol’ ‘girls’, now can we?). They came back for a visit, and I swear….I have never experienced such a vibe of sisterhood! These women had your back like nobody’s business. They were feminist, proud of being women, and feeling no shame. At the time, I remember thinking, “Damn! Maybe we should all go and become strippers as a rite of passage! We’d never feel ashamed of our bodies again!” But they did not have a positive feeling toward men, as a class. Why would they? They were experiencing the worst behavior on a daily basis.
Let’s not kid ourselves. This patriarchal society has a real f’d-up way of looking at sex. It doesn’t serve women, and it doesn’t serve men either. We are hypercritical of women’s sexual expression, and of women’s bodies. Hell, it even carries over into other areas of how we women live in our bodies….how and where we give birth, and whether we breastfeed.
It is this backdrop that we’re working against. Making prostitution legal is not going to liberate women. If we were really liberated, there would be no market for prostitution, capisce? I wholeheartedly agree with decriminalizing the prostitutes, as DJW and Lynn brought up. But not the johns.
ginmar and la lubu,
If fairness, I recognize that prostitution is the cause (and consequence)of a myriad of social evils, and that legalization would do little to address most of them. It’s no majic bullet that would solve this problem. The problem is pretty bad as it stands now. We should consider what criminalization does in our current environment, which is one in which those laws are (like drug laws) almost certain to be enforced occasionally and haphazardly. Prostitution is, unlike many other crimes, de facto tolerated. Police drive by prostitutes being picked up by johns all the time and do nothing. The back of newspapers are filled with ads for escorts. These ads stay the same for months, so presumably they’re not getting busted. Police do occasionally arrest prostitutes and johns, but generally there is some outstanding reason for that. Either the participants in prostitution broke some informal rule the police impose on prostitution, or the police simply needed to make a few arrests to justify their jobs or something. (Much of the same could be said of drugs). Those prostitutes and clients of the upper class, as rare as they are, are even less likely to be arrested as they can afford privacy not easily found at most levels of prostitution.
Those of us committed to an egalitarian society need to think long and hard about supporting laws that are not, and have never been, and almost certainly will never be enforced anywhere near fairly and systematically. (Obviously no law meets this standard perfectly, but prostitution is about as far off as meeting this standard).
What are the advantages to criminalization under these circumstances? Well, they express disapproval, which might be a good thing, I suppose. But it’s disapproval with a wink and a nod when it’s not enforced. In the end, this extends further the power of the police (which have their own problems with racism, classism, and misogyny) to be de facto bureaucrats who regulate prostitution as they see fit. They set rules, and when those rules are broken, they can enforce them with arrests. I don’t blame the police for doing this; obviously massive arrests and prosecutions of all in violation of the laws against prostitution (or even just the johns) is pretty unrealistic. But if we’re going to have rules governing acceptable and inacceptable practices within the realm of prostitution, why should we cede that to the police? With all do respect to the police, their goals may not be our goals. And frankly, it gives them an awful lot of power, which can then be abused and add another layer of oppression.
Some might respond that the appropriate response to this situation would be to give the police the resources and explicit instructions to go after prostitution in a serious and systematic way. This, too, would have enormous costs. It would be easy enough (after we hired lots more police, prosecutors, etc) to arrest lots of people involved in street-level prostitution. Of course, if we’re serious about our egalitarianism, we’ll need to go after the hidden forms of prostitution as well. Given the necessary burden of proof for a conviction, this will require enormous intrusions into privacy to an extent that might well make John Ashcroft blush. And I don’t think I’d be out of line in predicting that prostitution would continue, being driven further underground. This might well make it more dangerous, even if it were only illegal for the johns.
You both respond to me by saying that making prostitution legal will not liberate women. I couldn’t agree more, and I’m pretty sure I never implied or said otherwise. I don’t think any change to the legal status of the practice one way or the other could do that. The law can be a powerful tool, but there are some things it can’t do. I’m committed to lessening and hopefully ending the oppression of women, and to that end I’d be delighted to see an end to the practice of prostitution (and I’m listening to ideas about how to do that). I just don’t think that’s something that we could ever hope to accomplish with the law.
And another point, if anyone is still reading. I don’t think you are correct in saying that making prostitution legal constititues implicit approval of the activity. Do we really want to set up the following dichotomy.
All activities fall in one of two categories:
Inappropriate, and deserving of legal sanction.
Appropriate, pefectly acceptable and OK.
There are lots of activities that clearly fall into a third category, and we all know it. The law is not the beginning and the end of what is socially acceptable. I could legally spend my Saturday drinking a fifth of Jack Daniels, eating a case of twinkies, watching a Jerry Springer marathon, and occasionally calling my dear old Grandmother and telling her I don’t love her anymore. Would that be legal? Yes. Would anyone think that because that is legal, that it is acceptable and “OK” behavior? Of course not.
Here’s a better example: being a parent who provides no emotional support for their children (while housing, clothing and feeding them sufficiently). Again, this is not illegal, but it is very widely held to be a very bad and unacceptable thing. There are plenty of other examples. Legality simply doesn’t mean an activity is endorsed by the state.
the one fact that noone seems to know, or bring up, is in countries where prostitution was legalized due to some of the above arguments, the street trade actually increased. Australia is one example of where this happened.
The web page Sam gave above is a great resource for FACTS as opposed to rhetoric. Another resource is here http://www.polarisproject.org/polarisproject/.
Legalizing it doesn’t constitute condoning it? Sorry, I don’t believe in mincing words. Legalizing it is a substitute for really doing something, for attacking a huge problem at its root.
Prostitution is the sign and the symptom of the way society regards women. Legalizing it might have practical benefits but it also has the poisonous subtle effect of legitimizng commerce in womens’ bodies—and abused women at that. Everyone loves to bring up Heidi Fleis or some college girl hooker. Nobody wants to talk about all the women who have to numb themselves with drugs to get through the day. Nobody wants to talk about the effect on other women, of what it does to see that that’s considered a LEGAL job for women. A job. Fucking strange men who, let’s not gild the lilly here, just want a warm body. Yeah, that’s sure fighting sexism. And it’s conveniant for people who just can’t look the problem in its face.
Men go to prostitutes for the same reason that some men have more of a relationship with porn and fantasy than they do with real women—-they want to AVOID women. They want a body, and that’s it. Making it legal gives their hatred an excuse.
If prostitutes didn’t come from horrendously abusive backgrounds, you might have an argument for legalization. As it is, you don’t. All this is is the opportunity to talk about sexual liberation, when you’re just liberating men to take advantage of women yet again.
Thanks Ginmar and Lalubu and Sam. I don’t personally have much knowledge about this issue, but I feel like I’ve learned a bunch and gotten backup for my vague/uninformed impressions.
Maybe it does come down to the old question: Who benefits by this action? And I don’t think it’s women who benefit from the full decriminalization of prostitution.
Besides, the fact is that some forms of prostitution are entirely legal and even normative in some communities. How many women are still encouraged to find a husband to support them? How many men regularly have sexual relationships with women less financially well off than they are and part of that relationship is luxuries that the woman could never afford for herself?
I’m not saying that every relationship where one partner is richer than the other is equal to prostitution, at all. I just think that the mindset of sex being a commodity that can be acquired with money is very deeply ingrained in our culture, and criminalizing johns, the most clear cut, extreme end of things is only the very beginning of the struggle.
If prostitutes didn’t come from horrendously abusive backgrounds, you might have an argument for legalization. As it is, you don’t. All this is is the opportunity to talk about sexual liberation, when you’re just liberating men to take advantage of women yet again.
Ginmar, with all due respect, if this is meant as a response to me, this makes me feel as though you’re not reading my posts. Every argument I make about prostitution is premised on the notion that it’s a horrible practice and women and society as a whole would be better off if it were somehow eradicated. I’m trying to think through if criminalization (in particular, the partial and haphazard form of criminalization we have now) is the best way to attack this problem. It’s obviously not working very well. Nothing I’ve written has anything to do with any argument for legalization based on “sexual liberation,” and I would consider such an argument absurd. If that was meant as a general statement against some argument you think some proponents might make, than I apologize, but if it was meant as a response to me, I’d appreciate an effort to respond to the arguments I actually make. I’ve made an effort to extend that courtesy to you.
DJW: I have conceded that decriminalizing prostitution, for the prostitutes alone could be feasible—as a means of increasing their personal safety (eliminating pimps, giving prostitutes a means to call police when needed). That’s a far cry from legalization, though.
I always like to bring arguments back to the real nitty-gritty. The concrete. The ways and means. Let’s talk possibilities.
Let’s say that prostitution was legalized. That prostitutes could legally practice in my neighborhood. It may or may not keep them safe from pimps. In the meantime, customer traffic in my neighborhood would likely increase. I consider this to be a public safety issue.
So, you could say, we’ll do it like the Netherlands….certain areas will be zoned for prostitution, and houses or window stations will follow certain regulations, and prostitutes will be strictly monitored and inspected.
Well, the women who are prostitutes in my neighborhood are drug addicts. They’re not gonna go for that. They’ll be part of the underground economy of prostitution, with all the ills that existed before legalization. Just like the illegal prostitutes in the Netherlands. Rates of HIV infection won’t go down. Exploitation won’t go down. And yes, there will be customers for unregulated prostitutes, even though there are more risks involved. There always are. Customers will go to the underground economy to get what they can’t in the legal world. Sex without condoms. Really abusive, sick stuff. Coprophilia. The seamy, dangerous practices that ‘reputable’ establishments would not or could not provide.
Sex work is different from other transactions for money. Customers tend to feel an intimate sense of ownership and power over the prostitutes they hire, in a far deeper way than with other services for hire. Probably because, whether they like it or not, they are intimate and vulnerable, too. Many customers feel shame. Shame that they project onto the prostitutes. Sometimes, they get violent. Prostitutes are more likely to experience on the job injury than any other profession. They are at high risk for being killed on the job. Considering that legal or illegal, we’re still dealing with this backdrop of patriarchy, classism, exploitation, shame and fear of the body, shame and fear of sex, shame and fear of women…..I don’t see how this is going to change. If johns are legal, this is only going to increase their sense of entitlement and power….even though many of them simultaneously feel ashamed and angry. I’m female. I have a hard time imagining a man who respects women as hiring a prostitute. Perhaps this is my bias.
Laws….I know you can’t regulate every behavior through laws. We have laws against theft and murder; things are stolen and people are senselessly killed. The most effective form of regulating behavior is the social contract. People have to agree what will and will not be tolerated in civil society, and act on that.
I’m talking about consciousness raising. I’ll say it again…..prostitution thrives on sexual repression and the idea of women as being unclean. Legalizing prostitution isn’t going to get rid of those attitudes, and it is those attitudes that have a direct effect on societal treatment of prostitutes, and on the regard of women in general. Those shitbags who felt perfectly comfortable propositioning me in front of my daughter did so because (a)I’m a woman, I’m in the neighborhood, therefore I’m fair game, and (b)if I’m not a hooker, who cares anyway? I’m just another dumb broad. I’m already devalued because I’m female. And so is my daughter. (umm…no, I don’t dress like Hollywood’s version of a prostitute. Here, the prostitutes wear T-shirts, blue jeans or sweatpants. Just like every other Saturday morning mom outfit. Just so you know.)
By the way…earlier in the thread, Michelle gave the statistic of 50+ customers a day. What exactly would be the legal OSHA regulations for a prostitute? I mean, think about it. Fifty customers. All that wear and tear on tender mucous membranes. Really…..no one chooses this kind of life in a vacuum. Even Heidi Fleiss is more famous for her days as a madam (exploiting others) than her days as a working girl.
How long did Heidi Fleiss turn tricks anyway? Five minutes?
Lynn:
It’s not “my†strong presumption, it’s the strong presumption of liberal democracy. The basic principle is that people should be free to buy and sell whatever they like unless there are very strong reasons for preventing them from doing so. There are very few things that we absolutely prohibit people from buying and selling. If you think sex should be one of them, then I think you have the burden of justifying that absolute prohibition. Assertions of social harm unsupported by evidence, or only very weakly supported by evidence, do not begin to meet that burden. And I think this is why most civilized countries have concluded that banning the sale and purchase of sex is unjustified.
You didn’t answer my question about other kinds of sexual service—pornography, phone sex, stripper bars, etc. Do you seek to ban those, too? Do you think banning them would be justified if they were shown to be socially harmful? If so, what standard of evidence would you require, and what would the magnitude of the harm have to be to justify prohibition, in your view? And what about non-sexual products and services? We allow people to buy and sell all sorts of things that clearly cause harm. Alcohol and tobacco are obvious examples. I think you’d be hard-pressed to show that commercial sex is more socially harmful than those products, or many others that we allow people to buy and sell with little or no controversy. I think you have a huge double standard when it comes to sex.
So, since my main goal is not to have exploited prostitutes vulnerable to abuse by pimps and unable to get help from the police, the most modest change that would achieve my goal seems to be decriminalizing the prostitutes, but not the johns or pimps. It seems unlikely to me that making that change would lead to an increase in the kinds of problems reported by ginmar and LaLubu, and likely that it would mitigate the harm to prostitutes; for me, that seems like a win-win arrangement.
If criminalizing the purchase of sex deters potential buyers, then criminalizing the sale of sex deters potential sellers, and decriminalizing it would remove that deterrent and would therefore likely increase the number of prostitutes. Perhaps a prostitute would be more likely to report a violent or abusive customer if she did not have to worry about being prosecuted for selling sex, but that effect might be swamped by the increase in the number of prostitutes that decriminalization would likely cause. And it would also tend to socially legitimize prostitution more broadly (“The government says I can do it!â€). If you don’t require clear and convincing evidence that decriminalizing the sale of sex would be beneficial in order to support that change, why do you require it for decriminalizing the purchase of sex?
It’s not “my†strong presumption, it’s the strong presumption of liberal democracy. The basic principle is that people should be free to buy and sell whatever they like unless there are very strong reasons for preventing them from doing so.
So you say. I consider that a novel interpretation of “liberal democracy.” I’d say, rather, that “liberal democracy” means that people get to vote on their government rather than having it imposed on them (that’s the democracy part), and have basic liberties and due process protected (that’s the liberal part), things like the Bill of Rights.
I see a whole lot of cases where buying and selling is restricted in the US, as indeed there have always been. Some of these I consider to be unwise. For example, the drug war would be better handled in a demand side way, as a public health issue. For another example, laws against the selling of vibrators are truly silly. Other restrictions are reasonable (for example FDA regulation of medicines).
There should, of course, be some strong reason for prohibiting anything (especially for making illegal things that are now legal), but I think your level of burden of proof is going to be higher than mine. You appear to define “liberal” far more in terms of commercial freedom than I do, while I define it more in terms of freedom of thought, speech, and belief (and other things like protection of privacy in your own home).
You didn’t answer my question about other kinds of sexual service—pornography, phone sex, stripper bars, etc. Do you seek to ban those, too? Do you think banning them would be justified if they were shown to be socially harmful?
Socially harmful in a general sense isn’t the issue. Sex slavery is the issue. Different sexual services may have different business dynamics, or differ in the ease with which they can be legally regulated, etc., so the answer could be different in each case.
For example, if, in practice, legalizing the filming of sexual acts results in better regulation of the business, and, hence, a much smaller probability that underage people are recruited, while (just to take a hypothetical) a particular model of legalizing stripper joints results in a thriving underground business in underage and not so voluntary “sex work” alongside the legalized stripper joints, then it would be appropriate to keep the legalized filming of sex acts and scrap the legalized stripper joints.
“Pornography,” of course, has a more general meaning, which extends beyond the filming of sex acts and explicit photos to also include written material that is considered obscene, and has, under past more stringent interpretations, even extended to works like “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.” So I would strongly oppose any attempt to make currently available pornography illegal by more stringent interpretation of the meaning of “obscenity”; the result would extend to many things that aren’t remotely likely to involve people being under any sort of duress, and would be an undue burden on free speech.
Alcohol and tobacco are obvious examples. I think you’d be hard-pressed to show that commercial sex is more socially harmful than those products, or many others that we allow people to buy and sell with little or no controversy. I think you have a huge double standard when it comes to sex.
I think you’d be hard-pressed to show anyone being trafficked into either buying or selling alcohol or tobacco. I think you’d be hard-pressed to show any market for underaged sellers of alcohol or tobacco. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find bar owners treated with the degree of contempt and the sense of entitlement that falls on a woman merely for being suspected of being a “slut.”
Darn right I have a double standard about sex. I’m not afraid anyone’s going to be shoving alcohol down my throat, and I’m not afraid that people are going to shove alcohol down other people’s throats (or not often). I’m not afraid that people will have trouble distinguishing between shoving alcohol down someone’s throat and voluntarily drinking it. Sadly, my experience is that people sometimes do have trouble making that distinction, with sex, and that is why, in a business which reportedly involves a whole lot of women working under some degree of duress (if, also, some women making their choices more freely), I don’t trust automatically that legalization will get rid of the duress.
If criminalizing the purchase of sex deters potential buyers, then criminalizing the sale of sex deters potential sellers, and decriminalizing it would remove that deterrent and would therefore likely increase the number of prostitutes.
Only for people who actually want to be prostitutes. People who don’t want to be prostitutes - those who were trapped into the trade by being trafficked from other countries and promised different jobs, those who were recruited while underage, those who are there out of desperation and drug addiction, those who may be stuck out of fear of their pimps - the “throwaway people” that LaLubu talks about - those people are freer to leave. Concern for their wellbeing should be a far more important consideration in setting our laws than any other harm prostitution may do. I’d say that greater safety for prostitutes is a darn good social benefit. And if decriminalizing prostitutes results in a few more willing prostitutes and fewer unwilling ones, I’d say that’s a reasonable trade.
The specific benefit that decriminalizing johns along with prostitutes would need to supply to be worthwhile is: 1) fewer prostitutes under duress, along with, 2) containment of the problem of street harrassment (and resulting safety concerns) of women living and working in the vicinity of where prostitutes operate, and, 3) greater physical safety for prostitutes (actual data on how the various legalization models have worked would be useful here). Everyone else’s benefit takes a back seat to these things.
Till then, I’m sticking to my guns on favoring the Swedish model.
Fabuluous post, Lynn!
Fred: You seem to be talking theory, while I’m talking about actual practice…how prostitution actually works in the world on a non-theoretical level. We have a saying on the jobsite, “You can make anything work on paper”, this referring to the fact that an engineer can make a lines on a print specifying the location of say, multiple runs of four-inch rigid conduit…while in physical reality, those multiple runs will not physically fit in that location, because of other mechanicals, or the building structure itself. With that in mind…
In Western thought, there is a tradition of dualism…the body/mind split. Our bodies and our minds are considered to occupy different locations…in theory, that is. Since we don’t actually live with our bodies and minds as separate entities, consider this:
Part of the backdrop of patriarchy, is a devaluing of ‘the body’, especially the female body. There is a corresponding negative view of sex. This manifests in various ways throughout society, but specifically regarding prostitutes, this manifests as regarding the prostitute as less than human, and as a cause (rather than a symptom) of society’s ills.
So, let’s say a john picks up a prostitute, takes her to the local no-tell motel for the minimum hourly rate. He takes his clothes off, she takes her clothes off, he “talks dirty” to her, calling her repulsive names, and generally taking some liberties that he wouldn’t think of taking with a woman that he was conditioned by society to show some respect to….he is “allowed” by custom, to disrepect the prostitute, treat her like a piece of meat (or a robot), and he justifies this by saying, “well hell! I paid for it!” He ejaculates (hopefully into a condom and not her body, but the HIV rates of prostitutes tell me that either many folks aren’t using condoms or that condoms have a way of coming off or breaking…). He leaves.
What of the prostitute? Statistically, she is using drugs and alcohol to numb herself. She does not live in a world where she can so easily separate her body and her mind. She lives in a world where total strangers denigrate her on an hourly basis. Where total strangers deny that she even has a mind. Or a past. Or a future. She is still hearing the “dirty talk”. It’s not just talking dirty to her. She is internalizing the message. Why? Because the dirty talk isn’t just bedroom “fun” for her…she keeps hearing it, on the street, in the grocery store, buying cigarettes, whatever. Not just men, but women also feel free to dehumanize her. She takes another dose to get through the day.
The “choice” to be prostitute? Give me a break. Ask a prostitute what led her into that life. Statistically, they were abused as children. Statistically, they came into ‘the life’ as the result of coercion, either due to drug addiction, or a “boyfriend” (read: pimp), or some combination of both. It is a harrowing life. That is why many cities have started a new program to reduce prostitution….mandatory education for the johns, a la similar programs on DUI. Johns are sentenced to spend a couple of months taking night classes on the realities of prostitution and listening to real, live ex-prostitutes tell them about their lives. This busts many a bubble. It’s harder to deny the reality of a living, breathing human being, talking face-to-face, than it is a myth.
In my neighborhood, police conduct periodic ’stings’. The next following couple of days, there are letters to the editor about it in the local paper. Residents of neighboring towns and other neighborhoods talk about how terrible it is to arrest these men (the johns). They weren’t doing anything wrong! He was just naive; he thought he was offering a girl a ride home in a dangerous neighborhood! I read my way through those letters and laugh wickedly; humor is a way of dispelling anger. I’ve been propositioned by those ‘upstanding citizens’ too….they’re pretty plain spoken about what they want. No room for misunderstanding.
Talk all the theory you want. This is reality outside my window. And it won’t change with appeals to “liberal democracy” (translation: laissez-faire capitalism).
Human beings should not be bought and sold. Don’t tell me it’s not slavery because it happens “by the hour”. There is a fundamental difference between a prostitute selling her body (and face it, the pimp or dope dealer is the one walking off with the money, so let’s call slavery what it is), and me selling my labor as an electrician, or Hugo selling his labor as a teacher. If you can’t see this difference, I have to ask: where is your compassion?!
Oh, and to get back more to the original point of the discussion, that of U.S. soldiers being barred from using prostitutes, maybe now is the time to bring up that (a)rape is used as a weapon of war, so many of the women found in brothels are women who have been raped and ‘conscripted’ so to speak, during the war, and (b)war displaces many women (and their children), and prostitution can quickly become the only means for getting food to eat.
Maybe you’d like to tell me where “choice” comes into play there, Fred.
Regarding strip clubs, porn, etc.:
Because strip clubs are quite often involved with prostitution and because of the abuse of women that happens so consistantly in them, I would like to see strip clubs go the way of minstrel shows. Yesterday at a conference on human trafficking I heard a local vice officer with 20 years of experience say his division of the Portland PD has never yet investigated a strip club or massage parlour that did not serve as a front for illegal commercial sexual exploitation.
It should not take a law for men to recognize the disrespect to women and female sexuality that occurs in strip clubs, prostitution and pornstitution just like it did not take a law for white people to recognize that Steppin Fetchit and blackface extend racism’s dehumanizing stereotypes to the next generation.
It’s about education, and I believe in men’s humanity and basic goodwill enough to believe they can learn to treat their fellows better than that.
Fred, you are wrong when you say criminalizing prostitutes selling sex deters them. As has been said many times now, it is not a true choice and therefore cannot by “unchosen” by the woman or child so desperate for money, shelter or drug they’ll do anything to get them.
This: “Alcohol and tobacco are obvious examples. I think you’d be hard-pressed to show that commercial sex is more socially harmful than those products” shows you really aren’t critically looking at the available data.
It is very easy to prove the harms of SOBs (sexually oriented businesses) on many levels, as a good deal of research at http://www.prostitution.com demonstrates. Sex crimes, gang activity, and drug dealing all happen disproportionately where SOBs are located. SOBs are purposefully zoned into poorer, ethnic neighborhoods because the people there don’t have the money to fight against them, but white men from all over the general region flock there to use the “services” they assiduously keep out of the privileged neighborhoods where they live.
Clusters of 2-3 SOBs in an area result in a sharp increase in crime that results in physical and emotional harm to residents and a devaluing of their property; this is well known by real estate agents who couldn’t care less about prostituted people.
I do not believe alcohol causes the same damage to employees of the alcohol industry in ways that are comparable to to the damage done to employees of the sex industry. People can and do abuse their own bodies in many destructive ways, but that is not the same comparison as when someone else (pimps, madams, etc.) abuses other people’s bodies for profit. That is why the average age of entry is 13, why there is trafficking, why the poorest, most desperate, youngest, most often darker-skinned females with a history of prior sexual abuse are the ones used in its production. Alcoholism is not so discriminating in its demographics and trancends rich, poor, male, female, European, African, etc, because alcohol is not an industry built on the broken backs of society’s most ecomonically, and physically vulnerable, sexually and racially oppressed people.
I some your message thanks for your ecoragement.bye is me maggi
I have a personal experience with military prostitution. My husband, drafted out of high school, served in S. Korea during the Vietnam War. After thirty one years of marriage to this man and four children, I discovered that the “trich” infection that I was afflicted with after my first child was born, which I thought was just another yeast infection, was in fact an STD, that I also had chlamydia, another STD which we in fact passed back and forth before we were cured, and that my husband no longer can donate blood due to a previous bout of hepatitis B, acquired almost surely with a S. Korean military prostitute.
To make a long history short, my husband lied to me about his past. The “so called” Korean girl friend whose picture was in a box of old papers, was in fact, just a friend and acquantance. My husband had at least fifteen other “girlfriends,” “one night stands” in Korea, all military prostitutes, who worked in clubs right on base.
Soldiers’ only forms of entertainment were these clubs on base and they were actively solicited there by the prostitutes. Find someone you like at the club? Just stroll on down the street to a free room for a half hour of unprotected sexual intercourse.
My husband claims that he didn’t impregnate any of these women, but who knows for sure? He never used any protection. You have to wonder if the prostitutes did, but I doubt it. How many of these S. Korean women work while pregnant until they show, then dump their newborn babies in the local orphanage? How many of them have abortions?
When my father was a Lt. JG in the Navy during the 50s, one of his jobs was to locate sufficient condoms for the men in whatever port they pulled into before they could go on shore leave.
Seems the military has some schizo ideas about sex. Adultery is a criminal offense, but raping or molesting your fellow, female, servicemembers often results in the woman getting drummed out of the service (unless the media gets wind of it, such as in Tailhook).
Their domestic-violence policies are similarly weird. When my sister was hit by her first husband, who was in the Navy, she didn’t report it because even though he would have been put in the brig, they would have also cut off his pay, which would have punished his family. The situation with the Marines (her second husband is a Marine, and no less problematic than her first) seems to be somewhat better, at least on an official level, but unofficially, they’re closing ranks and vilifying her.
zuzu, I am stunned that anyone in the armed forces, back in the 1950s, no less, tried to locate condoms for soldiers. In S. Korea, NO condoms were available, nor was anybody told to use them. No soldier was informed about the consequences of unprotected sex, including unwanted pregnancies. It just wasn’t done, which makes me suspect that S. Korea had a booming backdoor GI/prostitute baby market. That and a booming backdoor abortion industry.
As much as you can pity these “poor” prostitutes, I also look upon the poor, dumb, young, ignorant GIS as the victims. There was no forced prostitution in 1967-1968. These military prostitutes were willing participants and the military was their cash cow.
Whoa! No forced prostitution in 1967-68? Willing participants? Get real.
Organized crime syndicates have a tight lock on the prostitution market in Asia. If a woman tries to leave that life, she is beaten or killed. Women are also imported from other countries to fill the “need.” Prostitution, like prison rape, has been used as a look-the-other-way, hush-hush, smirk-smirk form of societally condoned social control. The military looks the other way because the alternative is risking disciplinary problems. Those women are scapegoats. Your burden was on their backs, too.
And Sherry? Why are you directing your anger at unwillingly and unwittingly contracting an STD on these women? Excuse me, but your husband could have masturbated instead to relieve his sexual tension. He did not have to have sex with a prostitute.
They were warned, Sherry — ever see those STD films from WWII? The Navy may have been more vigilant because of the way they were discharging ships full of pent-up sexual frustration at port, but the military did care about this stuff, even to the extent of putting saltpeter in the food to cut down on urges.
Nobody was warned in S. Korea. There were no films, no condoms, no nothing. No decent S. Korean woman would work as a “western” whore unless she was desperate for money and sexually experienced. I blame the U.S. for all of the problems there because the S. Korean/U.S. puppet government just did the U.S. military’s bidding.
When my husband was in Seoul, S. Korea, there were three clubs on base. The clubs had slot machines, music, and bars, and two of the three clubs had about 200 prostitutes actively soliciting soldiers. Organized crime probably did manage these clubs, but why didn’t the U.S. military keep the prostitutes out? The U.S. military allowed these women to work in the clubs as long as they had clearance cards.
As for my sexually transmitted infections, yes, I’m angry. I’m angry at my husband for acting so irresponsibly. My son’s autism, learning disabilities, and developmental problems could be linked to these infections and the medications used to treat them. I went through years of physical and mental anguish coping with my problems. But my husband was sent to a foreign land as part of a military that encouraged his irresponsible behavior during a war which was a mistake.
Sherry, if it’s any comfort, your son’s autism was not caused by your husband’s irresponsibility–I can’t speak to your other problems.
Em what i thing of is that P is not to good and is not to bad for those who know why they go there
Thanks
Not to forget i sopport la bulu`s point