Apart from supporting human trafficking (a non-negligible amount of sex workers has been brought from other countries under false pretenses and is held against their will), it coaxes consenting (young) women into a harmful lifestyle. Prostitution harms mental health, hinders relationships, and breaks career paths in the bud.
Or putting it simple: I definitely do not want my daughter to become a prostitute.
The sad part of this line of thinking is anti-human trafficking efforts are infact made WORSE when you have a blanket prohibition. It drives the entire market underground, wastes resources that could be used to find and rescue victims and makes it where market customers have no real venue to know if a provider is "trafficked" or not. Where a legal market would have such things built in.
Blanket prohibitions on anything, sex, drugs, etc do not curb or prevent abusive actions it infact masks it, hides it, and makes such abuse MORE PREVALENT,
if you want to reduce human trafficking, legalize Prostitution
We should decriminalize the sex worker so they can report abuse and seek medical attention without fear of imprisonment. It's hard to say it should be completely legal because that does seem to incentivize some trafficking that might not otherwise happen. Maybe I should see some statistics instead of blindly guessing what the situation is.
I think we somewhat agree. But what I am going for is: we still want to be prosecuting the sale of drugs while decriminalizing drug use. Society doesn't benefit if heroin is readily available, but it does benefit if heroin users are able to get help. I don't know the analogous situation with sex work. Even taking part may be harming a third party.
>> But what I am going for is: we still want to be prosecuting the sale of drugs while decriminalizing drug use.
We do not agree then, I should be able to walk in a CVS and buy Cocaine or any other drug (provided CVS wants to sell it)
It is no business of the government (or you) what I consume, be it a High Fat diet or cocaine or something else
No different than who I sleep with and the reasons why be it for a "relationship", for a dinner or for $XXX money exchange
The government should prevent person X from Abusing Person Y, so in the context of Drugs that would preventing someone selling Weed that was laced with something, or that was some other substance. in the context of Sex, just like any other work, that would be to ensure the seller is selling their labor voluntarily
I dont care if they are selling their labor for sex or to work in a meat packing plant, sex work is no different than factory work, I would want people prosecuted for operating Sweat Shops and I would want people prosecuted forcings someone into sex work
Why should the government do anything about minimum wages and long working hours in a sweatshop? That's a voluntary exchange just like you buying cocaine at CVS is.
Well sweatshops normally invoke forced labor of some kind, often in relation to Human Trafficking, since this conversation is about Human Trafficking I was using that context. I will recognize the technical definition is any "employer that violates more than one federal or state labor law governing minimum wage and overtime, child labor, industrial homework, occupational safety and health, workers' compensation, or industry registration", however in the context of this conversation I think it is pretty disingenuous to circumscribe that to be violations of "minimum wages"
In the context here Sweatshops often obtain workers that have been tricked into starting work without informed consent, or when workers are kept at work through debt bondage or mental duress, or child labor. None of which have anything to do with Minimum wage, they could be paying them $20/hr and still be a sweatshop
I am not a big fan of current Minimum wages laws, and believe there is far better ways to accomplish the stated goals of those laws with out a blanket floor on the price of labor, ironically minimum wages also end up hurting the very people they purport to be "helping" very much like drug and sex laws.
> > Or putting it simple: I definitely do not want my daughter to become a prostitute.
So it's about you and your honor, not her and her life and financial choices.
This is patriarchy too.
And supports my thesis that people become parents because they want something in return, especially men , they want to be the patriarchs of a family that has a bunch of members in relevant and respected roles in society.
If one of the members defaults on the grand vision of the patriarch and pursues immediate financial gain abandoning the "relevant and respected" part then the patriarch becomes irate and resentful because his grand vision has been sabotaged.
The point is that the patriarch and young people have different preferences. Young people want stuff and experiences, so they are looking for ways to make money to buy such things, the quicker the better. Unlike the aforementioned patriarchs ,young people have not yet painted themselves in the corner so much that they are only satisfied with people kissing their asses in the local town council because they are a doctor or a lawyer.
> Apart from supporting human trafficking (a non-negligible amount of sex workers has been brought from other countries under false pretenses and is held against their will)
Isn't this primarily an argument for legalizing and regulating prostitution so that less money goes the the black market to create demand for trafficking?
I don't want anyone to be homeless, daughter or otherwise. Nevertheless, criminalising homelessness is unlikely to help.
How long have there been attempts to stamp out prostitution? Centuries? Millennia? At some point, and that point is passed, the retrogrades would do everyone a favour by working to providing alternatives and get better outcomes than trying to send in the police. Arresting these 3 septegenarians:
* Is a waste of taxpayer money.
* Will have no impact on the ability of prostitutes to sell their bodies.
* If it does have an impact, will probably make the lives of prostitutes even worse, somehow.
* Will save no failing marriages.
Something can simultaneously be horrible and legal. Sex work should be in that category. If human trafficing is a problem concentrate on that - but this article is (and I repeat myself) the US government at its most petty and ineffective.
Most of those are consequences of it being illegal. Similar to how legalizing marijuana has drastically cut down on the illegal trade for it in the states where it's legal, you've actually just made a great argument for legalizing prostitution as a way to reduce human trafficking by pulling it out of the illegal ring.
The rest of those things are consequences of the economic system we live in, not the job it itself. I don't see people arguing for outlawing of electrician work because it draws in young people and is strongly correlated to physical health issues. The fact that people need to sell their bodies in order to survive is an established part of capitalism. Why then is the target of your banhammer specifically prostitution? Just because sex is icky?
the employment market supports labor trafficking, guess what, labor trafficking is still illegal.
there is no reason for sex work and sex trafficking to be conflated, as sex trafficking is labor trafficking. in both a decriminalized or legalized world, trafficking is still illegal.
everything else you wrote is a labor rights issue as well. those particular harms of prostitution are specifically because the government perpetuates it being more dangerous than it is.
you not wanting your daughter to become a prostitute is not a government problem.
in another comment you wrote you're worried about government endorsement: the government getting out of the way in a decriminalized framework, or providing consumer protection in a legalized framework, is not endorsement. if you want to reinforce a deterrent, that comes from your community.
And people are trafficked to work in meatpacking plants. Should we outlaw meat too? (the people that think yes usually base their reasoning on other grounds)
Human trafficking is an orthogonal issue, but one that is facilitated by prostitution being illegal.
There are a lot of young girls (which are definitely someone's daughters) who knowingly start to perform escorting because it's easy and provides a lot of money. Without all that human trafficking argument.
And plenty more become mistresses of wealthy men, or "sugar babies" or whatever other terms we have for compensated relationships. But society doesn't regard this as prostitution because it's done under the guise of a relationship.
Or putting it simple: I definitely do not want my daughter to become a prostitute.