As That_little_attention_whore said above: "Actually, I think a big part of "mainstream" society's dislike of prostitution is the idea that A) a woman would want to have sex (outside of a loving, pro-creating marriage, obvs) and B) a woman may exert some control over her own sexuality, and the old chestnut C) any non-romantic sex must be damaging to women because we only "want" to have sex when we're in love.

I detect a lot of that undertone in the more paternalistic "we want to protect the women" arguments."

If I want to fuck someone and get paid for it, I should be able to.

P.S. My mother was an "escort" as well as an exotic dancer. I'm not but I'm fine, she's fine.

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I don't have any problem with people sleeping around. But sex work is not the same thing as sleeping around. While there are varying levels of control exercised by individual prostitutes, it isn't as though a bunch of johns put themselves on display for the prostitutes to pick from. Female lust isn't a required part of the equation.

You don't become a prostitute because you really want to screw. Sex is much easier to give away than to charge for, the motivation is money. I find the empowerment argument to be really hollow.

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and there will still be women who choose to become prostitutes.

It sucks that there are women out there who don't have access to the kind of education, child care, health care, etc. to get a higher-paying job. I don't understand how that fact makes prostitution wrong.

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I detect a lot of that undertone in the more paternalistic "we want to protect the women" arguments.

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exactly, though it was a really narrow margin:

The tally as of Wednesday morning, Nov 5, was:

Yes 89,833 42.44 %

No 121,815 57.56 %

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It is also complex, in my mind, because there really is NO example of anywhere where prostitution is legal or illegal that has successfully dealt with all of these issues. So the answer to your question, "Look, I agree that trafficking poses a complicated issue, but it is possible to police that and ALSO legalize consensual prostitution, yes?" is basically.... well, we don't know. Is it? how do we do that?

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Consensual Prostitution = nobody else's business

Trafficking = organized crime

The problem is, people often conflate the two. So, for example, you look at US anti-trafficking policy. While those State Dept. Reports are pretty good, and I think their hearts are in the right place, part of the problem is that a lot of anti-trafficking efforts are actually just anti-prostitution. Like people freaked out when Germany legalized brothels before the World Cup, claiming there would be a HUGE jump in trafficking (which there was not, according to German authorities)

At the same time, American - and most western nations' - law enforcement and judicial systems, when presented with the opportunity to really crack down on human trafficking, and really make a hit on the supply side, they really don't. (at least, not to the extent that they do with, say, heroin or arms trafficking).

So, when you look at both of these things together, of course anti-trafficking policy is going to look like a confused, muddled mess. Because it kind of is.

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But pimping and trafficking should be treated as a crime, in the same way we treat drug dealers in the US. You have your small-time dealers, and your major trafficking operations. Take the prostitution out of the equation entirely and look at it like an organized crime operation. Investigate and prosecute it thusly.

Also, not all people are trafficked into the sex trade - some are forced into sweat shops, others get their organs sold, etc. So sex trafficking is one (albeit a very prominent) form of human trafficking. I would even take the word "prostitution" out of the language when discussing human trafficking, because that's not what it is. I would use the word "slavery" A) because it is a more accurate depiction and B) it doesn't get the judgment that "prostitution" would incur

That's just my $.02

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There are so many amazing organizations out there right now that are working to change the focus to sex worker's rights...it saddens me to see played-out stereotypes again and again on Jez.

From the intro of "Whores and other Feminists" ed by Jill Nagle:

Sex worker activists around the globe have been laboring for more than two decades to improve conditions for those who choose the profession, and to oppose all forms of coercion, in the process calling attention to the larger economic context that severely cicrumscribes the range of options for all women (and most men). A small group of such activists recently helped ensure that the Platform for Action that emerged out of the United Nation's Bejing Women's Conference in October 1995 clearly differentiated between forced and voluntary prostitution, condemning only the forced variety

Feminism too often has failed to incorporate and theorize this distinction....it is high time to stop excluding the perspectives of sex worker feminists, time to stop assuming that traditional feminist analysis of sexual oppression alone exhausts all possible inprepretations of commercial sex, and time to stop reproducing the whore stigma common to the larger culture. These practices dilute much of feminism's radical potential. This needn't happen. Mainstream feminism can and must take up the mantle to include sex worker feminism -- and feminists -- in the larger picture.

this book is an excellent insight into the framework and dialogue we need to be using.

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Look, I can see where you're coming from, and years of policy could make it easy to think they're the same, but they're obviously not. Yes, it is the same demand, but they are COMPLETELY different suppliers, and that is the point we are trying to make.

Think of it as the difference between diamonds that came from a mine that employed only adult, unionized workers versus diamonds coming from a mine that used the forced labor of children. Either way, you're getting a diamond, but I think we should treat the former mine's owners differently than the latter's.

And, FWIW, most organizations that are involved in human trafficking are also involved in drug or arms trafficking. These are organized crime operations. The US, at least, has laws like RICO that could be used to crack down on traffickers. The question we ought to be asking is why the hell do we as a society care more about cracking down on people's ability to get high in their homes than we are on cracking down on the modern-day slave trade?

Trafficking in persons - whether for sex, forced labor, organ sales - is vile and should be investigated, prosecuted and punished to the fullest extent of the law.

I could care less if some college girl puts an ad up on Craigslist to get money for "dates"

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I suppose you could go after traffickers in a way more similar to arms trafficking and terrorism, but then you are looking at a HUGE intelligence initiative. Perhaps unfortunately, I don't really see the US or UN member states jumping at the idea of setting up such large and expensive programs.

I don't have the answer of how to untangle prostitution from trafficking entirely since, as you said, a lot of trafficking does feed into prostitution rings (though not all, of course). My kneejerk reaction is to say de-criminalize the sale or sex, but keep the purchase criminal.

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I think there has to be a way to see if a brothel is not legit other than daily raids as you suggest. I think they would have to approach it from a more top-down approach: investigate the people who are running the brothels. Which is why I would advocate involving investigators who deal with organized crime (rather than, say, the vice squad).

I agree with you that it's not easy, but it has to be more feasible than cracking down on all prostitution indiscriminately. I am trying to think - is there any other industry that is legal, but regulated, and authorities have been able to crack down on operations?

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I think it is interesting you chose mining as an analogy because i believe it is the male equivalent to sex work: people dont tend to choose it when they can make similar amounts of money doing something else and it is not good for the body long term and tends to lead to an earlier death (on average!).

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The only thing I have popping into my head, if you want to go with the organized crime example (or drugs/arms) is imposing some kind of civil penalty on suspected traffickers or people possibly linked to traffickers. The threshold for anything civil is a lot lower than trying to get someone on criminal charges, so theoretically you could just have investigators constantly watching brothel owners for anything off and then slam them with a civil action, perhaps blocking their funds, or taking away their passport and registering them on the no-fly list(if they were using it to in anyway move people internationally), or publishing a list of all brothel owners and the names of their brothels (at this point assuming it is regulated) suspected of unlawful business, a kind of name and shame if you will. I think the effect of these type of things though, might be that it would keep the straight owners and operators on their toes, but still may not do anything major to stop the crooked. Not sure though, could at least help if not solve the problem, particularly for the major traffickers. The small time guys would still probably slip through the cracks.

I suppose another way to have prostitution legal and highly regulated would be to just REALLY limit the context in which is is legal, like is done in Nevada. A certain number of brothels/sex workers would be allowed per state (based on population of that state, also taking into account varying size of the brothels)and those owners would be given business licenses. You could then have these businesses highly regulated, perhaps even with authority oversight. You could have the testing, required condom use, health-care, etc. but you would be working with a limitied pool of sex workers in a really limited context. Any other type of prostitution would still be illegal. I still think this would be rife with problems, but I can see it working to a certain extent...

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