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Around the world, there's a growing movement to decriminalize sex work. Last year, Amnesty International, the largest human rights group in the world, came out with a recommendation that governments should decriminalize consensual sex work and develop laws that ensure workers are "protected from harm, exploitation and coercion." A United Nations commission has also come out in support of legalizing prostitution.
But the idea is a divisive one, stirring impassioned debates and concerns about the ways varying approaches could harm sex workers. Amnesty's recent policy drew strong support from public health advocates and intense backlash from those aiming to end prostitution completely.
Understanding the scope, harms and public health implications of policies addressing the world's oldest profession is really tricky. While prostitution - the buying and selling of sex - is a multibillion dollar industry, the sex trade is clandestine by nature. It's taboo. That makes it really hard to study, especially in the United States.
That's most often the case, except in this one part of the country, where the laws of prostitution were totally upended. It's a peculiar story that's largely left out of the current discussion. The place in question is not Nevada, where there's a small number of regulated brothels in certain rural counties.
It's a whole state - Rhode Island.
For several years, ending in 2009, indoor prostitution such as in massage parlors, strip clubs and through online escorts, was not a crime in this tiny New England State.
The whole thing happened somewhat unintentionally. But at the time, it fueled a heated public debate about sex, crime and health.
Years later, some are revisiting the lessons learned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @03:55PM (12 children)
Not really, there's numerous things that you're not allowed to do with your body because they cause problems. For example, you can't use your fist to beat somebody up and you can't expose yourself to children at the playground.
Why is it that you people have so much trouble with the concept of externalities? Nobody is saying that people can't have sex, what we're saying is that the consequences of paying for it aren't what we as a society want to be dealing with. The people who are pushing for decriminalization and full legalization are mostly people that have no idea what prostitution is like and the problems surrounding it. There's a reason why around here we require education for anybody we catch soliciting a prostitute.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Justin Case on Wednesday August 09 2017, @04:03PM (3 children)
Well I can but your point is physically harming someone else is, and well should be, against the law. So to continue the analogy, I can't use the car I own to crash into your house either. That's not among the rights of ownership.
But if you own something, you are allowed to sell it.
So, nobody owns their own bodies.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Mykl on Thursday August 10 2017, @01:36AM
No. You are essentially advocating the legalization of slavery (which is literally selling your body to somebody else). There are things that you can possess/own, but which cannot be sold or transferred. Examples are citizenship or qualifications such as degrees. Literally selling yourself into slavery is also illegal as ownership of your body is non-transferable.
Besides, prostitution would more accurately be described as renting your body to somebody else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 10 2017, @02:02AM (1 child)
You argued that what we do with our bodies is our own business. You can argue with me all you want, but the reality is that what we do with our bodies isn't without limits. A lot of the things we do with our bodies do impact other people and society in general and it's naive to suggest otherwise.
Punching somebody in the face is something that most people agree is wrong, however, what if that person has insulted you? Is it still wrong? Or, how about if you think they're about to rob you? Still wrong?
The question is where we draw the line, it's clear to most adults that there are limits to our freedoms and that's necessary in order to ensure that we have freedoms rather than all being stuck doing whatever the most powerful people say we should do.
In this case, there's limited reason for this service to be legal and a few reasons that it shouldn't be. But, the people looking to legalize and decriminalize don't actually have any arguments, so this weak argument gets trotted out about how this is an unacceptable breach of our rights.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 11 2017, @03:25AM
What is the point of arbitrarily creating limits on personal freedoms merely because you conclude that limits to freedoms should exist? In the case of prostitution, sure, there are limited reasons for prostitution, but there are also limited reasons against prostitution. The deciding factor should be that people want prostitution. After all, if you're not allowed to use freedoms to pursue your desires, then they aren't really freedoms.
In a democratic, free world, you should have really compelling reasons for constraining freedoms. Not because there are "a few reasons" to constrain freedom or even weaker some weird cyclic argument where we constrain freedom because freedom must be constrained. In other words, our restrictions on what is allowed should be highly permissive with constraints coming from inflicting violation of other peoples' rights (your right to swing your fist ends at my nose) rather than pathetic and often imaginary concerns.
I'll note here that we have a remarkable lack of credible reasons for making prostitution illegal, not just in your post or in the thread, but in this entire discussion. And that is to be expected, since prostitution doesn't violated anyone's rights. Thus, arguing from a rights perspective, while it might be weak, it is also good enough due to the far weaker arguments of opposition to legal prostitution.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @04:07PM (1 child)
For one person to punch another person in the face involves the involuntary allocation of the punched person's resources (e.g., of the punched person's face). That is, you're still dealing with the question "Is this my body or not?"
As for exposing oneself to children at the playground, that too can be understood in the context of property rights, and the involuntary allocation of someone else's resources; at the very least, the owner of the playground could establish usage rules to which people entering the playground must agree in advance, including the agreement not to flash other people, etc.
What you call "externalities" is really just code for "poorly organized society".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 10 2017, @02:34AM
Exernalities is code word for somebody else is stuck cleaning up your mess you selfish asshole prick.
(Score: 3, Informative) by EvilSS on Wednesday August 09 2017, @04:39PM
You know professional boxing is a thing, right? And MMA, and martial arts tournaments, etc. So yes, there are currently legal ways that you can use your fist to beat up somebody.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @05:44PM (2 children)
That sentence doesn't say anything unless you specify what consequences you mean, why you consider those consequences as negative, and why you consider those consequences to be inevitable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @05:46PM (1 child)
Oh, and I forgot: Who is "we".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @06:13PM
You can spot a collectivist a country-mile away. A collectivist confuses himself with everybody else, and the consequences of this confusion are dire.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @05:47PM
What if the cure to the problems is worse than the problems to begin with? That is the case with prohibition of drugs and it is also the case with prohibition of prostitution. Prohibition creates new externalities that are worse than the original problem.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 10 2017, @11:34AM
So the grandparent was asserting that because he owns his own body, that means he owns the bodies of other people too? Maybe you should learn what the argument is and think about what it actually means. Just because I own my fist, doesn't mean I get to beat up other people with it. But that's because I don't own those other people and hence, don't have the right to inflict harm upon them, not because you can wave some vague term like "problems" about.