Discussion for article #233605
Good story about a good program doing good work. Well done.
I’m sure sex work will be stopped any millennium now.
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A process more concerned with justice than retribution? It’ll never catch on.
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I don’t understand why they don’t just legalize and regulate prostitution. Give the people who choose that path an opportunity to be protected from predators, an opportunity for health care. It would be safer for them, it would be safer for the general populace. I don’t understand why it is illegal in the first place.
I’ve only ever known one woman who took that route, but she successfully paid her way through college with it, and has a good paying stable job now. She got out of college with no debt and was able to stop the moment she got a job. She isn’t ashamed of her past, but she is rather selective of who she talks to about it, for obvious reasons.
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Dang, Blueb: do you really wanna be Holland … or CANADA?
No proliferation of unregulated firearms, universal entitlement to health care, progressive tax rates, prosecution of those who exploit sex workers for profit but not sex workers themselves – what an absolute nightmare living with all that would be.
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There is a difference between prostitution and sex trafficking. Why is prostitution (an adult woman freely choosing to be a sex worker) considered to be like a mental illness that can be treated with court mandated therapy? Are the clients of these women equally mentally ill? Where does one draw the line? Is a stripper working in a club just a little ill compared to an actual prostitute? Yes, many women that work in the sex industry do have drug abuse problems, but that is conflating two separate issues.
This program smacks of moral judgement and religious overtones. Get thee to the nunnery! The best way to help woman that choose to work in the sex industry is to legalize and regulate the sex industry. In the future, we will look back at prostitution laws and see the horrible damage they caused for actions that caused no real harm to society just like what we are experiencing today with marijuana laws.
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You are probably right, but it is illegal. In addition it is degrading to the workers, especially the street workers targeted by this program. We have a duty to give them hope for the future.
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I think legalizing and regulating the sex trade done right could be a good thing. The women in this program aren’t high dollar call girls or hookers working out of a nice house for some madam with a heart of gold. These are street workers who would be exploited in any system of legalization and regulation. Not very many women work their way through college giving drive by blow jobs to honkies on streetcorners. This program seems to be aimed at giving them a way out.
“. . . therapy at the end of a gun barrel.”
What a poor choice of words and hardly accurate.
That has been tried in Germany with devastating consequences. It is now a hub for human trafficking.
The regulation would be key. When Germany legalized prostitution it opened up the floodgates for ever more extreme victimization on an industrial scale. Never saw do-gooder politics backfire more spectacularly.
The experience in Australia hasn’t been any better: http://www.catwinternational.org/content/images/article/95/attachment.pdf
If you don’t rehab the men who pimp them out and buy their services, what good will this do?
Why are you assuming the pimps are only male?
Only read the headline and the comments. Two comments…
- No way is sex work going to be eliminated.
- The same logic that says there should be not bans says that there should be no regulations. Who says to another person, “you can’t have sex unless you pay me”?..Pimps, that’s who. If he government licenses it then, what does that make the us. We can argue over whether or not pimps are necessary, but that’s a different question.
I suggest you read the article. The headline is inaccurate and about 1/2 of the commenters didn’t read the article. The point of the court is to give these long time low grade sex workers help achieving a better future. It seems to be working.
The notion that these women are making free choices and that what they are doing is something other than a degrading deadend drug fueled life is naive. They and their children are the true victims of prostitution.
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@ronnbyers, Probably a third to half the jobs in the U.S. are degrading in one sense or another or more, so that’s no argument. Who’s the “we” in your “duty?” What do you have against consensual sex among adults? Rather, abolish laws against prostitution, jail the pimps, unionize the prostitutes, provide free health care, lay off the “johns,” and make marriage and divorce entirely a civil procedure, that is, registration and de-registration at a government office (just like the Soviet Union had in its revolutionay, pre-Stalinist, days).
Obviously your understanding of prostitution is informed by watching Pretty Woman. The women in this program are older, they are poor, they don’t have opportunities. Many are addicts. They don’t have much longer in the sex trade. I suspect none of them wants to see her children end up in the trade.
As to the sense of duty, I confess that sounds pompous but the way I look at life, you can either believe each of us has a duty to be our brother and sisters keeper or you are a Republican. I choose not to be a Republican.
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I think you need to document this as nations with legalized prostitution have, by and large, fewer “associated” problems than nations in which prostitution is legal.
I believe wholeheartedly in the concept of duty. But you should be careful, Ronbyers, duty is a powerful thing. If you believe in the concept of duty, you will be to the right of TPM’s message boards in no time, at least on social issues. Before you know it, you will be agreeing with Darrius and disagreeing most of the other here.