Another thing I think worth pointing out is that research shows time and time again that a majority of prostitutes were sexually molested and beaten as children by their caregivers -

http://womensissues.about.com/od/rap.../a/Wuornos.htm

My own personal view - people who were subjected to raped, assault and molestation as children need help. They need psychological counseling, they need support centres, they need a stable environment.

Can we all agree that it would be wrong to look for paid sex with a woman who you know was raped or molested or beaten up as a child and has not dealt with it? It seems to be a pretty elementary moral truism that that is wrong.

Now since you can't know when you visit a prostitute if she was abused as a child, how infrequent do these cases have to be to make it moral? 75%? 50%? 25%? 10%? 5%? 1%?

Yes, but the issue of whether prostitution in-and-of-itself is immorral vs. whether human trafficing is immorral are obviously seperate.

Let's say shoes are sometimes made in sweatshops by slaves. Would it be wrong to wear shoes made by those slaves?? Assuming yes, would it be wrong to wear shoes given that you can't tell which ones are made by slaves? Does this make shoe wearing immorral?

Well I would hardly expect hookers who actually did enjoy their job to go to a social services center for help....

I'm not saying you are wrong or anything, but making blanket statements based on certain anectdotal experiences tends to be misleading. And yes, it goes both ways.

How does the proportion of coerced to non-coerced compare in places where it is legalized? Is there such a thing as a place where it is de-stigmatized? It'd be interesting to see what its like there. Social stigma can be every bit as big a deterrent as law.

I mean...ok, but what is the main reason that most women get into waiting tables at Denny's? Passion for food service?

What does whether the sex was paid for have to do with anything?

Personal Story Time: I was "friends with benefits" with a girl for a couple of years in college. She later confided in me that she had been molested as a child. I don't think our consensual relationship was wrong.

Since I chose "other" and it asks to specify: Prostitution should be legal, and whether it is unethical/immoral/harmful to the woman is on an individual basis.

Available anecdotal evidence is irrelevant. Besides, we're not really talking about 'existing' prostitution, but rather prostitution in a completely different environment, namely, a theoretical free market without prohibitions. Someone already mentioned the TV show 'Firefly'. Basically high-end prostitutes operate legally and there are strict vetting procedures (e.g IQ test, mental tests, sober...) to be accepted as a prostitute ('companion') and the men similarly undergo strict application at the behest of the women. There is nothing unethical about this, unless you subscribe to puritan values. Point being: I find it hard to envisage an industry as seedy and crime ridden as under current conditions, in a free market environment.

? I've already made the necessary distinction... child drug running is immoral and thus it is justified to cut off the kids source of income. If drugs were legal there would obviously be no such thing as child drug runners anyway. Prostitution isn't immoral, so the same doesn't apply.

''...more people die every year as a result of the war against drugs than die from what we call, generically, overdosing. These fatalities include, perhaps most prominently, drug merchants who compete for commercial territory, but include also people who are robbed and killed by those desperate for money to buy the drug to which they have become addicted.

This is perhaps the moment to note that the pharmaceutical cost of cocaine and heroin is approximately 2 per cent of the street price of those drugs. Since a cocaine addict can spend as much as $1,000 per week to sustain his habit, he would need to come up with that $1,000. The approximate fencing cost of stolen goods is 80 per cent, so that to come up with $1,000 can require stealing $5,000 worth of jewels, cars, whatever. We can see that at free-market rates, $20 per week would provide the addict with the cocaine which, in this wartime drug situation, requires of him $1,000.... '' (William F Buckley)

... the medical dangers of drugs are a minor problem compared with factors brought on by prohibition such as impurity, high prices, gangs, cartels etc. Have you never read the arguments in favor of drug legalization? The serious arguments (i.e conservative/libertarian ones) have nothing to do with the said medical aspect of drugs, but rather the much greater problems (e.g deaths) caused by their prohibition.

Cocaine isn't particularly harmful, but this is irrelevant to my argument. In a free market society, crack would never have existed.

If there was alcohol prohibition it would be completely ******ed to talk about the medical dangers inherent to alcohol when the majority of deaths would occur due to impurities from bootlegging, transportation, gang/cartel crime and crimes committed by alcoholics due to inflated black market prices.

In a free market there would be less incentive to become a prostitute in the first place because there would be more available jobs, wealth, prosperity and predictably less sexually repressed men. Also, drug addicted women could afford their habit without resorting to prostitution as is often the case.

I don't know what you mean. I'm not against 'government imposed burdens' like criminal records.

Ah ok, I see your point. But then we are just talking about abstract fantasy-land prostitution not in any way rooted in the real world.

I think we should try our best to inform ourselves on where are products come from yes. Like I said to Taso, if he can show me a product which is being made with significant slave labour I'll stop buying them. That is unethical, yes.

It's an unfortunate consequence of modern economies and the extension of the division of labour that it's often very difficult to know where are stuff is being made, and in what conditions. I do think we have an obligation to at least try to find out where and how our stuff is made, as best we can though.

Right, and if it wasnt prostitution, there would be some OTHER "worst possible job for a woman" that any young woman could get with no skills at all, that all the desperate women would go into. I think partially its our sort of bizarre sex taboos and hangups that make this even a particularly interesting topic, because its not inherently more exploitative just because dirty dirty dirty sex is involved.

That being said, the "she just does it because she loves sex" crowd is essentially analogous to the "pot is natural, it grows in the GROUND MAAAAAAAN" crowd...please stop helping.

No, a better analogy would be "Would it be unethical to shop at stores" rather than "shop at Walmart" if you found out that a guy at WalMart was being coerced to work there.

Good point.

I guess Amsterdam is the closets thing to it being de-stigmatized and legalized, as far as I know. There is still a huge amount of human trafficking, sex slavery and violence that goes on in that situation.


Prostitution in the Netherlands

It seems to be pretty de-stigmatized - "In the 1990s, Dutch attitudes supported the legalization of prostitution: in a 1997 survey, 73 percent of Dutch citizens favored legalization of brothels, 74 percent said that prostitution was an "acceptable job," and in a 1999 poll 78 percent felt that prostitution is a job like any other job (polls cited in Weitzer 2000, p. 178)."

And it's legalized (or at least far more legalized than most other places).

There is, however, still large amount of human trafficking - "There were 809 registered victims of human trafficking in 2008, 763 were women and at least 60 percent of them were forced to work in the sex industry."

And the conditions are still pretty bad for a lot of the prostitutes from what I've read (I did have a study open earlier, I'll try to find it again).

lol, its at least possible he voted 2 because he believed your argument that there arent any voluntary transactions involved, right? Dont sell yourself short!

Ok, am I reading that wrong, or does it say that 60% of the victims of human trafficking were forced to work in the sex industry....not 60% of all workers in the sex industry? It seems like its about 500 women total that are both "sex workers" and "victims of human trafficking." Now thats still a lot of women, in a smallish country, but there are something like 25,000 sex workers in Netherlands, so its ~2%, right?

I might be reading that wrong.

When we start getting to that level of coercion, I think I get to employ an ACist argument. I am hugely against the violence involved, but I can't avoid shopping at stores and still lead a functional life. Visiting prostitutes is completely avoidable.

I say I'm employing an ACist argument here, because this is how ACist typically defend using products which involve government violence (roads, univerisites etc.). You can't expect people to realistically go to such extremes to avoid things they find unethical.

leave tomdemaine out of this

"Many victims of human trafficking are led to believe by organized criminals that they are being offered work in hotels or restaurants or in child care and are forced into prostitution with the threat or actual use of violence. Estimates of the number of victims vary from 1000 to 7000 on a yearly basis."

So that's anything from 4% to around a third of workers forced to be there against their will. That would be a pretty big concern to me if I was considering going there.

I did have some data which suggested higher numbers also. I'll try to find it again.

Dont disagree with the rest of this post, but I gotta pick a nit here. No, it would not be, depending on how you mean "small chance." This type of argument is never productive, it is basically just an emotional plea, because no rational person could ever mean it as it is actually presented. There is ALWAYS a small chance you are raping any woman you have sex with, so clearly no one would agree that "its immoral even if there is a small chance." What you mean is "Is it immoral if there is even a 3.2% chance?" which doesnt quite carry the same weight...which is why people say "even a small chance!" rather than 3.2%.

1/3 = pretty big concern
4% = significantly smaller concern

The fact that there is that much variance = pretty big concern in the validity of studies, especially considering there is every single possible motivation to make number as large as possible and almost zero motivation to make it smaller (unless the pro-sex slavery lobby is stronger than I think).

I'd ask her, and probably sleep ok.

I think you are holding this to a ridiculous double standard for ulterior reasons, but its not like you are alone there, so whatever.

Fairly revealing post. Its fine to have bias, we all do, but you should recognize what this post says about your take on this issue.

Sticking with this analogy because i think i'm so clever, you probably feel ok buying shoes because you buy them at reputable stores with brand names and such. If there was a slavery incident, those stores would be shutdown or at least outed so you can feel pretty confident you're wearing non-slave shoes. Don't you think the same thing would happen if prostitution was legalized? If it comes out that Joann's House of Lay is using slave workers, Joann's in trouble.

What if there is "even a small chance" his shoes were made by slaves?!?!?

Possibly, and I'd imagine it would get a lot better, but prostitution has been legalized in some places and sex slavery still persists there. The burden of proof seems to be on you to explain why it has not disappeared even where it is legalized. The evidence backs my claim up so far, it doesn't back yours up.

So if we are talking about religious zealotry levels of consistency upon our positions - you are opposed to state violence and theft, yet you are training to be a doctor in a profession which is built on violence and theft. Does that invalidate your position on state violence? I don't think so, for the same reason I don't think this invalidates my position on prostitution. We all have somewhat arbitrary cut-off points when it comes to morality...