11-10-2018, 07:28 PM
(11-10-2018, 03:34 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: By voting for the proposition you probably just realized that its prohibition was no more successful that it was with liquor nearly a century ago. How far off can decriminalization of sex work be? Hope to see that before my life is over.
I don't have a daughter or granddaughter, and I would not want her involved in sex work even if it were lawful. I would not patronize sex workers if it were legal.
Sex work probably hurts the psyche of someone who does it. It is emotionally exploitative, and it is not a wholesome relationship. This is not to be confused with economic exploitation which is severe or benign in America depending on one's position on the economic spectrum. But really-low-paying work, as by retail sales clerks, does not have the facade of intimacy with a client.
I have heard people describe the situation in Amsterdam, where someone might walk down the wrong street. On one street is the museum, and on the next street over are sex workers showing their wares to attract clients.
This said, pornography is legal. It too is emotionally exploitative. I have heard of people in the business getting messed up. Yes, people can be messed up while doing 'legitimate' work such as clerks, nurses, teachers, cleaners, farm laborers, and salespeople, too -- but the suicide rate among people in the pornography business is high. It could be that troubled people are more likely to enter the sex trade than to become schoolteachers, accountants, or engineers.
This said, sex workers deserve some protection from people who abuse them. It is also best that such people have some protection from predators. If the sex trade is licit, then sex workers can unionize and can get the aid of law enforcement against people who would beat or kill them. The illicit character of the sex trade creates its own dangers, including the harsh judgment of creeps who murder then out of the perverse superego. Many of the victims of serial killers are prostitutes. I would support legal changes that would make the lives of sex workers safer, even if that implies legalization.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.