h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3898009.stm

What do people think about this?

A couple of thoughts that spring to mind for me are:-

Would this just legitimise an evil trade that opresses women (normally vunerable ones) for the benefit of men?

Would it rather recogise the reality of life, prostitution happens and we need to make it as safe as possible for the people who work in the industry?

Does it signle to moral decay in Britain?

These are not necessarily my thoughts but I would like to stimulate some discussion on this issue.

how do you legislate for the difference between an individual making a personal choice to work as a prostitute and an individual forced/coerced by external forces into the same decision?
Is it easier to corrupt an inclusive framework or an exclusive one?
Far too muddy and complicated for me on a friday afternoon!
Good questions though

One thing I always think when this subject is debated is the assumption that the prostitution trader is somehow natural and inevitable because it has existed for so long.

Without meaning to make a definitive judgement I think it is equally possible that the trade has always existed becuase women have laways been subjegated and poverty has always existed.

This really is a tricky one, one that merits serious disscussion though methinks...

Prostitution was recently 'legalised' here in NZ - I put that in quotes, because I think it was merely decriminalised.
You have a point - inasmuch as I think legalisation does *trap* people within prostitution. The making it safe argument is used a lot, but one result (and the Prostitutes Collective here isn't any happier about it than anyone else) is the number of underage sex workers here - some 12 years old!

Prostitution exists, has existed, and will always exist in some form or another.

If no action is taken then prostitution continues to exist in the same conditions it does now, which does the prostitutes nor the communities any good.

Prostitution could be decriminalised if the prostitutes were willing to make some kind of reforms; standardise the business so-to-speak, and clean it up. It could be safer for prostitutes and clients both, make a less vulgar presence in the communities and could possibly run illegitimate business out.

Somehow the idea reminds me of providing smoking rooms/areas. A kind of segregation to keep it out of public areas. I'm not sure that it would help prevent pimping.

"Prostitution exists, has existed, and will always exist in some form or another."

Do we know catergorically that this is true?

I wonder how do we know that prostitution has always existed in some form or another, I would say for example that the prostitution trade as it works now is reliant on currency.

Now we do know that human society has not always had currency.

Are we then talking about less definitiver errr definitions of what prostitution is?

Human society may not have always had money, but it has always had trade. I'm sure in the stereo typical days of Ug and Og there was more than one male who sought to seduce a woman by the timely offering of half a wooly mammoth steak!

Just to add another angle, if it is decriminalised, should one allow sex workers to visit those unable to get out and about themselves? I seem to recall such is allowed in certain countries. I think I saw a proggy about a fella who was confined to a hospital bed and who had regular visits to relive him. Or should they just have lots of bromide tea?

I think it is a difficult question, not least because it forces us to really look at sexual attitudes.

actually, devils advocate hat on here,
We already have legalised brothels. They're called nightclubs. People go there with a lot of money, spend it on someone they wish to have sex with, then have sex with that person. OK, so you don;t actually give the money to the other person, but some form of gift giving (drinks etc) is expected, and in return you get sex.

I have to agree to the challenge to the idea that prostitution as we know it has always existed. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't.

In addition to currency I would say that patriarchal cultures are the main enablers of prostitution and they have been around for only 5,000 years or so.

I'm very glad to see in that article they are concerned about the international sex slavery trade.

I have no faith that legalising prostitution will reduce the number of child prostitutes.


Personally I think if the intent is to protect women and children then they could make _buying_ sex illegal and decriminalise _selling_ sex. This doesn't solve the pimping problem but it does expose the ridiculous hypocracy of the whole situation.

Reducing poverty and giving women pay parity would go along way too.

A more sensible attitude toward hard drugs would help as well.

The vast majority of prostitutes in Britain are addicted to Heroin. They are prostitutes in order in the main to pay for the habit. Prescibe heroin to registered addicts and you reduce the problem massivly IMHO.

Good point FB. I was shocked by the statistic on drugs and prostitution in the article.

I feel very uncomfortable with decriminalising prostitution unless buying sex is criminalised. Because prostitution is _so_ abusive to women and children, simply decriminalising the selling of sex is a way of saying we will give a small amount of control over your body and life but essentially the society we live in says it's ok that you have to do this to eat, and feed your children.

"Prostitution exists, has existed..."
Very good use of words there broe - if you'd said 'has always existed' you'd have been wrong because we don't know that it has always existed, and for many reasons. Firstly, we don't when, how, or in what circumstances a woman first received a reward (money, exchange, barter, whatever) for sex. There must have been a first time, so presumably before that there was no prostitution.

Why not? The people who say that prostitution has always existed make so many assumptions, most of which aren't true. They make the assumption the conventions and moral framework we have today has existed ever since people first achieved the power to think of themselves as something more than just a part of nature. In the days of Ug and Og there may have been no need to offer a woman a woolly mammoth steak - for all we know of how things were at that time, society may have been like that of a tribe of chimpanzees or bonobos - pretty damn promiscuous. You can't have prostitution if it's ok for everyone to be having sex with everyone else! You can argue that offering a female a piece of food to persuade her to have sex with you instead of another male is a form of prostitution since she's received something for sex... that's a very fine line.

"Do we know catergorically that this is true?"
Do we need to? We know that prostitution goes as far back as biblical times and beyond. How much history do you need in order to accept that it's been around a bloody long time and in many different civilisations? Ever since human beings realised that sex was a pleasurable thing and separated the idea of sex from reproduction, people have wanted to do it for pleasure - some people want to do it a lot.

"and will always exist in some form or another."
Well, that we don't know for sure, but we can make a cast iron case that it's going to be around for some time to come. It's here right now and it's not going away in the forseeable future.

Here's a question about prostitution which comes from a slightly different angle - why does prostitution exist? I'm not asking why do some men want to pay for sex, I mean what are the moral values that make paying for sex stigmatised in some societies but not in others? Why is a mistress slightly more acceptable than a prostitute? If we want to discuss whether or not prostitution should be controlled by the laws made by the people we voted into power, first we should understand the need for prostitution and society's motivations for its views about prostitition.

I don't have a problem with prostitution as such - but I do have a problem with women being forced into it against their will. If a woman is prosituting herself to fund a crack habit, or to feed her chlid then it is against her will. I worry that if we legalise prositution then people will start saying 'why should be give single mothers benifits? they could go and work as hookers'.

Icaton, I'm sorry but equating one night stands in nightclubs with prositutions is so bl**dy male centric! Why do you think the women are doing it? To get drinks? or because they *want* to have causal sex because they like it. They can after all take drinks off you and leave!

and what is there in society that concentrates on the 4/5ths of prostitutes that are women and seems to ignore the 1/5th that are men?
If the 80,000 in the uk figure quoted is correct, then that is still 16,000 men. Mind you, the article doesn;t specify what those 80,000 do. I guess it could be prostitutes, pimps and madams or just 80,000 prostitutes. So it could be 16,000 men pimping 64,000 women.

I think that Prostitution should be decriminalised (an approach favoured by Prostitutes rights groups as it devolves power to the workers themselves), but that the punters should be criminalised. If they have the money for prostitutes, then they have the money for hefty fines.

Several of my friends have worked as prostitutes, and each of them has said it is horrendously damaging, but they had no real choice due to homelessness and poverty. This answered the question I always had, which was why are the vast majority of beggars male.

On the issue of drug addiction and heroin. I used to think that if you could prescribe heroin to registered addicts then you'd reduce the amount of prositution.

But I've just spent two weeks with our local drug treatment team and having seeing methadone and buprenophrine (another opiate subsitute) prescribed to addicts then I've changed my mind.

I've learnt that stopping taking illict heroin is far more about a change in lifestyle and motivation that kicking a physical addiction. You can kick a physical addiction by staying in a treatment centre for two weeks. In my area there isn't even a waiting list for inpatient detox on the NHS. But I've met numerous people who have detoxed and relapsed again within a few weeks. Because taking heroin is the only way they know of dealing with stress, or because they're going back to the temptations of their old life.

Heroin is prescribed to registered addicts in one part of Liverpool, I don't think that there has been a reduction in prositiution in that area.

In areas where heroin isn't prescribed then methadone or buprenorphine are available, these take away the craving for the drug but don't give the same high as heroin. Often some people will use these for their day to day addiction and use heroin for the buzz every so often.

I've met countless heroin addicts in the past fortnight women (and men) who have used these drugs to turn their lives around and come off illictly acquired drugs and start living normally. But they go back to it.

I am not talking about prescibing Heroin in order to get people off it, I recognise that it wont work.

Rather I am suggesting that if you prescribed it then those prostitutes who only do it to feed their habit will have no need to work the streets. Then they will probably be in a much better state to start sorting their lives out and thus get into a position where they might raise the self esteem to a level where quitting through will/lifestyle are possible.

An excellent book for people interested in the issues involved in the legalization/decriminalization of prostitution is "Brothels" -- it's about the women who worked at the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada (USA) before it was shut down by the IRS (for tax evasion, not because it was a brothel, specifically).

For me, some of the most interesting things I learned from the book (and also what seemed to surprise the author the most) were --

* a large chunk of the women had been coerced into the position, just as with illegal prostitution. many of the women would work at the brothel for a few months a year so that their husbands didn't have to work at all. there appeared to be many services available to help the women get out of these situations, but the women seemed more frightened of losing their husband, despite what a the man obviously was.

* some of the women who had been originally brought to the brothel by a pimp or a husband (who was essentially pipming his wife) were later dumped by this man. these women continued in prostitution, *and* looked for a new man to send their money to, even when no one was trying to get them to. obviously, there's a lot of psychology involved here, but I just can't get my hand around this.

Definitely a worthwhile read, even if the author does go a bit overboard in trying to insist how nonjudgmental she is at times.