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

There are moves afoot in Scotland to follow Sweden's lead and criminalise men who use prostitutes. One 'newspaper' wants to see such men placed on the Sex Offender's Register.

The opening position for this debate is:

Prostitution is a victimless crime, if it can even be termed a crime at all.

Do you agree/disagree?

I can pay anohter person providing they of a legal age to work the number of hours required to do everything a spouse/partner might ordniarily do with or for me except one thing.

So I cant pay a 16 year old o drive me home from the pub at two in th morning as its not legal or them to drive or be working that late and I can see the good reasoning behind such rules and laws.

No one has ever explained to me the reason that of all the things you can pay another person to do to or for you a bit of *slap and tickle* isnt one of them without falling back on "just because it is".

People should be legaly stopped from buying sex if its a moral issue that can be fully explained and we can see how we benefit either interms of protection of the vulnerable or as a whole socially, but Im still waiting to see where the advantages in prostituion being illegal actually outweight the problems of it being illegal.

I think the question is too generalised to give an un-generalised answer.

Prostitution as a street activity with pimps and underage girls and boys or government sanctioned, red light district prostitution with mandatory protection and regular doctor tests?

Victimless crime takes a whole other meaning in each of those scenarios.

I think anyone pathetic enough to pay for it should be shot. And I think anyone skilled enough to get people like that to pay 'em has a good career ahead of them in politics.

Prostitution is explotation.

sure we're all exploited to some degree if we work, but selling one's body for sex is a direct explotation of a person - I don't think it is possible to have a working respect for someone you are paying for sex.

Then there's the whole slavery and people trading issue - people making money off the misery of others.

And please no cr8p about housewives doing it in their spare time and its all respectable.

It has to be a generalised question as the reasons women prostitute themselves are so varied. However, 3 primary reasons often given are poverty, drug addiction and having been illegally trafficked for that purpose.

IMO, poverty is not an adequate excuse. With a full Welfare State, nobody need starve in the UK. Also, millions live in relative poverty without recourse to prostitution. Those that do are doing so through choice. In which case, who is exploiting who?

Many prostitutes claim to be feeding a drug habit. In which case, they are the victims of crime but again, they are exercising a choice.

Increasingly, women are trafficked into the UK for the purpose of prostitution. Again, they are the victims of crime.

It seems to me that there are a lot of criminals involved here; drug dealers, pimps, traffickers. Surely they are the criminals that should be targeted?

Someone made a comment about the men who use prostitutes being "sad". Fair enough. But is being "sad" a crime? Many would say that people who spend an inordinate amount of time on Message Boards are "sad". Should they be criminalised and/or shot?

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This bit first. I totally agree. But..

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I don't see in what way the exploitation via sex is *fundamentally* different from other forms of exploitation. Do you feel as strongly about gigolos, McKay?

As an aside, putting johns on the Sex Offenders Register seems like about the best way to stop men using prostitutes. It also seems extremely harsh to lump them in with paedophiles and rapists.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/7095134.stm

If a man can be placed on it for masturbation...

A ridiculous idea for many reasons.

1) Prostitution is an exchange involving two adults whereby someone is being paid to have sex with someone else. That's it. There is no serious moral argument for why this should be a crime beyond the idiotic religious notion that sex is sanctamonious. There are problems connected to sex, generally, of course but we already understand those and trust adults to deal with them regardless of the arrangements of their sex lives. Anything criminal connected with prostitution (child abuse, drug addiction, violence, people trafficking) should be treated as a crime *separately*.

2) Prostitution has not and will not go away ever; it's a constant presence in any human society. History teaches us this.

3) Thinking it's "wrong" for religious/political reasons is never going to make it go away. If someone supports the outlawing of prostitution then they should realistically accept that they are responsible for the problems that go with it (which I mention in point one) which are magnified by its illegality and admit that, since prostitution will never go away, they are arguing a case that ensures these things will perpetuate. Beating fists on the ground and screaming "the world shouldn't be like this!" doesn't change anything.

4) The sex offenders register is (supposedly) there to protect the public from people who might be a danger to them so they can be monitored by the police. Men who pay for sex might be all sorts of things but they're not a danger to the public by definition and so this is simply using an aspect of the law for the purpose it wasn't intended in order to scare people. It's like somehow using the anti-terrorism laws to threaten people who pirate films (to use a bizarre example); it's abuse of the law.

Additionally, this is an example of the law targeting the wrong people. If we want to target the harmful side of illegal prostitution (and I'm realistic enough to know that it will not be legalised in this country for at least a generation if at all; as with the drugs issue people are happy to be taken in by emotive and idealistic arguments on the issue and happy to ignore the damage their policies actually do) then we should target those who are harming people against their will: abusive johns, abusive pimps, people-traffickers, predatory drug-dealers (despite what SWL says I don't think all prostitutes who are drug addicts do so by free-will, some pimps essentially use drug addiction as an agent of enforcement, which of course they can do because it's an unregulated black-market trade), child-abusers etc etc.

And would the move to criminalise extend then to men who buy their mags from the top shelves of newsagents?

Novo

Re: Point 4 & the Sex Offenders Register. Campaigners claim that states like Nevada with legalised brothels have a higher incidence of rape than other States. Therefore, they argue, men who use prostitutes are more likely to rape than otherwise and thus they constitute a risk to the public in the same way as other sexual predators.

Here's the link to the story that sparked this. Worth reading - http://www.theherald.co.uk/search/display.var.2229052.0.prostitute_punters_more_violent.php

"Re: Point 4 & the Sex Offenders Register. Campaigners claim that states like Nevada with legalised brothels have a higher incidence of rape than other States. Therefore, they argue, men who use prostitutes are more likely to rape than otherwise and thus they constitute a risk to the public in the same way as other sexual predators."

First that would need a conclusive link between men using prostitutes and rape (I can't read the Herald article, I'm afraid, as it's being extremely slow to load so I've no idea if one has been proven) otherwise it's pure conjecture and drawing links with no evidence. It also isn't an argument for putting men who use prostitutes onto a sex offenders register. If a man uses a prostitute and then violently attacks her then he should go on a register, if he rapes someone he should go on a register. People should go on these things because of something they've actually done.

Additionally, taking this particular part of that argument:

"men who use prostitutes are more likely to rape than otherwise"

Hasn't this argument also been applied to pornography, strip clubs, lap dancing and other situations where women are objectified? In that case, wouldn't the same argument have to concede that men who do these things should be on some sort of register or would that just be, I dunno, extremely silly?

Finally got to read the Herald article. I'm afraid it doesn't prove anything beyond that men who use prostitutes (and are happy to talk about it) are more likely to be aggressive towards women. It doesn't prove a link between using prostitutes and mysogyny in the sense of it makes people more mysogynistic: it's perfectly likely that the have a bad attitude towards women to start with and this leads them to use prostitutes (in the same way it might lead them to go to stripclubs or lapdancing clubs alongside other men who don't share their issues).

One of the commenters also makes an interesting point. Glasgow has a low-tolerance approach to prostitution (which makes little difference to the trade - you can still find plenty of prostitutes in certain areas of the city at night) whilst Edinburgh is more tolerant and yet Glasgow is a much more dangerous place for a prostitute to work.

Of course, that doesn't actually prove anything and "culturally" Glasgow is more violent than Edinburgh generally but it's worth taking onboard nonetheless.

"There are moves afoot in Scotland to follow Sweden's lead and criminalise men who use prostitutes."

I guess this needs to be understood in the context of UK law, under which soliciting and brothels are both illegal, and the act of selling and buying sex not illegal. Perhaps Scottish law is different, but there is surely a fundamental imbalance here. If police raid a brothel, all of the women working there can be prosecuted for a criminal offence, but the 'customers' can't, as they've not committed a crime. If it's a crime to sell x, it should surely be a crime to buy x too.

Surely there should be equality here - either prostitution should be illegal and therefore a criminal offence on the part of the client and the prostitute, or it should be legal/decriminalised and both clients and prostitutes equally controlled or regulated in some way.

I've just made virtually the identical point on another board. Is it possible to simulpost on different boards?

It is different in Scotland. It is not illegal to buy or sell sex in a brothel or massage parlour. (AFAIK)

"Prostitution is explotation.

sure we're all exploited to some degree if we work, but selling one's body for sex is a direct explotation of a person - I don't think it is possible to have a working respect for someone you are paying for sex.

I know people who as you call it "sell" their bodies I respect hold a cheap supposal them on an indivudual basis. There's a guy I know whose job it is to hoist away illegally parked cars I have very little respect for him but his job doesnt figure in my estimation of him. The same goes for the protitutes and rent boys I know. I know a few "players" who still "borrow" money from women with childrn who they know havent got a pot to piss in. I have no respect for them but its got nothing to do with "selling their bodies".


What's more people are NOT selling their bodies they are hiring them out. I used to work as a door-man. A job a lot of people simply coould not do, a job a lot of people arent willing to do and a job that requires a certain attitude to the prospect of violence. I see little seperation between what I was doing and when I used to strip.



"Then there's the whole slavery and people trading issue - people making money off the misery of others.

This is an issue that aects fruit production, mining and domestic service. Funny but I dont often see people trafficking bandied about in the same way by the same people who use it as an argument against the sale of sex using it as an argument against the sale of fruit, employment of domestic stafs or mobile phones.

What I think you are doing is tacking on an emotive issue where it only has a tenuous link. Yes traficked people are exploited in prostituion but what are the percentages and do the exisisting laws make this a more likely thing or would tightening up the laws actually help these people?




"And please no cr8p about housewives doing it in their spare time and its all respectable.

Its OK McKay you can say crap here and despite your pathetic attempt to dictate what we can or cant say I will say that anyone working as a prostitute and treating other people in a decent way is respectable. Givent the circumstances of people like you ready to judge in cases where people lie to keep it hidden I think its acceptable to tell lies about it too.




Top and bottom of the issue really.

What right to do any of us here have to tell other people what they can do with other consenting adults?

one love

A point to consider. For those that argue that prostitution is normal or "acceptable" -

Would you prefer to see prostitution legalised in licensed brothels where the women have ready access to healthcare, addiction services & counselling? Not to mention paying taxes and having employment rights?

If so, would you be happy for prostitute's jobs to be advertised in the Jobcentre and for your wife/sister/daughter/mother to be threatened with losing their benefits if they didn't take the job?

That's a rather laughable situation you've dreamt up there SWL.

We have three lapdancing clubs up the road and they arent being sent anyone whose been threatened with their benfits being stopped so why employ the scare scenario here?

I think it should be treated as a self employed industry and allowed the right to form voluntary umbrella bodies.