Why Do People think Lowly Of Hookers?

[Els]

 

Also, plenty of men who use the services of prostitutes aren't doing so because sex is "hard to get" for them. There are many other reasons for it.

 

Hahah, yeah. I recall a male model responding to an interview about why he obtains the services of prostitutes despite the fact that getting sex should be easy for him. He said, "I don't pay them to have sex with me, I pay them to leave and not try to contact me again."

[zengirl]

There were no misconceptions presented in my post. Only your perception of such. If you read my post without bias, facts were stated.

 

Depends on if the married men were regular customers of the hooker. It's also illegal to hook in North Carolina. Double jeopardy.

 

I'm not sure that you couldn't still sue in a civil suit for damages -- I don't think double jeopardy would apply.

 

I did read your post without bias. It left out important facts --- the notion that abortion is LEGAL in NC has nothing to do with the law in NC that the state actually makes.

[casey1989]

 

 

I don't think many female hookers will say that they get sexual pleasure from their job - a few may, but then again I'm sure a few male gigolos do as well. Benefits quoted for the job usually involve flexible hours that allow pursuit of a second career, good treatment and high pay, etc. If a woman has sex with a man she's not attracted to who just pumps and dumps, it doesn't matter if he's a buff 6-foot-tall 20 year old football player, it isn't necessarily any 'better' than having sex with a 60-year-old obese person. She isn't attracted and she isn't being satisfied in any way, emotional or sexual, so it is definitely something she should be paid for, else why should she do it?

 

That being said, if we are to talk solely about appearance, I have read about quite a few male escorts whose clientele are largely professional young or semi-young (below 40) women. They tend to offer services beyond what you would imagine to be the norm, though, from romantic dining and accompaniment to social functions, to professional domination or submission. Professional dominants, in fact, are pretty highly in demand in certain communities, and many of those men are not really good looking, they bank on skills, reputation and experience. I would venture to say that the reason fewer male prostitutes exist is simply because of social taboo about women seeking prostitutes - as you mentioned, you immediately think that a woman who seeks them out is likely to be 'bottom of the barrel'. Perhaps in a few generations' time this will equilibrize, as it is already beginning to.

 

 

I have to say that most of us do get sexual gratification from clients. But that has absolutely nothing to do with the appearance of the guy. Yes physical attraction is nice when it happens (which for me, maybe because I am quite young, doesn't happen very often) but satisfying sex isn't for me related to my attraction to the client, it's about many things from how much I like the client, and most importantly how good he is in bed.

 

On the other hand many men pay me because in any other situation I wouldn't even look twice at them. But like others have said they don't want any strings, they want me to leave. Plus a lot of clients have specialised things they want to try, which they haven't been able to try before.

 

In terms of male escorts, there is already a thread on that where I gave my opinion. Interesting that the clients are seen that way though.

[somedude81]

Originally Posted by somedude81

 

 

Actually, since we're talking about "shoulds," I think that sex "should not" be thought of as something that you "get," like an entitlement or a thing.

 

But, since it is, specifically to you, the fact that you CAN go buy it makes it not hard to get at all.

 

Is a pack of cigarettes or a soda "hard to get"?

 

Stuff that's for sale is easy to get. The money? That might be a different story.

What I'm saying is that sex should be a normal part of life and should just happen.

 

Yes I do think I'm entitled to have sex and get a girlfriend. Every decent person is. That's what I've learned from my culture and religion.

 

Having to pay for sex cheapens the whole experience and it's not doing things the right way.

 

 

Also, plenty of men who use the services of prostitutes aren't doing so because sex is "hard to get" for them. There are many other reasons for it.

Though I'm sure not being able to get it any other way is the primary reason. There is also not being able to have sex with somebody they consider attractive and the only way they can do it with a hot girl is to pay her.

 

BTW, I'm have not said that men are entitled to sleep with hot girls. But they are entitled to have relationships with somebody who is their rough equivalent.

[Els]

What I'm saying is that sex should be a normal part of life and should just happen.

 

Yes I do think I'm entitled to have sex and get a girlfriend. Every decent person is. That's what I've learned from my culture and religion.

.

 

I'm sorry that your culture tells you that. Honest to god, I am. Mine tells me that I'm not even entitled to survival if I don't find a way to fill my stomach. Not certain that that's better, but it certainly inspires you to not expect handouts.

[denise_xo]

Yes I do think I'm entitled to have sex and get a girlfriend. Every decent person is. That's what I've learned from my culture and religion.

 

No one is entitled to sex or a partner (or children, for that matter). Religion and culture have historically told us that we should get married, framing marriage and children as a moral obligation and as a good way to organise society. Now that we are no longer (semi) forced into marrying, and we also have the option of divorcing if we are 'unhappy', this 'safety net' for getting married and establishing a family no longer applies to many of us. On the positive side, we don't have to marry if we don't want to, or if we don't like the partner that is suggested to us. On the other hand, more people are going to have a harder time finding a relationship, and making it sustainable.

[johan]

What I'm saying is that sex should be a normal part of life and should just happen.

 

Yes I do think I'm entitled to have sex and get a girlfriend. Every decent person is. That's what I've learned from my culture and religion.

 

Well, somedude. That's just not how the world works. No matter what you wish or what your religion tells you.

[Mme. Chaucer]

Though I'm sure not being able to get it any other way is the primary reason. There is also not being able to have sex with somebody they consider attractive and the only way they can do it with a hot girl is to pay her.

 

According to a few contributors to this thread, a big reason for going to prostitutes is to "enable" a married man to cheat on his wife, in which case he is in a sexual relationship already.

[Mme. Chaucer]

Originally Posted by somedude81

What I'm saying is that sex should be a normal part of life and should just happen.

 

Yes I do think I'm entitled to have sex and get a girlfriend. Every decent person is. That's what I've learned from my culture and religion.

 

Cause you think it don't make it so!

[Scottdmw]

My academic field is one which, as I have said, has far fewer mitigating factors and unknowns than the social sciences. In fact, you don't get much more deterministic than my field, because it is the study of deterministic systems in itself. In some facets of life, raw data and facts obtained via surveys and laboratories matter more than others because some aspects of life are more readily explained via the current methodologies that we have. Academia does not explain everything in life. For the last time, no matter what methodology your studies use, they are limited by virtue of the simple fact that they can only detail the cases that they know of. For instance, look at the rape statistics listed here: Rape statistics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia . The USA has higher rape statistics per 100,000 population than many other countries such as Kazakhstan, the Arab Republic, etc. Do you REALLY think that is a genuine reflection of how much rape really goes on in those other countries? Really? Come on. You're smarter than that.

 

No one is questioning that social science statistics are less perfect than physical science. The point is, up until now all you or others offered is personal opinion and personal experience. Believe what you prefer, but I think that any working professional in any field is going to agree that some data is better than no data.

 

Also, I'm confused as to what your stand is on this issue again. In your initial post to me, you said that you agreed that people should not be judged for prostitution and that it should not be made illegal, you just feel that people should be warned about the potential detrimental effects of the act. I thought we had reached a happy agreement. You then later posted arguing with the legalization of prostitution, and after some conversation with zengirl agreed that there was no proof of causality between legalization of prostitution and incidence of trafficking. Now you're insisting that there is a link? Will you please pick your stance and stick with it, before we get any further?

 

I feel that the illegality or legality is not the most important issue to talk about. But, I honestly got tired of seeing so many people state things as facts that were contrary to all the published data I have seen. So, I started posting published data, and was dismayed at the fact that people are willing to completely ignore it in favor of their “personal experiences.” The reason why I've been so persistent about this is if we can’t talk about evidence no one is going to convince anyone of anything.

 

That conversation with zengirl was actually before the point when I carefully read through some of the evidence and realized that there was evidence of a causal link. If you could post some the other way I might even change my mind again, I'm not strongly made up on the whole legalization thing, I'm just dismayed at people's unwillingness to discuss the evidence.

 

What I am fairly convinced of is that there is a LOT of force involved in prostitution, a lot of underaged women involved, and a lot of trafficking. I have seen no good evidence that legalization is going to help these things, but I've seen a lot of people make that claim and refuse to consider the evidence.

 

 

 

Also, just for funsies, I'll indulge you and post some 'pro-legalization studies'. Not exactly peer-reviewed and meta-criticized stuff, here, but yours really aren't either, so here you go...

 

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Selling sex legally in New Zealand

Legalized Prostitution: Regulating the Oldest Profession

SFU study says prostitution should be legalized or decriminalized in Canada

 

 

Well, at least this is more than personal experience. I read the articles. Since you didn't want to discuss them in detail, I'll do it.

 

For the first one, this is an interview-based news article. It asks a small number of sex workers what their experiences have been. The most useful line is here:

 

“According to Catherine Healy of the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective (NZPC), better and safer working practices are now the norm. Across the industry, she says, women are now aware of their rights and exploitative brothel owners are becoming marginalised as a result of the reform.”

 

If that's true, that is at least something. It does not address the point in my quote which mentions that in Australia “there are 400 illegal brothels as against 100 legal ones”, nor does it mention anything about the effect on trafficking or force one way or the other, except to say that women are more “aware” and exploitative brothels are “marginalized.” Am I missing something here?

 

For your second article, I'm not really sure what you think it proves. It has some data that talks about correlation of legalized prostitution to various rather unrelated things such as number of murders and number of prisoners. It does not address the question of trafficking, of whether legalized prostitution decreases forced prostitution, of underage prostitution, or any indication of causality. What do you think it proves?

 

For the third article, this is a study that talks about what Canadian sex workers would like to see happen with legalization. Again, I'm not sure how that affects the main points of whether legalization will actually affect the rates of trafficking, underage prostitution, or forced prostitution. The people in the study may think it will, though they don't state that, and what people think will happen does not always happen.

 

I do appreciate you taking the time to post something. However, it's not clear to me how it addresses the main points I've been making.

 

Scott

[denise_xo]

BTW, I'm have not said that men are entitled to sleep with hot girls. But they are entitled to have relationships with somebody who is their rough equivalent.

 

I find your concept of entitlement very peculiar. If you (or anyone else) is 'entitled' to a relationship with someone 'equivalent', who is responsible for making sure that this happens? Should I complain to the government if I don't find a partner? Or should the next 'equivalent' man I meet feel obliged to start a relationship with me and/or provide me with sex? How exactly is this entitlement business supposed to work?

[casey1989]

I find your concept of entitlement very peculiar. If you (or anyone else) is 'entitled' to a relationship with someone 'equivalent', who is responsible for making sure that this happens? Should I complain to the government if I don't find a partner? Or should the next 'equivalent' man I meet feel obliged to start a relationship with me and/or provide me with sex? How exactly is this entitlement business supposed to work?

 

I also find the entitlement thing perplexing. What do you mean equivalent? If you mean equivalent in looks, then that just doesn't make sense as beauty is always in the eye of the beholder. If you are looking for a lasting relationship, to me at least, physical beauty is not a main consideration- looks change, people get old, fat etc... what someone needs from a relationship is love and kindness, which are the things that create a long and happy relationship, and enable them to have a fulfilling sex life.

 

In my personal life I don't have a 'type' or a criteria of how someone should look before I would consider dating them, I would rather get to know them and see if there is a connection.

 

Maybe this is because my job has allowed me to see that people are more than looks, age, weight, ethnicity, penis size etc.

 

What makes someone truly beautiful in my eyes is their personality.

[Els]

No one is questioning that social science statistics are less perfect than physical science. The point is, up until now all you or others offered is personal opinion and personal experience. Believe what you prefer, but I think that any working professional in any field is going to agree that some data is better than no data.

 

Years of a life lived in one of the places highly speculated about in such studies is NOT no data. I would certainly place higher value in personal interviews with, say, Kazakhstan or Bahrain women who have been raped or know the incidence of rape in their village, over statistics such as the link I quoted that claims that the incidence of rape in Kazakhstan is over 30x less than the incidence of rape in the USA or UK. By your logic, the surveys are superior because they are academically-conducted whereas all those women have is 'personal experience'. So you believe that women in Kazakhstan are genuinely raped 30x less often than women in the USA, yes?

 

 

I feel that the illegality or legality is not the most important issue to talk about. But, I honestly got tired of seeing so many people state things as facts that were contrary to all the published data I have seen. So, I started posting published data, and was dismayed at the fact that people are willing to completely ignore it in favor of their “personal experiences.” The reason why I've been so persistent about this is if we can’t talk about evidence no one is going to convince anyone of anything.

 

That conversation with zengirl was actually before the point when I carefully read through some of the evidence and realized that there was evidence of a causal link. If you could post some the other way I might even change my mind again, I'm not strongly made up on the whole legalization thing, I'm just dismayed at people's unwillingness to discuss the evidence.

 

What I am fairly convinced of is that there is a LOT of force involved in prostitution, a lot of underaged women involved, and a lot of trafficking. I have seen no good evidence that legalization is going to help these things, but I've seen a lot of people make that claim and refuse to consider the evidence.

 

In academia, we call this 'waffling'. What is your stand on this issue (other than the fact that trafficking troubles you, and believe me, it troubles many of us)?

 

Well, at least this is more than personal experience. I read the articles. Since you didn't want to discuss them in detail, I'll do it.

 

For the first one, this is an interview-based news article. It asks a small number of sex workers what their experiences have been. The most useful line is here:

 

“According to Catherine Healy of the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective (NZPC), better and safer working practices are now the norm. Across the industry, she says, women are now aware of their rights and exploitative brothel owners are becoming marginalised as a result of the reform.”

 

If that's true, that is at least something. It does not address the point in my quote which mentions that in Australia “there are 400 illegal brothels as against 100 legal ones”, nor does it mention anything about the effect on trafficking or force one way or the other, except to say that women are more “aware” and exploitative brothels are “marginalized.” Am I missing something here?

 

Yup. Maybe the fact that NZ and Australia are completely different countries, or the fact that legalization was implemented in different ways in both countries, or the possibility that the studies are only able to list, again, the illegal brothels and trafficking incidents that the authorities know about.

 

For your second article, I'm not really sure what you think it proves. It has some data that talks about correlation of legalized prostitution to various rather unrelated things such as number of murders and number of prisoners. It does not address the question of trafficking, of whether legalized prostitution decreases forced prostitution, of underage prostitution, or any indication of causality. What do you think it proves?

 

For the third article, this is a study that talks about what Canadian sex workers would like to see happen with legalization. Again, I'm not sure how that affects the main points of whether legalization will actually affect the rates of trafficking, underage prostitution, or forced prostitution. The people in the study may think it will, though they don't state that, and what people think will happen does not always happen.

 

I do appreciate you taking the time to post something. However, it's not clear to me how it addresses the main points I've been making.

 

Scott

 

I said that those were pro-legalization articles. Why are you so fixated on trafficking? Again, nobody is claiming that legalization in itself is able to prevent trafficking. That would be asinine. You know what, if it were up to me and I absolutely had to pick ONE: legalize prostitution or ramp up law enforcement to crack down on trafficking, I would pick the latter. Just as how if I had to pick between oxygen and food, I would pick the former. BUT WE DON'T HAVE TO CHOOSE. Legalization's primary benefits are for the consensual prostitutes in the region! It does nothing in itself for the nonconsensual ones! But when you have BOTH legalization AND law enforcement of trafficking, then you can protect BOTH groups!

 

I really don't understand how that was so difficult to understand for a seemingly intelligent person like yourself, I swear. I haven't been so exasperated since the last time I tried to explain to SD that nobody was entitled to sex from hot girls.

[somedude81]

I find your concept of entitlement very peculiar. If you (or anyone else) is 'entitled' to a relationship with someone 'equivalent', who is responsible for making sure that this happens? Should I complain to the government if I don't find a partner? Or should the next 'equivalent' man I meet feel obliged to start a relationship with me and/or provide me with sex? How exactly is this entitlement business supposed to work?

It should just happen. Though it would be great if modern society had a way to facilitate matchmaking.

I also find the entitlement thing perplexing. What do you mean equivalent? If you mean equivalent in looks, then that just doesn't make sense as beauty is always in the eye of the beholder. If you are looking for a lasting relationship, to me at least, physical beauty is not a main consideration- looks change, people get old, fat etc... what someone needs from a relationship is love and kindness, which are the things that create a long and happy relationship, and enable them to have a fulfilling sex life.

 

In my personal life I don't have a 'type' or a criteria of how someone should look before I would consider dating them, I would rather get to know them and see if there is a connection.

 

Maybe this is because my job has allowed me to see that people are more than looks, age, weight, ethnicity, penis size etc.

 

What makes someone truly beautiful in my eyes is their personality.

Looks, class, personality, education level, interests and various other areas that are relevant.

 

BTW, are you sure that love and kindness are required? There are many, many stories of women on this board who are in a "relationship" with a guy who is certainly not kind to her, and obviously not in love, but she doesn't know what to do and can't leave him

[Els]

It should just happen.

 

....SD. You got to 30 thinking this? Really???

 

I'm sorry, but I don't even... Damnit. I think I need an LS break.

[denise_xo]

It should just happen.

 

Well, it doesn't. I have no idea where you get this idea from. There is no empirical evidence for it. You either need to accept that your idea is not rooted in reality, or you need to opt for re-birth in a country where parents and extended families arrange marriages for their children and where divorce is frowned upon.

[zengirl]

What I'm saying is that sex should be a normal part of life and should just happen.

 

Yes I do think I'm entitled to have sex and get a girlfriend. Every decent person is. That's what I've learned from my culture and religion.

 

[snip]

 

BTW, I'm have not said that men are entitled to sleep with hot girls. But they are entitled to have relationships with somebody who is their rough equivalent.

 

Not the way the world works, as you've since learned, I'd hope. No one is entitled to anything in life, really, and entitlement is a pretty ugly attitude.

[Anela]

It should just happen. Though it would be great if modern society had a way to facilitate matchmaking.

 

Looks, class, personality, education level, interests and various other areas that are relevant.

 

BTW, are you sure that love and kindness are required? There are many, many stories of women on this board who are in a "relationship" with a guy who is certainly not kind to her, and obviously not in love, but she doesn't know what to do and can't leave him

 

If your self-esteem is low, and you have had some sort of need fulfilled by that relationship, then it can be a case of "better the devil you know". I would rather be alone, but it can take a while for the feelings to pass. Had my confidence been higher, and I hadn't been so isolated, I wouldn't have taken nearly so much time too disconnect from someone who ended up being a bad (weird, and utterly depressing) part of my life ultimately - my focus would have been elsewhere as soon as red flag showed itself.

[Els]

or you need to opt for re-birth in a country where parents and extended families arrange marriages for their children

 

He would not survive to this age unless he had rich parents. Food, education, and jobs don't just 'happen' in those countries for the most part.

[Scottdmw]

Thank you for taking the time to post at length about your experiences. They are interesting.

 

 

 

Now interestingly, a lot of times the girls come from outside the city, sometimes quite a distance, and while prostitution is tolerated to an incredible degree it's still illegal here. When a cousin, sister, friend from back home, etc. needs employment, sometimes a GRO will buy the tickets and fund her travel. If this has happened, and it almost always does unless she is local, the person making the loan is a trafficker and the person taking the loan has been trafficked. See how that works?

 

. . . .

 

Sally is making a living down in Alabama; it's not a great job and surely not what she dreamed of in high school but she's taking night classes and making ends meet. Her cousin Diane back in Pennsylvania has fallen on some hard times, so Sally gets her the promise of a job and buys her a bus ticket.

 

If Sally works legally, say at a shoe factory, no crime has been committed but if she works illegally as say, an escort, Sally is a human trafficker and Diane has been trafficked.

 

That's how it works, but I suspect you knew that.

 

In the case of the massive numbers of "trafficked" women in places like Australia, they are only considered (for the most part) trafficked because they have violated labor laws. Working on a tourist visa and/or in an "illegal brothel" as opposed to a legal one. Usually amounts to one and the same.

 

 

So, here we get to this problem I've been talking about for a while. You say these things are true. But, how are we supposed to know? People say all kinds of things on forums like this. Maybe you know what you're talking about and maybe you don’t. I believe your related experiences are true, but question how you know about the ins and outs of the gathering of these statistics. Even if what you say is exactly true at your location, you are only talking about one place. How do you know what goes on in other parts of the world? Do you have any evidence to back up your claims here? How do you know so much about how the statistics are compiled in Australia, do you work in the industry?

 

You are basically saying that the trafficking statistics are massively inflated. I'm not naïve and I realize that this can go on, but let's talk numbers. My statistics say that 89% of women would leave prostitution if they could. What do you think the number is, and what do you base that on? What do you think the percentage of underage prostitutes is worldwide, and what do you base it on other than your personal experience in one location? What do you think the percentage of prostitutes is that are trafficked or forced?

 

Scott

[casey1989]

It should just happen. Though it would be great if modern society had a way to facilitate matchmaking.

 

Looks, class, personality, education level, interests and various other areas that are relevant.

 

BTW, are you sure that love and kindness are required? There are many, many stories of women on this board who are in a "relationship" with a guy who is certainly not kind to her, and obviously not in love, but she doesn't know what to do and can't leave him

 

For me all of those things are irrelevant except for personality. I don't think someone's class or educational background would stop me dating them for example.

 

Yes of course they are required. I'm talking about a good relationship, not one which is unhealthy. it's better to be with no one at all, than some one you aren't happy with.

[dasein]

Funny thread. Infidelity is a wrong unto itself. Human slavery and trafficking is a wrong unto itself. Bad effects on people from their behavior are wrongs unto themselves. Yet in the prostitution discussion, people always want to talk about these other things as opposed to the topic at hand, whether prostitution, in and of itself should be legal or not? and whether and to what extent a government should ban or regulate prostitution? Those are the directly related reasons for thinking someone who engages in prostitution or not is immoral. Are gamblers immoral? Same question.

 

But OK to the tangents, prostitution has little or nothing to do with the propensity to cheat and act on it, so all the infidelity analysis goes out the window. In the internet age, cheating behavior is easy for most anyone who wants to do it, with prostitutes or not.

 

With respect to human trafficking, the only rational conclusion is that legalized prostitution will stamp it out entirely. In a regulated regime, the legal elements will whistleblow on illegal competition constantly, maybe even by unions. Would be funny to see the giant inflatable rat turned out on illegal brothels. Moreoever, the illegal elements will stick out. Moreover, in a legalized regulatory regime, more willing participants will enter the trade crowding out unwilling participants as a matter of market quality control. Moreover, governments in a regulated regime seem to "wake up" to lots of lost tax revenue, penalties go up, enforcement is stricter. Corporate prostitution will crowd out inefficient and harmful pimping generally, just as corporate interests crowded the mob out of Vegas. Stating that legal prostitution will increase trafficking is the equivalent of stating that legalized gambling increases illegal gambling, a nonstarter.

 

Turning to the actual topic, IMO governments shouldn't ban any activity that takes place in the personal sphere as a matter of choice between two consenting individuals. That is not the job of government. Or rather such bans should relate directly to a gray area where enforcement is problematic, such as assisted suicide. There is no such gray area in prostitution, which would be relatively easy to regulate and tax.

 

People think poorly of hookers because of religious beliefs, threats to female sexual power, and the tangential issues above, usually not due to the mere act of selling or buying sex in itself. It's their right to think badly of whomever they like. If thinking badly of someone is the order of the day, though, I prefer to spare people trying to earn a living on an individual basis and focus more on those who are unproductive in society yet trying to make a living by violently extracting productivity from the productive backed by the gun barrel of the government. A prostitute may or may not be immoral, but a bureaucrat or politician damn sure is by definition.

[Mme. Chaucer]

I find your concept of entitlement very peculiar. If you (or anyone else) is 'entitled' to a relationship with someone 'equivalent', who is responsible for making sure that this happens?

 

There would also need to be an unbiased panel to deem what constitutes "equivalent." I'm pretty sure that there are women who would feel "equivalent" to SD but whom he would feel were beneath his standards.

 

How do we sort through the complicated issues about what qualities balance out others in order to achieve this elusive equanimity? For example, is a girl who is a so-called "10" in the looks department but who is functionally illiterate and a member of the Aryan Sisterhood roughly equal to a girl who might be a "7" and has short, kind of clumpy hair, but kind, compassionate and hilarious as well as being an expert at oral sex?

 

Does a wealthy person's riches bring them into the same realm of a beautiful person's looks? Or are the rich required to stick with other rich people, and beautiful ones with other beauties? And ugly rich people can only be with other ugly rich people, while beautiful poor people must seek others like them in those aeas?

 

Does a woman with one breast equal a man with one testicle? Or one leg?

 

According to SD's perspective, I believe that the only qualities that are judged in oder to deem "equivalence" are physical beauty, weight, and age. Boob size is included for women - but which quality in a man is "equivalent" to a c cup in a girl?? The size of his wiener?

 

Who's in charge of figuring all of this out?

 

I'm concerned that my husband and I are not "equivalent." I'm much prettier than he is, and younger. Plus, he's short.

[ThaWholigan]

....SD. You got to 30 thinking this? Really???

 

I'm sorry, but I don't even... Damnit. I think I need an LS break.

I'm baffled too such a counterproductive thought process

[Scottdmw]

Years of a life lived in one of the places highly speculated about in such studies is NOT no data. I would certainly place higher value in personal interviews with, say, Kazakhstan or Bahrain women who have been raped or know the incidence of rape in their village, over statistics such as the link I quoted that claims that the incidence of rape in Kazakhstan is over 30x less than the incidence of rape in the USA or UK. By your logic, the surveys are superior because they are academically-conducted whereas all those women have is 'personal experience'. So you believe that women in Kazakhstan are genuinely raped 30x less often than women in the USA, yes?

 

If a person were to systematically interview women in one of these places and record the results, that would be data. If a person simply lives in these areas and happens to talk to whoever they talk to, forming a personal impression, that is not data. In either case it only applies to the particular location, not entire countries like the evidence I was presenting.

 

 

 

In academia, we call this 'waffling'. What is your stand on this issue (other than the fact that trafficking troubles you, and believe me, it troubles many of us)?

 

Are people not allowed to not have their minds made up on any issue?

 

 

 

 

I said that those were pro-legalization articles. Why are you so fixated on trafficking? Again, nobody is claiming that legalization in itself is able to prevent trafficking. That would be asinine. You know what, if it were up to me and I absolutely had to pick ONE: legalize prostitution or ramp up law enforcement to crack down on trafficking, I would pick the latter. Just as how if I had to pick between oxygen and food, I would pick the former. BUT WE DON'T HAVE TO CHOOSE. Legalization's primary benefits are for the consensual prostitutes in the region! It does nothing in itself for the nonconsensual ones! But when you have BOTH legalization AND law enforcement of trafficking, then you can protect BOTH groups!

 

I really don't understand how that was so difficult to understand for a seemingly intelligent person like yourself, I swear. I haven't been so exasperated since the last time I tried to explain to SD that nobody was entitled to sex from hot girls.

 

Okay, I agree they are pro-legalization articles. I think we can agree that trafficking is the more important problem and that legalization by itself is not going to solve it.

 

I think it's possible we may have both forgotten the original context in which certain points came up. I suggest resetting the debate a little bit. The main points I'm trying to make are that the large majority of women in prostitution worldwide are not there consensually, that very often they are also under age, that trafficking plays a role in this, and that some data indicates legalization may make the problem worse. My secondary points are that people should pay attention to data not personal experiences and originally that prostitution is generally harmful for all participants and best avoided for one's own sake (which we already discussed at the beginning). Those are the things I’m concerned with. Do you disagree with them?

 

Scott