It seems to me that consensual sex, which involves the payment of money from one party to the other is neutral, neither good or bad. Prostitution which involves coercion is unequivocally bad. If surveys are to be believed, the population of The Netherlands overwhelmingly support legalised prostitution, while the population of Sweden overwhelmingly supports the abolition of prostitution and the prosecution of men who engage with prostitutes. They can’t both be right, can they? My own experiences, which shape my thoughts on this issue can be seen at theamsterdamdiaries.net
It sure as Hell isn’t, especially if you legalize it!
You have National Debt at about six Googolplex, so my opinion is, if you can legalize and tax it (and it won’t result in anyone being killed…at least not immediately), tax it. Besides, it’ll be safer for everyone, legal prostitutes are required to be checked monthly.
For a group of people who can’t even figure out any agreed distinction between good and bad, this seems like a silly thing to ask - or answer.
How can you decide if it is good, if you haven’t even figured out what “good” means?
But what about the CHILDREN? Won’t somebody PLEASE think about the children?!?!
I did not say that it is good, I just said that it isn’t bad.
also, mr. OP, I must say, the design of your site is very clean, very well done!
You can’t possibly conceive of how much I would want that to be a joke (if I allowed myself to fantasize).
Are you suggesting that because something isn’t bad, it’s automatically good?
Can a thing not be neutral? Or, alternatively, can it not have both, ‘bad,’ qualities and, ‘good,’ qualities to such an extent that one may consider it good while another considers it bad, and another still considers it neutral?
Personally, I don’t think it’s good or bad. I would not have sex with a prostitute, legally or otherwise. However, looking at it from the perspective of the Government, I find it difficult to believe that the Government wouldn’t want to do it because it’s tax revenue for something that many people are purchasing anyway. Furthermore, you no longer have to utilize other Government resources (police officers, jails, etc.) to enforce anti-prostitution laws.
Wow, good thing that wasn’t a big bubble.
I was suggesting that having to explain this would be depressing.
If you don’t know what good is, then you also don’t know what bad is (or isn’t).
Does that really need further explanation?
All completely irrelevant.
That’s fine. That’s kind of cheap, though, if you really think about it. Within the context of a discussion on Moral Philosophy, I could certainly understand why it would be a big deal, but I didn’t really understand where you were coming from because this is Social Sciences. In Social Sciences, you can state whether you consider something good or bad (and why) without having to define, or otherwise defend, your use of the words, ‘good,’ or, ‘bad.’
By the way, I do know what, ‘Good,’ means and what, ‘Bad,’ means, just for the record, so I can decide if I think it’s good, bad, or neutral.
It also makes your initial post patently off-topic, but I’m not terribly concerned with that.
I’m simply curious: do they have the same attitude towards the prostitutes?
Whether prostitution is a good or a bad thing is determined through the only question that matters - does it cause harm? And if so - to whom? Well? Does it?
Whilst I am no feminist Pav, I wouldn’t say that prostitution could be considered a ‘good’ thing in pretty much any cases. Neutral at the very best.
Admittedly it is not so bad when legalised, but even then you are ignoring a whole range of psychological issues for the women. In principle, prostitution is a great thing in my eyes. But it damages women internally (not in that way).
Now there you go trying to be rational.
What does it do to men? There are male prostitutes. Does selling themselves for sex damage them internally, or are they fine because they’re men and all men want is sex anyway?
Legalized prostitution is not a bad thing. It’s going to happen regardless. Legalizing it nearly erases any crime involved – men aren’t getting throw in jail for paying someone for sex, women aren’t thrown in jail for soliciting, pimps become employers and will have a much harder time harming their employees without being held responsible, everyone is getting their fair share of the money, the risk of STD’s drops considerably because, as Pav mentioned, legal prostitutes are tested regularly.
Now, whether it harms the man or woman selling themself is another matter.
I think it’s a whole different ball game when men are the ones selling themselves to be honest. Not that I know much about it to be honest, but I’m just trying to observe the psychology of it as closely as possible.
Legalized prostitution will certainly be beneficial for the reasons you stated. But sex is a fundamental thing for all people and there are all kinds of deep harboured emotions attached to sex.
Just one example for now; the prostitute’s sexual relationship with their boyfriend/husband. If sex becomes dispensible like that, then the sex in the relationship with their other half is not going to be intimate, jealousy will rage; all sorts of things going wrong. Without decent sex a relationship fails, and prostitution will hardly aid that. That’s not the best explanation but I’ll leave it there for now.
Sorry to keep moaning on about psychology, I’m going all Hexhammer on you.
I’ve seen a couple documentaries about prostitution that included some cases of male prostitution, and god, the guys honestly seem worse-off than the women who do it.
Let’s not confuse “good” and “legal” - abortion, for example, is not a good thing (never heard anyone braging about it) but it’s still legal. Prostitution exists since the begining of written history (probably even earlier), and all attempts to eradicate it have failed - the only thing one can do about it is to minimize the damage by legalizing it.
Now, is it a good thing? Well, it’s symptomatic in any case. It means something. A man (or woman) who seeks prostitutes is usually insecure or otherwise inept for a normal relationship. A prostitute is usually a prostitute out of necessity.
But, let’s look at it from another perspective: who among us is NOT a prostitute? Whoever has a job is selling his body, one way or another. We sell our physical strength, our ideas, often our pride - is selling (technically it’s not selling, it’s renting, leasing) one’s body in prostitution all that different? Plus, what about the so called “gold diggers” and marriages out of financial interest? That’s not illegal even though it’s frowned upon in most societies because, technically, that too is prostitution…
If we deem prostitution a bad thing, we risk condemning virtually every relationship between two human beings, since they are all based on interest, financial, emotional, carnal - you give something, you get something back. Why discriminate?
Here is an interesting old thread on this subject.
As for my position, I think it is a bad thing for a variety of reasons, which relate/can be distilled down to to a central message which I’ll define as (1): 1) It provides a service in exchange for money which can be readily obtained through efficient, socially condoned, non-financial means of exchange. 2) It contains no excellences particular to the profession given (1). 3) It conflates internal and external goods (really a corollary of 2). 4) Society regards sex as being distinct from other activities (such as cleaning toilets) and so any cavalier activity regarding said activity results in the denigration of its participants. Because of those reasons, the process demands the commodification of humanity. If you think that humanity is not reducible to mere dollars and cents, then it makes sense to think of prostitution as a bad thing.
But rather than asking whether prostitution is “good” or “bad”, what we ought be asking is whether there are any pragmatic arguments for banning prostitution. On that one, I have to swallow a rather bitter pill and say I can think of none. The problems that arise from the prohibition of prostitution represent a greater demographic threat than the prostitution itself, so no matter how vile I may find the practice, I cannot call for making it illegal.
While I have no ideological problems with abortion, I imagine it is much the same with many pro-choicers. Not only is it a service to which they would not avail themselves, but it is a service they find at odds with deeply held beliefs. However, they also recognize that things like back-alley abortions and the like are, in fact, worse.
That said, regulation is key. Prostitution can never be viewed as a regular occupation in terms of governmental monitoring, at least under the current systems with which I am either familiar with or recognize as sane. Think about it. Ineligible for work? Really? You can’t just lie on your back and take it? Those who reject prostitution choose to do so. This creates a rather nasty back-door, whereby poor people are forced into prostitution because they would otherwise be denied benefits.
It could be argued that this is already happening. Poor people are disproportionally forced into prostitution. But if the regulation goes awry, it gets a governmental stamp of approval as opposed to approbation all of a sudden. Given that many of those arguing for the legalization of prostitution are already skeptical of the capacities of the government, it behooves to to ponder this question.
Properly done, it is a bitter pill. Improperly done, it is a legitimization of the slavery that is already present.
That brings us back to the whole issue of rationality vs. humanism. Aside from arbitrary, pre-determined, arational values, the question of whether the legitimization of slavery is worse than the clandestine spread of STDs within illegitimate slavery is an open one.
Why is abortion a bad thing? There has to be some universal reason that abortion is “bad”, and there isn’t one. You might say, “…because you’re killing a life.” – but does the life of the mother not count? Now don’t get me wrong, I think those women who use abortion as a form of birth control are disgusting, but what are you going to tell a woman who was raped and got knocked up? I know it’s an oft-used argument, but it’s valid. Are you going to tell her she needs to carry that baby to term, even though the entire pregnancy is one big reminder of her rape? Waking up every day, seeing that belly, remembering where it came from…that’s torture. That’s inhumane. But I’ll shut up, cuz this thread isn’t about abortion.
Yeah. They’re hookers because they need money, and it’s the quickest, easiest way to get it, but a person seeking out a prostitute doesn’t mean they’re insecure, not even usually. It means they’re horny. They want a quick lay, and to be able to get up, walk out, and not have to worry about some psycho-obsessed bitch going all Lorena Bobbitt on them for not calling back. Maybe they’re not looking for a relationship, or maybe they’re in a bad one.
Agreed, on all of this part.
me too