posted
well, gee, instead of prostitution, i'll go with my sister's current job, nurses assistant.
would i want it? goodness no. i don't like the hours, i don't like people, and i don't have the patience for patients at all.
kat, would you suggest i am in some way destroying my credibility in being proud of my sister for doing it?
Posts: 3956 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Kat, if proper protection was always used and I knew I would earn $300/night working 5 days a week, I'd definitely consider it. That would be $78,000 a year, and is far more than I make as a lower level engineer.
If I earned $200/night, I'd be making $52,000 a year about what I'm making now. And I wouldn't have had to sit through the tortures of Momentum Heat and Mass Transfer I and II, and Partial Differential Equations! If I wasn't mathematically inclined, why not? Heck some people sleep around more than that for fun, why not get paid for it?
posted
Suneun, I'm sorry for spelling your name wrong. I was typing it from memory and I often reverse vowels. I don't believe in using spell or grammar check on a conversational forum like this because to me those mistakes preserve humanity. (I would however run it on any formal document!) How do you pronunce your handle anyway? Is it Sunny Un or Sew Kne Oon?
posted
I'm just getting the feeling that this discussion has entered the realm of "all other things being equal and reality ignored, $200 a night isn't bad."
If that's the case, then I'll ignore it, but if it isn't, I seriously want to know how someone could claim of life of prostitution to be a valid, positive career choice in the face of it's history and details.
It is so incomprehensible that I suspect either naiveté or disingenuousness.
----------
Edit: *sigh* Type too slow.
Okay. We don't have enough in common to discuss it.
I'm chalking it up to naivete. I'd love for everyone who thinks it's easy, consequence-less money to turn off the first season of the West Wing and work with some.
posted
Celia is that hitting below the belt? Actually one of my favorite classes was turbulence. Unfortunately due to health issues I didn't finish it and took an incomplete. I still regret it though because I really had fun with the PDEs in that class.
Which brings me to an interesting tangent. Why not work at a job you have fun with? There is nothing saying a prostitute can't have fun on the job? A very few wierd people like me occasionally think partial differential equations are fun, though sometimes we think we are just crazy because they are hard too. But I wouldn't have become an engineer if I didn't think the work at some level was fun.
When people ask me why I became an engineer, one of my answers, is well because I could, and the money was good. That rationale could easily be applied to the high end of prostitution as well.
Kat, my old roommate is making $78,000 working for Microsoft. I'll be pretty darn lucky if I ever make that much. The problem is that I'm not a computer programmer, and I have absolutely no interest in ever being a computer programmer. But it's a great choice for him.
I don't agree with Suneun's defense, but I can see how it's possible for her to defend it without wanting to do it herself.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
Well Kat, I find it naive that you would believe in the suffering of every sex worker in the world. And I find it offensive that you refuse to look at material I link to, or refuse to acknowledge that you did. Please don't pretend you know what my answer to that question is. I'd rather you take Banna's acceptance of the possibility of working there. I repeat, I find it an extremely personal question that I request you refrain from pressing.
Banna: It's alright... I get it more often than not. Unfortunately, some people (two?) misspell my name then ignore any requests to spell it correctly. Which is perhaps an attempt to hurt me, but not one I find worthy of Hatrack. My name is my middle name, it's Korean. It's pronounced sun-uhn, mostly. The 'eu' is hard to transliterate. It's been my handle since I was eight.
Posts: 1892 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
Some would say making $78,000 a year working for Microsoft is worse (morally speaking) than making the same amount from prostitution. Posts: 1810 | Registered: Jan 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Have you ever worked with any? Known them? Ex-prostitutes? I mean, have you ever encountered the reality of it?
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
As far as career choices, prostitution in France in an earlier time, was one of the ways women could influence politics. There were immensely powerful courtesans and courtesan guilds. You may say well, but they had to go through men in order to do it. This may be true but many of them got exactly what they wanted.
If you also look at history you will find that often prostitutes had far more financial freedom than women in other classes as well. So it is a far more complex issue than just "men taking advantage of women" or "women taking advantage of men"
I've met strippers and talked to them about their work. I watched a documentary of unionizing sex club dancers in San Francisco. You can argue that strippers have nothing to do with prostitutes, but they're in the same industry.
I have not met a prostitute. I have spent hundreds of hours reading material written by women in the sex industry about their jobs, the abuses, and the solutions they are working towards. It's a personal hobby of mine, you could say. What proof do you want? I can find two dozen testimonials for you from prostitutes who will tell you that it's a job, and all they want are laws to protect their safety.
Posts: 1892 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
If you look at history, then you can see the prostitutes is what makes possible the illusion that women were sexless paragons of virtue symbolized by a white debutante dress and desperately in need of protection.
The culture of accepted prostitution pulled men from their families. I am NOT blaming prostitutes for this - it's the idea that men can't control themselves and have the right to pay someone for them. It's instituting an acceptance of adultery. It's perpetuating women as sexual objects. And the joke that it would be the greatest job in the world for a woman to fulfill fantasies and get to have sex with strangers.
And whether or not you believe in the spiritual damage, the psychological damage of being placed up for the highest bidder, for having no part of yourself that is not for sale, has not been acknowledged at all.
Either you don't know about it, or it's inconvenient for the argument.
I'm serious. This makes me so sad.
And has anyone advocating this "career" actually spent some time with prostitutes when they weren't getting paid?
--------
Edit: Choices one and three from above are not mutually exclusive.
posted
As someone who's dated both strippers and prostitutes -- from the "just paying my way through college" types to the "I need money for my crack habit" types -- I believe that prostitution, like fast food employment, is as degrading as the worker is willing to let it be.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
So, Katharina, have you read any of those links? *realizes that passive-aggressiveness is a hard urge to stifle (as I'm struggling with it unsuccessfully at this very moment)*
Posts: 1810 | Registered: Jan 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
kat, needing personal contact is not necessary to argue something rationally. The whole "plural of anecdote is not data" thing.
On an emotional level, yes, it can make a subjective, but overwhelming difference. That's irrelevant to this discussion, at the level of public policy creation; should we keep it illegal, or legalize but regulate it.
In fact, all talking to a prostitute under the current situation really says is that prostitution under the curent conditions is nasty, dangerous, and ugly. Where we go from there (increased enforcement of current laws, or some other policy) is something that can be rationally discussed.
posted
Clearly the women Suneun is describing, are also literate. From bits I have read some are quite articulate as well. The two I am thinking of from personal acquaintance were. There is a vast difference in spectrum here though. These are not whatsoever the inner-city crack whores with pimps taking advantage of them that you are picturing and cringing about kat.
posted
And you think it's a great idea? A positive career choice? One you'd be proud of your sister for choosing?
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
In a Nevada brothel? Yes. Even though the legal-brothel system has a few kinks, it's reasonably decent.
On the street in an alleyway? No. But none of us want that. We just see the way of destroying alleyway prostitution by decriminalizing it and making standards/laws to help the sex worker.
Posts: 1892 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
No, I mean someone who is dealing with the consequences of that life. Someone not "on the job."
----
I wish Coccinelle were here. She was roommates with a prostitute - one of the infamous "working her way through college/non-crack whore" ones. She has a much personal perspective.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Ok, Kat. What you're saying is that they only "data" that matters on this issue is a personal story that backs up your feelings on the subject from someone you've met online? And that other personal stories from other people that you know online don't matter and that pages of personal online testimonials also don't matter?
I'm not even involved in this discussion and I'm getting frustrated.
Posts: 3243 | Registered: Apr 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
I can think of a hundred reasons why prostitution is detrimental for those who practice it. About half would be solved by perfectly-run brothels with doctors and investment planners.
The other half wouldn't.
----------
So, besides money=not-starving, why would it be a positive choice?
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
This is just an opinion, but I don't think legalizing and putting restrictions on prostitution would move it out of the alleyways.
1. If it's legal, it's seen as less of a "bad thing", over time making it less of a shock to see it out in the open. They won't be deterred by the fact that doing it in the alley will be illegal, because obviously that isn't stopping them now.
2. The "I need it now" mentality will still be out there. I don't think this is the sole reason that sex is being sold and performed on the street, but I'm sure it's part of it, and won't go away with time. It will increase.
I refer to what dangermom said about Amsterdam. If you go there, you will see that sex is right out in the open, and it's driving much of the lifestyle around there. They made it legal. As a result, you can't walk down the street without seeing it sold, or used to sell. Things are bad enough that I can't take my kids to the mall because of the Victoria's Secret ads. I don't want to have to keep them home until they're sixteen.
Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
You're holding up shogun-era Japan as a society model? That's like saying slavery was a good thing in the South because we got some fabulous spirituals from it. ---------
There have been two questions asked:
1. What's the benefit to society? 2. What are the benefits to the practitioners?
posted
As far as prostitution in and of itself goes, I am firmly in camp with imogen. I think relegates women to being sexual objects, and I think that's wrong.
But the United States is very different from countries like Thailand and India in this particular regard. One of the things the United States is doing is threatening to cut of aid to countries who are given a certain rating in accordance with their sexual abuse rates. Countries who have a problem but are willing to prosecute known pimps and sex rings are able to raise their ratings and continue receiving aid so long as they continue their positive activities. Thailand, I believe, is currently under threat of losing aid if they don't improve their practices. India, on the other hand, is a very important trading partner for the U.S., and even though they have approximately the same problem as Thailand, the U.S. refuses to put them on the list to stop receiving aid.
So there are some positive steps being taken...but they are political, as always.
To be honest, my major concern with prostitution isn't the women who choose to do it or the women who are caught in the cycle. My concern is for the children who become sex slaves before they even reach puberty. I'm not sure what the best way is to help them, but I think legalization of prostitution in certain countries is something that should be considered. (I think all of it is abhorrent, but in this case I guess just I have a priority on fixing the most-abhorrent.) Kat & imogen, I'd honestly like to know what you think. Yes, prostitution is terrible...but how do we go about fixing it in countries where it is so rampant and destructive? (Suneun, feel free to respond as well, but I think I'm pretty clear on where you stand .)
Posts: 1784 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
No, I'm not. I was answering your question:
quote: So, besides money=not-starving, why would it be a positive choice?
and giving an example of an entire society where being a practioner of exotic forms of sex was viewed as a legitimate art form. Many people in the sexual industry today also view it as an art.
quote:Kat & imogen, I'd honestly like to know what you think. Yes, prostitution is terrible...but how do we go about fixing it in countries where it is so rampant and destructive?
*unhappy* I don't know.
It's like the drug trade. As long as there is a demand, an industry will arise to supply it.
The average prostitute may begin when she's 16, but the average customer is a middle-aged, middle-class man.
--------
Banna, I'm giving context. It was considered an art in a society when other choices were eliminated.
Comparing all prostitutes to crack whores is like comparing all priests/ministers to pedophiles.
Both are gross injustices.
Suneun and I are NOT advocating child prostitution. We are saying you CAN be a responsible adult (to tie back into the thread title) and be a prostitute. There is a huge difference.
There are a lot of things people could say to support their lifestyle, whatever it may be. But, cliche as it may sound, one thing that's more important than all that would be protecting the children of our country. They need to see less pointless violence, and especially less meaningless sex. The more we allow these kinds of things in our society, the more we run the risk of it severely negatively impacting children, no matter how many restrictions you put on it.
We have all tried to make our country what we want it to be, and then we break our backs trying to keep our kids from seeing any of it. Shouldn't we have laws that help our kids to be free to grow up without the fear that something could scar them...something that we made legal? I'd rather have to sacrifice to live in a world that's safe for my kids, rather then make them sacrifice to live in the world that I enjoy.
Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
| IP: Logged |
1. What's the benefit to society? 2. What are the benefits to the practitioners?
1. The benefit to legalizing prostitution is that it will make lower-end prostitution (ie. sex-slavery and crack-whoredom, the really awful kinds) less common. At least in theory -- obviously we need research to satisfy this question fully.
2. Relates to question 1, mostly. Better working conditions, better pay, other things that people here have mentioned.
-----
So now that I've answered your questions (though perhaps not to your satisfaction), please consider answering mine: have you looked at any of the links that Suneun posted on the previous page (or was it the page before that)? A simple "no" will suffice, if that's your answer; no explanation required.
Posts: 1810 | Registered: Jan 1999
| IP: Logged |
quote: Banna, I'm giving context. It was considered an art in a society when other choices were eliminated.
What other choices were eliminated? From what I have seen Japan at that time was a artistically rich society, in many areas. There were definite opportunities for women to suceed in business and in the context of family. They handled the money for most things. The treatment of women in that society was no worse, if not better than most of the rest of the world at that time.
1. You hope. This would only be true of the trade was then LIMITED to the legal brothels. It hasn't worked in Amsterdam and Thailand. There's no reason to believe it would be different here.
2. This relates to the first. And making better conditions for some prostitutes is not an argument for prostitution being a positive choice in and of itself.
Like Banna's... It's an Art Form. That's an argument for the profession itself.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
*wonders how a pre-marital sex thread turned into an abortion^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H prostitution thread*
Posts: 1810 | Registered: Jan 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
PSI, by that rationale, no child should ever live on a farm. They will see too much violence and sex. (and be scarred for life)
And the pioneers should have never ever migrated with their kids accross the prairie because they were worried about the kids being scarred for life by the things they saw along the way
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
Celia is that hitting below the belt? Actually one of my favorite classes was turbulence. Unfortunately due to health issues I didn't finish it and took an incomplete. I still regret it though because I really had fun with the PDEs in that class.![[Embarrassed]](redface.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
