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How much for your women?
Jan. 24th, 2006 10:58 amI'm reminded of a conversation I had a while ago.
"Have you ever paid for sex?"
"Only emotionally."
"Yeah, I heard you were overcharged."
Prostitution has been in the media a lot lately. More so than usually, anyway, and various people on my flist, like![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ditzy_pole and sherbetsaucers have made posts on the subject.
The reason for this media interest is the usual - prurient interest in what people get up to in their bedrooms. However, the current excuse being used for all the (oo-er) column inches is that the government has recently taken some tentative steps towards licensing the oldest profession by legalising small brothels, a move which is intended to provide greater safety and security than hanging round on street corners for the (mostly) women involved. This move hasn't been welcomed everywhere, however. Attempts to 'clamp down' on prostitution over the years have largely failed, but more people are pointing to the 1999 change in the law in Sweden, which means that people who purchase sexual services can now be charged with a criminal act just as much as the people they're paying. This has led to a massive decline in prostitution in Sweden, and the trafficking of girls to that country for the purposes of prostitution has dropped from an estimated 15,000 per year to 4-600 per year since the law was passed. This is pointed to as evidence that stricter laws, not liberal legislation, are a means of reducing prostitution and the social ills which are often attendant upon it.
However, the reality is that the legislation has had a twofold effect: firstly, that prostition has been driven deeper underground and is now less safe than ever before, and secondly that Denmark, Norway and Finland have become sex-tourism destinations as randy Swedes nip over the border to get serviced elsewhere whislt everyone simply looks the other way and continues with the increasingly unconvincing charade that Sweden is some sort of socialist utopia with the moral high ground.
Over the years many attempts to reduce prostitution have been tried, but so long as people like both money and nookie it is unlikely to go away and so making it safer for the people selling is probably a good idea until better permanent solutions to the problems caused can be found. A recent edition of Question Time had various MP's asked if they would like a 'small brothel' next door to them but having brothels next door isn't a question of legality, it's a question of zoning. After all, making it illegal to sell something which it it perfectly legal to give away to whomsoever you like is somewhat hypocritical and, like in any legal market, protecting both buyer and seller should be the point of legislation
What the government's new legislation is hopefully likely to do is reduce the incidence of Street prostituion (women engaged in this are significantly more likely to be assaulted, and also significantly more likely to be engaged in injecting drug use), and also the illegal '30 albanians and a mattress' brothels which have been so much in the news lately. Of course, a move towards legislation and licensing of brothels will also mean it will be easier to tax them, which would allow for the revenues gained to be put back into social programmes to reduce the criminality attendant upon prostitution as an illegal trade. Or rather, it would be if Gordon Brown wouldn't piss these extra revenues up the wall in the same way as he does so much of the money he takes already.
The whole thing is a grey area. Whilst drug/trafficked/street prostitutes live lives of misery and degredation, top class escorts can charge hundreds of even thousands of pounds an hour for their services and it's difficult to argue that the same rules can be equally applied to both groups. It is a fact of human nature that if people are paid for doing something then you will find people willing to do it, pretty much no matter what it is. The difficulty is the circumstances in which the actions take placve. After all, if we're going to ban people taking money for sex, then the first thing to do is to stop beautiful women marrying rich men for anything other than love. Suggestions on how to achieve that are welcomed.
[Poll #658878]
"Have you ever paid for sex?"
"Only emotionally."
"Yeah, I heard you were overcharged."
Prostitution has been in the media a lot lately. More so than usually, anyway, and various people on my flist, like
ditzy_pole and sherbetsaucers have made posts on the subject. The reason for this media interest is the usual - prurient interest in what people get up to in their bedrooms. However, the current excuse being used for all the (oo-er) column inches is that the government has recently taken some tentative steps towards licensing the oldest profession by legalising small brothels, a move which is intended to provide greater safety and security than hanging round on street corners for the (mostly) women involved. This move hasn't been welcomed everywhere, however. Attempts to 'clamp down' on prostitution over the years have largely failed, but more people are pointing to the 1999 change in the law in Sweden, which means that people who purchase sexual services can now be charged with a criminal act just as much as the people they're paying. This has led to a massive decline in prostitution in Sweden, and the trafficking of girls to that country for the purposes of prostitution has dropped from an estimated 15,000 per year to 4-600 per year since the law was passed. This is pointed to as evidence that stricter laws, not liberal legislation, are a means of reducing prostitution and the social ills which are often attendant upon it.
However, the reality is that the legislation has had a twofold effect: firstly, that prostition has been driven deeper underground and is now less safe than ever before, and secondly that Denmark, Norway and Finland have become sex-tourism destinations as randy Swedes nip over the border to get serviced elsewhere whislt everyone simply looks the other way and continues with the increasingly unconvincing charade that Sweden is some sort of socialist utopia with the moral high ground.
Over the years many attempts to reduce prostitution have been tried, but so long as people like both money and nookie it is unlikely to go away and so making it safer for the people selling is probably a good idea until better permanent solutions to the problems caused can be found. A recent edition of Question Time had various MP's asked if they would like a 'small brothel' next door to them but having brothels next door isn't a question of legality, it's a question of zoning. After all, making it illegal to sell something which it it perfectly legal to give away to whomsoever you like is somewhat hypocritical and, like in any legal market, protecting both buyer and seller should be the point of legislation
What the government's new legislation is hopefully likely to do is reduce the incidence of Street prostituion (women engaged in this are significantly more likely to be assaulted, and also significantly more likely to be engaged in injecting drug use), and also the illegal '30 albanians and a mattress' brothels which have been so much in the news lately. Of course, a move towards legislation and licensing of brothels will also mean it will be easier to tax them, which would allow for the revenues gained to be put back into social programmes to reduce the criminality attendant upon prostitution as an illegal trade. Or rather, it would be if Gordon Brown wouldn't piss these extra revenues up the wall in the same way as he does so much of the money he takes already.
The whole thing is a grey area. Whilst drug/trafficked/street prostitutes live lives of misery and degredation, top class escorts can charge hundreds of even thousands of pounds an hour for their services and it's difficult to argue that the same rules can be equally applied to both groups. It is a fact of human nature that if people are paid for doing something then you will find people willing to do it, pretty much no matter what it is. The difficulty is the circumstances in which the actions take placve. After all, if we're going to ban people taking money for sex, then the first thing to do is to stop beautiful women marrying rich men for anything other than love. Suggestions on how to achieve that are welcomed.
[Poll #658878]
