Legalize prostitution and get rid of the stigma. It being illegal only hurts the women (mostly) in the long run. With legalization you could get rid of a lot of abuse and make it easy for these women to come forward if there is abuse. I think it would also make underage trafficking harder if prostitution was legalized.
I think we’re a long way from that, but one can hope for society.
Hurting women is the point. By keeping some people’s primary form of income illegal they can be superexploited, just like undocumented migrant workers. It’s no coincidence that they’re also similarly at risk of kidnapping, trafficking, and violence. No work insurance, no safety net, no legal protection, no rights, no dignity, and if you get caught you are the one that gets punished instead of the people who exploit you.
Conservatives need prostitution to be illegal. If anybody with some cash could go out and get laid then the right would quickly run out of incels to recruit.
They need sex to be shameful all around. The more shame they can induce, the more leverage and control they have over everyone.
Also, sometimes prostitution SAVES marriages. Sometimes the wife likes her husband, but she just doesn’t want to have sex. Or vice versa.
https://medium.com/eros-ethics/prostitutes-saved-my-marriage-c2ffc07d59b
One of the best arguments for legalizing it.
I don’t think hurting women is the point, more like a bonus or icing on the cake.
The point is to maintain a facade that our culture is ‘above’ such kind of behavior, even though everyone with a brain knows it’s not.
Same kind of sentiment that allows Christians/Catholics to have sex out of wedlock but still think they’re ‘holier than’ everyone else who does the same.
It’s all just hypocrisy and insecurity.
Our culture is very much in favor of hurting women, so it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other. The harm to women is far too consistent to be a coincidence.
“Convicted prostitute” is not the condemnation the article-writer thinks it is… Work is work!
We do not need to legalize it to get rid of the stigma. Spreading and calling out stories like this for the dreadful, inhumane, closeminded bullshit that they are is how we get rid of the stigma.
You think it’s possible for something to be a crime and not be stigmatized?
Cheating on taxes is a crime, but in certain circles it’s nit stigmatized.
The same goes for ignoring the speed limit in other circles.
A desperate mother shoplifting to feed her child would probably get compassion from many.
On a side note, it is also possible for something to be a crime and not be punished. It is a way for a society to condemn something, but acknowledge that is just necessary under certain conditions.
(Some countries use this trick for contentious topics like abortion and, yes, prostitution.)
All your examples are things you say are stigmatized, just not in certain circles. In other words they’re actually counterexamples, unless you’re agreeing with me and I’m totally misleading your tone. If the goal is for prostitution to be destigmatized only in certain circles, then we’re already there. Mission accomplished!
It is a way for a society to condemn something
If there’s a difference between society condemning something and that something being stigmatized, I’m falling to see what it is.
I think removing the stigma is the best pathway towards decriminalization.
I think removing the stigma and changing the law are both worthy goals, and that one can facilitate the other, but I don’t think the stigma can ever be fully removed. Laws can be changed with a single vote, but cultural values never really go away; at best, they become fringe views.
Yes; smoking weed. Jaywalking. Drinking during prohibition.
A crime is what the law says will be punished, but the law isn’t moral.
That has nothing to do with public perception which has everything to do with stigmatization.
The fact that you listed things that have historically been highly stigmatised because of the law is bizarre.
(Except jaywalking, not sure where that one is coming from)
You should look into the history of jaywalking. It’s interesting.
Sounds like as good a wikipedia rabbit hole as any
Jay walking was originally a derogatory term for rural people in the ‘big city’ and supposedly not knowing how to navigate paved streets.
Yeah I guess I’m picturing people walking head on into traffic whereas it can also include simply crossing an empty street.
Where I live the latter is fine but the former is illegal.
It’s the exact opposite way around. Early car users were plowing their way through crowded streets, which were designed for and primarily used by human beings. The streets also had their fair shares of carts, horses, trolleys, etc., but they were primarily for people walking around.
The fledgling auto industry was under SERIOUS fire for the HUGE number of people getting killed by reckless, inattentive, unsafe drivers. Serious risk of cars being fully banned from many cities. So they ran a giant PR campaign to flip the blame. The issue wasn’t reckless drivers carelessly charging around crowded streets and killing people – it was actually the peoples’ fault for being in the streets (that had ALWAYS been theirs to be in previously and which were built for them by them).
Worked great. Streets rapidly became places people were not allowed to use – only cars were permitted, and nearly rent-free. A total hostile takeover.
All of those are/were stigmatized specifically because of legal status.
What are you even taking about, my man.
The law usually reflects what people think is moral. Not all people of course, but a critical mass. Smoking weed is still widely considered immoral. Drinking was considered immoral by a lot of people when Prohibition started, and it still is by a smaller but still substantial number of people.
Jaywalking is more complicated, because there was a deliberate campaign to stigmatize it. I can’t recall if it was made a crime to promote the stigma or in response to it, but a sigma was definitely involved.
But why was weed initially considered immoral? What did the aide to the president say about the “war on drugs”?
Couldn’t possibly be ulterior motives, like the racism our country was founded upon. That couldn’t be right, right?
But, why? This feels about as effective of a strategy as ‘thoughts and prayers’…
Would brothels be allowed to participate in job placement programs at career day in high schools ?
Do porn directors? No? Stupid Question? Yes.
Yes, special schools, graduate programs, AP classes…
Let’s start with any kind of sex ed, period. And no, “save yourself for Jesus” doesn’t count.
No but these absurd questions show up faster and faster as the government legitimizes sex work.
And so do trafficked immigrants who are kidnapped and coerced into the sex work industry by people threatening to kill their family while using Facebook Live standing in front of that family’s home back in their country of birth.
That shit has been happening for a decade. And it is why lots of the liberal western European countries have curtailed their red light districts.
There is no way to save those people without destroying privacy.
https://reddthat.com/post/8968028 - “European Parliament rejects mass scanning of private messages”
We have legalised sex work in my country.
Don’t remember these questions ever coming up.
The trafficking can also be dealt with, through means such as actually investigating workplaces and ensuring they’re compliant with workplace laws.
Not to mention, people are already trafficked while it’s illegal as well, so you’re not helping the situation by making the victims criminals who will now be less likely to engage with police.
That’s because your country is not US and likely does not have significant fraction of religious population.
Governments can legalize sex work but they can’t legitimize it, because governments don’t dictate societal attitudes. (Well, they sort of can through propaganda, but they shouldn’t. A democratic government should reflect the attitudes of its people, not the other way around.)
There is no way to save those people without destroying privacy.
I disagree. Legalizing prostitution and fighting the social stigma would prevent many of those crimes.
If you criminalize a service that will always be in demand, you won’t kill the market - you’ll just turn it into an unregulated black market run by criminals, who are much less inhibited than legal employers to use any means at their disposal (even threats and violence) to maximize their profit.
The exact same thing happened during the prohibition.
But if you have a legalized market… using threats and violence to force people to perform i.e. call center work is much less common.
You act like that’s absurd, yet we allow the military to come and recruit children. That’s far worse.
Probably not as that would be advertising sex work within an area frequented by minors. I bet it would fall under the same laws as consuming or selling pornography close to schools and parks.
The only problem that I have with legalizing prostitution is that it requires the government enact sane protections and oversight for them. I do not trust the US government to ever do anything for real people, so I believe it would just lead to different abuses.
Well, we should eliminate every government agency then.
Including courts, social security and meat inspectors. Welcome to anarchy.
/s, since on internet it is not clear.
Exactly. And once that’s all done, we can rest easy in the libertarian utopia, where whoever has the most weapons and acts the most brutally with them is in charge. Yay!
At last we will become Somalia.
Don’t forget the free roaming bears.
I get a good chuckle out of this every time I see it mentioned.
Very well you don’t trust the government. Can you detail to me how you use this in real life? For example do you conduct your own water testing and inspect the watersheds around waste water treatment plants? Do you take your electronics and subject them to FCC type testing for safety and non-interference? Do you perform your own bacteria culture tests on all food prior to eating?
The government is far from perfect but it can in general regulate industry when the legislative branch allows it too.
Ok, I’m curious. What kind of abuse are you imagining that could possibly be worse than the status quo?
Well in the past, some governmental members have been known to grab em by the pussy
To cut back on the hyperbole that you’re receiving for your comment: Even badly managed oversight would be better than none at all.
Amazon warehouse workers are being exploited brutally in a system that needs fixing, but there’s much less trafficking and violent coercion involved.
I can trust them to abuse their power, and by keeping it illegal you give them the power to abuse.
Sex work is work. This woman did nothing wrong. Fuck the puritans who fired her.
Fuck the puritans who fired her.
Ironically, there’s a chance that she may have been doing just that.
My money’s on a petulant john outing her after recognizing her from their kids school.
You joke, but I knew a woman who danced at a strip club to get extra money for herself and school supplies who got fired after a student’s dad saw her dancing
I wasn’t joking.
That’s some dystopian shit on several levels
That’s the world we live in, and the only reason we’re seeing this story is because she was/is a teacher. The number of people affected by others’ vindictive smearing for similar but in less “shocking” circumstances would lend itself to a public outcry that could very well undermine the whole “moral” control this stems from.
If you don’t realize you’re living in a seriously fucked dystopia already, you’re likely a white cis-het male in the middle class, all due respect. Take a look around, and breathe it in.
Believe me, this isn’t a new revelation for me.
Sex work is work.
Do you believe that every sort of work in the world should be 100% legal? All of it?
Only when they’re consenting adults doing no harm to anyone.
Well yes, that’s a different issue. It should be legalized and regulated as currently there are almost no legal protections for workers.
Obviously she should have joined the military and shot brown kids instead.
The military is a cancer. My country glorifies what should be an absolute last resort as something to be proud of.
That’s not how logic or reasoning works. They said sex work is work, they said literally nothing else about any other kind of work.
Come on dude, that’s like the most boring fallacy ever.
What’s the point of saying sex work is work, then? Obviously it is, but just saying something is work doesn’t somehow validate it.
Your logical fallacy is both juvenile and tired.
In what way?
Regardless of the fact that there’s no way many of her students will be mature enough to handle this information without being disruptive, there’s a difference between supporting life decisions and accepting them.
Like the difference between fatphobia and supporting healthy lifestyles, right? One is cruelty, the other is not supporting bad habits.
Same with prostitution, it’s one thing to not oppress sex workers, it’s another to tell kids to become sex workers. Hopefully she’s not doing that but is normalizing the profession really what you want around teenagers?
No parent wants to find out their kid started turning tricks because Ms Smith seemed cool.
Especially when her “Ways to Spot A Dangerous John” course wasn’t approved by the principal.
Active shooter drills? Super chill.
Woman had sex? Mind blown and values changed forever!
I wish you could see how you sound.
Some people view sex as something intrinsically beyond the purely transactional, and for those people it’s immoral to treat sexual intercourse as a commodity. I’m somewhat undecided, but it does seem a bit like the final frontier of neoliberalism.
What a useless word soup. Sex can absolutely be transactional if it suits two consenting parties. Your world view being as narrow as a drinking straw isn’t a basis for how the rest of society chooses to live.
Yeah, before neoliberalism prostitution didn’t exist, so clearly it is good to victimize prostitutes, as that’s just sticking it to neoliberals, the ones who invented prostitution.
That’s all very far from a claim I’d ever made.
Do you think sex ed somehow cheapens sex? People understanding sex only makes it better for everyone in every way.
There is nothing about sex ed that teaches anyone that sex is a commodity. My experience in public school was there was no morality involved whatsoever.
Freaks like you who are obsessed with which genitals a child has, are incapable of separating the physiological aspects of sex from the emotional ones. Sex ed is not sexy, dude, it was awkward as fuck. If anything, it turned me off of sex.
It’s like saying that learning about the chemical processes used to make meth in chemistry class is the same thing as smoking it.
And I grew up in what many would consider a liberal area, especially in terms of our local public education.
I’m an advocate of facilitated discourse and was highlighting what causes such polarisation in attitudes towards sex work/workers. Since some people view it as fundamentally immoral, that’s a very difficult bridge to cross.
Sex education is incredibly important and I’m amazed how bad it remains in many parts of the world. I’m unsure how or where children’s genitals come into this.
Especially when her “Ways to Spot A Dangerous John” course wasn’t approved by the principal.
It’s always a sign that you have a great argument when you straight up make up facts.
Seriously. This is a human being we’re talking about, who’s now lost her livelihood, and will possibly need to resort to prostitution again to make a living because of it.
Sounds like she was escorting at the time which despite being prostitution in a trenchcoat it’s legal in Texas.
Which is even more fucked because what she was doing was legal but still got fired.
It is massively naive to think that zero of the people who are students right now will ever do sex work at some point in the future. Some of them definitely will. Even if you don’t agree that sex work is valid and honorable work (which you clearly don’t agree with) there’s no way to stop people from doing it despite how vilified or illegal it is in any society.
Given that reality, a course teaching people how to avoid the dangerous elements of a job that some of those people will eventually do, sounds like a great course. Having a sex worker who knows WTF she’s talking about teach it? That’s fucking amazing.
You’re acting like she introduced herself to her students as a former prostitute. The kids never would have known if these asshole adults didn’t dig into her past like it mattered.
I’m sorry about your head injury.
I paid for my teaching degree by working as a prostitute. Prostitutes aren’t extra horny degenerates or something, they’re just folks trying to survive. I’d probably be a better teacher if I could still do it, because I could cut back the hours at my second job 🤷♂️
Seems like we hold teachers to higher standards than CEOs and politicians, for less money than a Walmart GM makes…
More like hold women to stricter standards than men.
Men can and are celebrated for being absolute sluts. Hell, its actively encouraged in most spaces.
Woman sleeps with more than 2 people and an inordinate amount of people will look down upon her and say all kinds of horrific things.
It’s almost like we should be paying you more… But… Nahhh, MuH tAxEs!!! Wahhhh!
Sorry we all collectively suck so much :(
Thank you for your service!
The fact that prostitition is illegal over there still baffles me. It’s just a job and if anyone knows about safe sex it’s someone who works a profession tied to it. If i wanted to learn about some hobby i’m sure i could learn more from a professional than some random guy.
I’m sure the misogynist gym teacher with the emotional aptitude of a 15 year old who’s partner has to drink themselves ready for the same missionary sex they’ve had for the past decade is a great teacher of sex-ed.
we were like 14 years old when dude said “well, today’s the day”. then he took a banana out of one drawer of his desk, and a condom out of another drawer. like they had always been there. like they belonged there. like the box his desk came in said “sturdy construction, faux wood grain paneling, and advanced banana and condom storage solutions.” he then took ten minutes to explain to us that condoms don’t work, and we shouldn’t trust them, and that only by not fucking will we be safe from wrath, rack and ruin. He then tried to put the condom on the banana, struggled with it being upside down for a bit, and BROKE THE FUCKING BANANA.
This was the state of sex ed in the wilds of Pennsylvania circa 2000
Sounds like abstinence would certainly be best for him and his penis.
Yeah, or if you’re in [MY LOCATION] the gym teacher who decides to show his junk to his [SPORTSBALL TEAM] and gets nominated to our hall of fame….
Or the US Senate
Must have been quite some [JUNK].
“Perfect, all he needs to teach is abstinence anyway” -evangelicals
I mean, just my personal opinion, but abstinence does need to be taught as a co-curriculum with a large portion of relationship education (particularly what a good relationship is/has, and what a bad relationship looks like and how to leave it), and stoicism and some other philosophies that demonstrate how forgoing pleasure (for some things, for periods of time) can lead to better outcomes. I don’t want my kid thinking they need to refrain from sex because it’s somehow immoral, but I also don’t want them to jump into every ‘relationship’ that comes their way in school and start having sex with someone who is just using them for their genitals.
I never said it shouldn’t be taught at all, the problem is the people that want only abstinence taught. I don’t necessarily believe that teaching stoicism to kids in high-school is going to do much. It’d be best taught around the age of 21 when the brain is closer to finishing development and the individual has better emotional control overall. Teaching about relationships will, as it always has been, ineffective because people don’t want to hear it from someone else, they want to experience it. And they will hold lofty expectations regardless. It’s good to demonstrate and show what abusive relationships look like, but beyond that people won’t listen. There’s a reason that it seems like the amount of abusive and shitty relationships never seems to change.
Christianity, racism and corruption. Politicians love to target poor people, and prostitution is a job that often draws in the desperate. Conveniently, POC make up a large percentage of the impoverished population.
Sex trafficking is out of control in the US, yet it’s never talked about by politicians. Even with Epstein, the focus was on how terrible he and his accomplices were, not on the actual problem. Not the thousands of other women and girls who are still being trafficked in the US. Legalizing prostitution is pretty much the only answer.
gig*
I think to just put it on the level of any other basic profession is naive, and I think you know that. I’m on board, but to turn a blind eye to human trafficking is foolish. And to suggest legalizing prostitution would all of a sudden eliminate human trafficking is just as foolish.
I’m so sick of people bringing up trafficking whenever prostitution is mentioned. I just don’t understand it. What do cars have to do with any of this?
Vroom, vroom
But what’s it got to do with the youth in Asia?
the yoots?
Oh, look… the puritan sex hater brigade has shown up.
Globally there’s way mor illegal trafficking in construction than in prostitution. So should wo do something there too?
And yes, legalizing will not eliminate human trafficking, but it would put the blame (and criminalization) away from victims.
You’re missing the important point which is that when women sell their bodies it’s icky. Human trafficking only matters if it’s for icky reasons.
Oooooo sex scary
My god please put a spoiler tag on that word, I’m in the hospital recovering from the worst heart attack the doctors have ever seen! Scared the heebie jeebies right out of me.
Now excuse me while I look over my $200k hospital bill, might have to sell some organs for this one.
Oh shit, I read the first few words of your reply out of context and was horrified at the thought that I may have accidentally spoiled some form of media for someone. I take that shit seriously.
“Over qualified”
Sex work should not be a crime.
Sex is legal, selling thing is legal but selling sex is… Illegal?
Can someone show me the logic here?
You need to have a camera and a website to upload the video to.
No.
I disagree. Society continues downhill.
Name a society that doesn’t have sex work. I’ll wait.
I’m sure all societies have prostitution. Just because something is widespread doesn’t make it right.
So what’s the solution? Thousands of years of making it illegal to some degree or another does not seem to work.
Or perhaps sex is deeply ingrained in the human psyche just as much as food is, and we shouldn’t consider that a problem?
Murder has been there since the beginning and making it illegal doesn’t seem to work. Should we just make legal? I think prostitution only plays into women being sexual objects for men.
…if you go to Pahrump, NV where prostitution is legal, those women are independent contractors who set their own prices and can turn anyone that they don’t feel comfortable with serving away. Additionally, clients must use protection AND the women have police on a panic button if anyone gets out of hand.
Compare that to the women who prostitute themselves illegally and are subjected to all the dangers of rape, abuse, and murder.
I used to think like you. While I was researching a paper I was writing (arguing against the legalization of prostitution mind you), I ended up at a completely different conclusion. My conclusion did not support my thesis and I wrote it that way.
Open your mind a bit, and see that legalization protects EVERYONE (except prudes I guess)
the women have police on a panic button if anyone gets out of hand.
Wonder what the response time is on that button press? Would have thought they would employ bouncers on-site to handle that kind of thing.
Why’s it wrong?
It’s always downhill, for Israel and Gaza a downhill fireball because when you attempt to victimise the very patriarchy that gives you freedom you shouldn’t decry losing your freedoms, you see what happen to Afghanistan? No civilization just gangs of terrorists. You get what you asked for, paedophiles and cunts run society like a pack of wolves, no seven wonders for you.
For once they had a teacher who actually knew her stuff…
Just think: hundreds of young men would know a clitoris existed before they were 30. But nnnoooo…
What, Isn’t she perfect for the job then?
Overqualified.
Yeah, like they don’t want a cop with too high of an IQ.
Yes she is - which is the problem. They don’t really want kids to know anything about sex - it’s too subversive for the “indoctrinate them when they are young” crowd.
Doesn’t this ironically make her more qualified?
So much for subject matter expertise.
she probably my cousin you watch yourself bud /s
Man, your cousin is kinda hot lmao
Bro she literally has the most experience why would you fire her
She’s over qualified. They couldn’t afford her.
someone on the board wanted her to lower her prices
Over experienced I guess lol.
Seems like she was over qualified
I am against prostitution being illegal. I am also against slut shaming. And I am even more against ruining someones future opportunities of ANY kind for having been in the sex work business. But befor you let anyone teach: Make sure they are a teacher. If you want to teach biology (which sex ed is a part of) to children, you better have a degree in biology and teaching, ffs.
Lol, get a load of this guy wanting a position getting paid 35k a year to have a degree.
I AM a teacher. I teach English as a foreign language and Computer Science (just CS right now). I have a gross income of slightly more than 60k a year (59k €). That’s about 3.850€ net a month after health insurance and taxes. I also have a not too shabby pension guaranteed as long as I don’t quit the job. That’s included in “my package”. Also I am tenured. I can only be fired for gross neglect or having an affair with a (minor) student, bribery or things of that nature.
The “catch” (some say advantage): That’s in Germany, not in Retardistan.
I’m generally against using the r-slur but fuck if I didn’t laugh at “retardistan”
Different languages and all aside why use the r word as a teacher? It’s really not necessary.
Also as a teacher from the states please don’t paint such broad strokes. You make it sound shameful to teach.
Edit: to add to this, the subject of the article wasn’t actually a teacher but part of a council that advised the district school board and curriculum/instruction teams.
I know a teacher in Retardistan (Florida) with a master’s degree and over 30 years experience pulling down just over 40k gross.
And especially a degree in a stem field.
If you want highly skilled teachers, expect to pay wages and compensations for highly skilled workers.
I do expect that. I expect teachers to be very well compensated. You are talking about educating future generations and the sustainability of the country. Not about selling microwaves (nothing against it, it’s just that I consider teachers to be as important to society as firefighters and healthcare workers).
I’d take it a step further and say that teaching is the most important job in society and point to everything going on as a result of the failure of the education system as evidence.
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You had me until the sex work part. I’m sorry, but that DQs you for anything that requires a public image.
It does. But it shouldn’t. There’s absolutely no reason.
A few millennium of valuing monogamous relationships might be important.
I have no plans idea what you are attempting to say. “A few Millenium” is supposed to mean what, apart from being grammatically questionable?
Wouldn’t that be someone with more knowledge on sex and hygiene?
My first thought was well. “Father expelled as PE teacher after being exposed as convicted marathon runner.”
She would seem to have a lot of experience in the matter though.
