The difference is in America, and any true Democracy,
America's intentionally and overtly not a "true Democracy". This may not be a bad thing.
if you don't like the government, any of the stuff that you listed, there are ways to change it without a violent revolution.
I see. Which ways? Assume that I consider the Republican and Democratic governments to be effectively the same, and try not to give an answer which comes down to, "Persuade over 100,000,000 people."
In Cuba you will get arrested for complaining about what the government does.
Idle complaining is of no benefit, and Americans essentially get the privilege of time-wasting. Well, they do today, what with the lack of HUAC.
To make a difference, you need substance and medium to your complaints to get people to listen. The warrant for your arrest will be your reward.
Sometimes when you flick a switch near a door, the room gets brighter. What's up with that? Life's full of weird associations, I guess, and sometimes you have to think hard to work out what's going down.
Although my memory's fairly terrible, it's good enough to recall that you've made lots of authoritarian posts implying an affectionate-to-the-point-of-intercourse relationship with your country's government+military+all that stuff people like when they're scared to stand on their own two feet, so I'm going to guess that you're actually being sarcastic rather than dense. But you brought nothing new to the table.
Feel free to try again. Second submissions will have mark scaled to 90%, so you could still achieve a respectable pass. Second fail and you'll be seeing me after class, bring your own cane, you know you like discipline, etc.;-)
In addition Cuban law bans using the Internet to spread information that is against what the government considers to be the social interest,
Swastikas.
norms of good behavior,
Porn.
the integrity of the people
Terrorism Act 2006.
or national security."
Assange.
Being rich in America is like being rich in Cuba: life's cool. Meanwhile, being poor in America is like being poor in Cuba: life sucks. In the latter case, what differs is the handout you get and who you can get away criticising sufficiently loudly.
The constant, awkward interaction between 65-drivers and 90-drivers would be far more dangerous than if everyone just went 90.
Or 65. I'm 100% sure that 100% of people (rounded to 1 decimal place) aren't doing anything important enough that it matters if they take a little longer to arrive. For the remainder, exceptions are already built into law.
...and there was me thinking they were for the children.
Seriously, though, driving is the most dangerous activity performed by a large proportion of the Western world, and people are way too misled by the "freedom" of driving.
Uhoh, do you mod me up for my first point and down for my second, or vice versa?
The majority of the prostitutes who have contact with charities don't want to do it.
What's your argument, exactly? Perhaps that no charity involved in helping sex workers has ever employed one person who has done a first year course in statistics, so they have no clue how to obtain a representative sample?
You're very angry for someone having a detached, disinterested argument on the Internet. Or maybe you're neither detached nor disinterested?:-)
You're ok with a girl growing up and banging strange men because they tell her
I'm not OK with it at all. If you read my posts you'll see I said precisely the opposite.
You say you're ok with "mutually honest one night stands". What the fuck do you think prostitution is!?
Prostitution = regularly, for money; Honest one night stand = when desired, for mujtual enjoyment of sex.
Should we stop people from becoming police officers because for many it is they endure "physically and psychologically harmful working conditions day after day and believing (correctly or otherwise) that there's no way out"?
No police officer should continually endure physically and psychologically harmful working conditions. He should be regularly evaluated to ensure this. And no man who believes he has no choice but to work as a police officer should be allowed to wear the badge in the first place.
After reading several of your comments, I really despise you.
You're slightly annoyed with my posts - as annoyed as anyone on a random Internet forum should get - so you've fashioned a reply into that of a hyperbolic troll. You've ensured to click Post Anonymously because you're slightly ashamed of yourself: you know you don't have a sound counterargument to the nuances of the problem so you substitute with vitriol.
You think prostitution is inherently dangerous, but you're more mad about the girls and johns than the pimps.
Not really mad about the girls. I haven't talked about the pimps at all. Perhaps they can drag up and blow the johns? They deserve each other.
You're completely uninvolved with the situation, but you seem to want to impose your morals on others.
Lower the blinds, we're going through Black Country! You're trying to absolve yourself of your part in society by pretending that other people's problems are so none of your business that it would actually be immoral to help them.
There's nothing inherent in the sex act that makes it more emotionally damaging than other acts; that's all in your head, based on your society's enforced rules.
OOI, do you deny all applications of the scientific method or just psychology?
You're part of the problem - judging people and actions you have zero familiarity with and then suggesting laws or rules to govern it.
Newton barely left Cambridge yet profitably used astronomical data gathered from around the Old and New World. I've never strangled a man to death for my sexual gratification while performing analingus on a pregnant ewe yet I would dare to question the man who does either (well, from behind a sufficiently strong separating wall, anyway).
I guess I'm no Newton, but at least I know how to think about something without experiencing it directly. I guess I evolved into a human at some point.
I'm sure you'll hear people arguing that it is more immoral to tax people in a welfare state than it is to give desperate/mentally-unstable/unintelligent/addicted/whatever women the alternatives of prostitution or starvation.
What are you talking about? To begin, the "dying in the fields" story is usually a canard, and it's often the case that conditions were not worse there until some large scale re-organisation of capital made it so in order to force people into the cities as workers.
But industrial revolutions can ultimately increase the standard of living for future generations, which is why the initial stage of factory slave labour is usually justified.
Since the sex trade does not advance the productivity of the country, there is no benefit to yourself or to future generations to being a de facto sex slave.
Weird, I thought I'd replied to this one. Damn HTML 2.0.
Anyway, I do, and I avoid going to major fast food joints where I believe they cause harm to their workers, to their suppliers and through harmful advertising to the dumb and the easily influenced. A responsible local business using carefully sourced food is far better for a community and for the worker.
But fast food work, as has been pointed out in several posts in this thread, is not nearly as harmful an industry to the workers as prostitution. Indeed, there's way more dangerous menial labour (especially for "illegal" immigrants). And the discussion is about prostitution, not about all the other nasty things in life which people use to justify patronising a prostitute: "Because if my life is shitty, her life should be even shitter."
Yeah, I was basically nodding my head in agreement (I also agree with your post about occasional student prostitute work vs regular street workers). I am genuinely puzzled by the quantity of people who view sex as a sneaky goal rather than an incidental enjoyment of a relationship, and then use this pathological viewpoint to argue, "At least paying for a prostitute is honest!"
I can't get out of my head the image of a serial killer justifying himself with, "At least I only poisoned the suicidal!"
Oh, that's definitely a shitty thing to do too. A symbiotic partnership, simple fuck buddy arrangement or even mutually honest one night stand seem far healthier.
But enjoying physically and psychologically harmful working conditions day after day and believing (correctly or otherwise) that there's no way out is likely more harmful than hearing one lie about how pretty your eyes are. And johns ought to ask whether it's okay to pay to support that environment rather than playing the pseudo-libertarian "no physical force => legal => moral" card.
but many times that I have sex with a "normal woman" I become somewhat poorer (although usually not 200$)
Every time I've had sex, it's been a progression of a friendship into a kissy relationship into a fully sexual relationship. I've never targeted anyone - certainly not by buying anything. I've never counted up how much I've spent in some way benefitting that person up to the point I first had sex with them. I've not considered having sex a goal, or the end of anything. It just happens. It's nice but it's not essential.
It's weird to see so many people here talk of sex as the result of an investment. Perhaps well regulated prostitutes would be the moral option for them if it were established that the prostitutes were physically and mentally healthy and had full freedom of choice. Or perhaps they need a fuck buddy. Or friends who will take a tenner and give you a BJ. I'm not sure.
But if the amount paid factors in, then this isn't really about morals, is it?
That's absurd. If you're well-protected, well-compensated and free from physical and (N.B.) psychological harm and destitution both within the job and if you choose to leave it, then there's not so much of a problem.
The problem is that all the above luxuries aren't enjoyed by the average prostitute.
(There's still the question of whether you enjoy the job or you feel you're draining away half your waking time. That's not an issue specific to prostitution.)
Why don't you take a brief hiatus from being a pompous, moralizing prick, and absorb the fact that I am far more familiar than you are with world history, and that's why I understand the futility of trying to legislate away anything that you don't like.
Maybe you have a strong background in world history. Since you've asserted that you are "more familiar than" I am with the subject, you should at least back up your fallacious argument by auto-authority with some links to your publications. It won't change the strength of your argument but at least it will confirm that you're not asserting irrelevant falsehoods.
However, I question your assertion in the light of your failure at basic reading comprehension. My original post did not advocate legislating against prostitution. Further posts repeated this position. The post you've just replied to makes it clear that I believe legislating against prostitution (and drugs) just makes problems worse.
You've erected a straw windmill, mounted your hobby horse and cried, "Charge!" You would not look out of place in a forum on the Internet.
If there are no other options, all the ugly girls and lowly educated men would die of starvation.
(1) Prostitutes aren't necessarily "pretty" - don't get your ideas on the sex industry from Western porn sites; (2) Men have far more employment opportunities. Most societies still overtly discriminate against women, sometimes because they're physically weaker and sometimes just because.
. Yes they are exploited, but how did they get there?
Are they OK now? Just because some uneducated kid is fooled into thinking that prostitution is a lucrative way out of poverty it doesn't mean you get to judge them any differently when they're physically and emotionally broken a year later.
The problems associated with prostitution are a consequence of trying to prohibit it
Why don't you take a moment to study a handful of societies, ancient, recent and current, which have legalised prostitution and/or drugs? Get back to me on whether the "problems associated with" drugs and prostitution have all magically disappeared.
The war on drugs and prostitution has made some of the problems associated with drugs and prostitution worse. It has also introduced new problems. It cannot be concluded from this that there are no problems with the recreational drug and prostitution industries which exist independently of their legal status.
For example, that man may uncaringly exploits his fellow man for enjoyment and considers that any act is moral providing he doesn't have to put a gun to someone's head is an obvious problem which has been illustrated in this thread. And that's just putting one issue in the most abstract terms to illustrate the desperate rationalisation of the angry johns.
Why do you think that I go to my job everyday. Take call-outs in the middle of the fucking night when there is two feet of snow on the ground on Christmas (I work in an open pit mine)? It's the money, duh!
So how's the lack of regulation, lack of benefits, share of physically abusive bosses and clients, nasty disease and repeatedly proven risk of psychological trauma playing out? What's it like having no CV to give you a degree of freedom to find something better?
Congratulations, you do a physically demanding and risky job. So did a certain relation, and he did it for good money too. He's now bedbound. It may be related - the gaggle of doctors haven't made up their mind even decades later. As I understand it, worker conditions have improved since he did that job, because we didn't have idiots saying, "It's a free exchange!" Instead, it was understood that it was immoral to expect people to work like that. It might not be as lucrative a job any more (for those who succeed), but such is the price of reducing the chance that the non-perfectly-free-informed-and-rational destroy themselves.
After ten seconds with Google. [dearcupid.org] Maybe not a majority
This is as bad as linking to Yahoo Answers as a substitute for a scientific report. What is wrong with/.?
How about asking "Is it moral for me to tell others how to live and what they can and cannot do?"
Is it moral for me to tell you that you should (I didn't argue for banning anything) not kill humans? Not kill animals? Steal? Copy software? Lie? Cut someone off? Drink and drive?
This thread is full of people confusing legality and morality. This is the mistake the religious right make. Given that geeks can be just as dogmatic, I guess I shouldn't be surprised to see that here too.
He didn't say anything about how many woman want to do it, just that there are obviously some.
The context is an argument defending prostitution.
If you say that you look at manga and my response points out that at least one person who looks at manga is a pedophile, I haven't actually stated that you a pedophile. But it's obvious what association I'm trying to convey. Otherwise, given that the literal assertion is almost inevitable, I wouldn't have said it.
Have you talked to many escorts to come to this conclusion? It really doesn't sound like it.
The "escorts" you're probably thinking of are not representative of the global prostitution industry. I know this is/. and an awful lot of lonely men have paid $200+ for an escort and assume that "talking to an escort" (who you are paying to say what you want to hear) is somehow singular for "data", but it isn't.
Stop forcing YOUR morality on others.
Knee-jerk. Arguing that funding the prostitution industry may be immoral is not forcing anything.
It's a choice, both by the service provider, and by the customer.
All work is free choice to the extent that you also have the options to lie down on the streets and starve or jump off a cliff and die more quickly.
So your morality may say that you need to spend money on fancy dinners and expensive trinkets, coming to a climax where a lavish party is thrown because you put a multi-carat diamond on some poor girls finger. It's all down hill from there. Will you cheat on her? Will she divorce you and take half of what you have?
You are bitter and angry, and it's showing. Not that your bitterness and anger detract from the worth of your argument, but you're not presenting a decent argument anyway. Healthy human relationships are continually symbiotic, not about paying to seduce a woman and then crying because she doesn't give you what you want.
Because of people like you, who have forced your morality on others, it's put these working women in danger. Legalization and acceptance of the industry is the only way to remove the bad elements of the industry.
You're about the 5th poster to assume that I was arguing for the banning of prostitution, even though I started the argument by acknowledging that there are good arguments for legalisation and making clear that "moral" is not the same as "legal".
Prostitution should be legal and well regulated. "Acceptance" is another matter. For example, let's say you're in an evil socialist European state and there's a job opening for a prostitute - should you lose unemployment benefits if you don't take the position? Geeks are so accepting of the scientific method except when it comes to studying humans themselves - in this particular case, no psychologist will argue that the effect of fucking 50 strangers a day is generally as benign as serving 50 burgers a day. But are you arguing that, and what is your extraordinary evidence?
so why single out prostitution as being somehow worse than the other ones?
Point 2. Also point 3.
Sure are a lot of people today defending why they pay for prostitutes! Why doesn't anyone just say, "I don't care about the welfare of the man/woman I'm fucking as long as I get my rocks off"? It would be far more honest than all these hand-wringing arguments about how women (always women...) are likely making a voluntary lucrative career choice.
Slashdot Mirror
The difference is in America, and any true Democracy,
America's intentionally and overtly not a "true Democracy". This may not be a bad thing.
if you don't like the government, any of the stuff that you listed, there are ways to change it without a violent revolution.
I see. Which ways? Assume that I consider the Republican and Democratic governments to be effectively the same, and try not to give an answer which comes down to, "Persuade over 100,000,000 people."
In Cuba you will get arrested for complaining about what the government does.
Idle complaining is of no benefit, and Americans essentially get the privilege of time-wasting. Well, they do today, what with the lack of HUAC.
To make a difference, you need substance and medium to your complaints to get people to listen. The warrant for your arrest will be your reward.
Sometimes when you flick a switch near a door, the room gets brighter. What's up with that? Life's full of weird associations, I guess, and sometimes you have to think hard to work out what's going down.
Although my memory's fairly terrible, it's good enough to recall that you've made lots of authoritarian posts implying an affectionate-to-the-point-of-intercourse relationship with your country's government+military+all that stuff people like when they're scared to stand on their own two feet, so I'm going to guess that you're actually being sarcastic rather than dense. But you brought nothing new to the table.
Feel free to try again. Second submissions will have mark scaled to 90%, so you could still achieve a respectable pass. Second fail and you'll be seeing me after class, bring your own cane, you know you like discipline, etc. ;-)
In addition Cuban law bans using the Internet to spread information that is against what the government considers to be the social interest,
Swastikas.
norms of good behavior,
Porn.
the integrity of the people
Terrorism Act 2006.
or national security."
Assange.
Being rich in America is like being rich in Cuba: life's cool. Meanwhile, being poor in America is like being poor in Cuba: life sucks. In the latter case, what differs is the handout you get and who you can get away criticising sufficiently loudly.
The constant, awkward interaction between 65-drivers and 90-drivers would be far more dangerous than if everyone just went 90.
Or 65. I'm 100% sure that 100% of people (rounded to 1 decimal place) aren't doing anything important enough that it matters if they take a little longer to arrive. For the remainder, exceptions are already built into law.
...and there was me thinking they were for the children.
Seriously, though, driving is the most dangerous activity performed by a large proportion of the Western world, and people are way too misled by the "freedom" of driving.
Uhoh, do you mod me up for my first point and down for my second, or vice versa?
The majority of the prostitutes who have contact with charities don't want to do it.
What's your argument, exactly? Perhaps that no charity involved in helping sex workers has ever employed one person who has done a first year course in statistics, so they have no clue how to obtain a representative sample?
You're very angry for someone having a detached, disinterested argument on the Internet. Or maybe you're neither detached nor disinterested? :-)
You're ok with a girl growing up and banging strange men because they tell her
I'm not OK with it at all. If you read my posts you'll see I said precisely the opposite.
You say you're ok with "mutually honest one night stands". What the fuck do you think prostitution is!?
Prostitution = regularly, for money;
Honest one night stand = when desired, for mujtual enjoyment of sex.
Should we stop people from becoming police officers because for many it is they endure "physically and psychologically harmful working conditions day after day and believing (correctly or otherwise) that there's no way out"?
No police officer should continually endure physically and psychologically harmful working conditions. He should be regularly evaluated to ensure this. And no man who believes he has no choice but to work as a police officer should be allowed to wear the badge in the first place.
After reading several of your comments, I really despise you.
You're slightly annoyed with my posts - as annoyed as anyone on a random Internet forum should get - so you've fashioned a reply into that of a hyperbolic troll. You've ensured to click Post Anonymously because you're slightly ashamed of yourself: you know you don't have a sound counterargument to the nuances of the problem so you substitute with vitriol.
You think prostitution is inherently dangerous, but you're more mad about the girls and johns than the pimps.
Not really mad about the girls. I haven't talked about the pimps at all. Perhaps they can drag up and blow the johns? They deserve each other.
You're completely uninvolved with the situation, but you seem to want to impose your morals on others.
Lower the blinds, we're going through Black Country! You're trying to absolve yourself of your part in society by pretending that other people's problems are so none of your business that it would actually be immoral to help them.
There's nothing inherent in the sex act that makes it more emotionally damaging than other acts; that's all in your head, based on your society's enforced rules.
OOI, do you deny all applications of the scientific method or just psychology?
You're part of the problem - judging people and actions you have zero familiarity with and then suggesting laws or rules to govern it.
Newton barely left Cambridge yet profitably used astronomical data gathered from around the Old and New World. I've never strangled a man to death for my sexual gratification while performing analingus on a pregnant ewe yet I would dare to question the man who does either (well, from behind a sufficiently strong separating wall, anyway).
I guess I'm no Newton, but at least I know how to think about something without experiencing it directly. I guess I evolved into a human at some point.
I'm sure you'll hear people arguing that it is more immoral to tax people in a welfare state than it is to give desperate/mentally-unstable/unintelligent/addicted/whatever women the alternatives of prostitution or starvation.
What are you talking about? To begin, the "dying in the fields" story is usually a canard, and it's often the case that conditions were not worse there until some large scale re-organisation of capital made it so in order to force people into the cities as workers.
But industrial revolutions can ultimately increase the standard of living for future generations, which is why the initial stage of factory slave labour is usually justified.
Since the sex trade does not advance the productivity of the country, there is no benefit to yourself or to future generations to being a de facto sex slave.
Weird, I thought I'd replied to this one. Damn HTML 2.0.
Anyway, I do, and I avoid going to major fast food joints where I believe they cause harm to their workers, to their suppliers and through harmful advertising to the dumb and the easily influenced. A responsible local business using carefully sourced food is far better for a community and for the worker.
But fast food work, as has been pointed out in several posts in this thread, is not nearly as harmful an industry to the workers as prostitution. Indeed, there's way more dangerous menial labour (especially for "illegal" immigrants). And the discussion is about prostitution, not about all the other nasty things in life which people use to justify patronising a prostitute: "Because if my life is shitty, her life should be even shitter."
No. Two wrongs are two things which need fixing.
Yeah, I was basically nodding my head in agreement (I also agree with your post about occasional student prostitute work vs regular street workers). I am genuinely puzzled by the quantity of people who view sex as a sneaky goal rather than an incidental enjoyment of a relationship, and then use this pathological viewpoint to argue, "At least paying for a prostitute is honest!"
I can't get out of my head the image of a serial killer justifying himself with, "At least I only poisoned the suicidal!"
Oh, that's definitely a shitty thing to do too. A symbiotic partnership, simple fuck buddy arrangement or even mutually honest one night stand seem far healthier.
But enjoying physically and psychologically harmful working conditions day after day and believing (correctly or otherwise) that there's no way out is likely more harmful than hearing one lie about how pretty your eyes are. And johns ought to ask whether it's okay to pay to support that environment rather than playing the pseudo-libertarian "no physical force => legal => moral" card.
but many times that I have sex with a "normal woman" I become somewhat poorer (although usually not 200$)
Every time I've had sex, it's been a progression of a friendship into a kissy relationship into a fully sexual relationship. I've never targeted anyone - certainly not by buying anything. I've never counted up how much I've spent in some way benefitting that person up to the point I first had sex with them. I've not considered having sex a goal, or the end of anything. It just happens. It's nice but it's not essential.
It's weird to see so many people here talk of sex as the result of an investment. Perhaps well regulated prostitutes would be the moral option for them if it were established that the prostitutes were physically and mentally healthy and had full freedom of choice. Or perhaps they need a fuck buddy. Or friends who will take a tenner and give you a BJ. I'm not sure.
But if the amount paid factors in, then this isn't really about morals, is it?
That's absurd. If you're well-protected, well-compensated and free from physical and (N.B.) psychological harm and destitution both within the job and if you choose to leave it, then there's not so much of a problem.
The problem is that all the above luxuries aren't enjoyed by the average prostitute.
(There's still the question of whether you enjoy the job or you feel you're draining away half your waking time. That's not an issue specific to prostitution.)
Why don't you take a brief hiatus from being a pompous, moralizing prick, and absorb the fact that I am far more familiar than you are with world history, and that's why I understand the futility of trying to legislate away anything that you don't like.
Maybe you have a strong background in world history. Since you've asserted that you are "more familiar than" I am with the subject, you should at least back up your fallacious argument by auto-authority with some links to your publications. It won't change the strength of your argument but at least it will confirm that you're not asserting irrelevant falsehoods.
However, I question your assertion in the light of your failure at basic reading comprehension. My original post did not advocate legislating against prostitution. Further posts repeated this position. The post you've just replied to makes it clear that I believe legislating against prostitution (and drugs) just makes problems worse.
You've erected a straw windmill, mounted your hobby horse and cried, "Charge!" You would not look out of place in a forum on the Internet.
# You're being morally presumptuous, basically saying you want to decide whether they should work as prostitutes based on whether you think it's wrong
Lrn2read. I'm suggesting that people should think about the moral implications of paying for a prostitute.
I'm not judging those who become prostitutes.
If there are no other options, all the ugly girls and lowly educated men would die of starvation.
(1) Prostitutes aren't necessarily "pretty" - don't get your ideas on the sex industry from Western porn sites;
(2) Men have far more employment opportunities. Most societies still overtly discriminate against women, sometimes because they're physically weaker and sometimes just because.
. Yes they are exploited, but how did they get there?
Are they OK now? Just because some uneducated kid is fooled into thinking that prostitution is a lucrative way out of poverty it doesn't mean you get to judge them any differently when they're physically and emotionally broken a year later.
The problems associated with prostitution are a consequence of trying to prohibit it
Why don't you take a moment to study a handful of societies, ancient, recent and current, which have legalised prostitution and/or drugs? Get back to me on whether the "problems associated with" drugs and prostitution have all magically disappeared.
The war on drugs and prostitution has made some of the problems associated with drugs and prostitution worse. It has also introduced new problems. It cannot be concluded from this that there are no problems with the recreational drug and prostitution industries which exist independently of their legal status.
For example, that man may uncaringly exploits his fellow man for enjoyment and considers that any act is moral providing he doesn't have to put a gun to someone's head is an obvious problem which has been illustrated in this thread. And that's just putting one issue in the most abstract terms to illustrate the desperate rationalisation of the angry johns.
Why do you think that I go to my job everyday. Take call-outs in the middle of the fucking night when there is two feet of snow on the ground on Christmas (I work in an open pit mine)? It's the money, duh!
So how's the lack of regulation, lack of benefits, share of physically abusive bosses and clients, nasty disease and repeatedly proven risk of psychological trauma playing out? What's it like having no CV to give you a degree of freedom to find something better?
Congratulations, you do a physically demanding and risky job. So did a certain relation, and he did it for good money too. He's now bedbound. It may be related - the gaggle of doctors haven't made up their mind even decades later. As I understand it, worker conditions have improved since he did that job, because we didn't have idiots saying, "It's a free exchange!" Instead, it was understood that it was immoral to expect people to work like that. It might not be as lucrative a job any more (for those who succeed), but such is the price of reducing the chance that the non-perfectly-free-informed-and-rational destroy themselves.
After ten seconds with Google. [dearcupid.org] Maybe not a majority
This is as bad as linking to Yahoo Answers as a substitute for a scientific report. What is wrong with /.?
How about asking "Is it moral for me to tell others how to live and what they can and cannot do?"
Is it moral for me to tell you that you should (I didn't argue for banning anything) not kill humans? Not kill animals? Steal? Copy software? Lie? Cut someone off? Drink and drive?
This thread is full of people confusing legality and morality. This is the mistake the religious right make. Given that geeks can be just as dogmatic, I guess I shouldn't be surprised to see that here too.
He didn't say anything about how many woman want to do it, just that there are obviously some.
The context is an argument defending prostitution.
If you say that you look at manga and my response points out that at least one person who looks at manga is a pedophile, I haven't actually stated that you a pedophile. But it's obvious what association I'm trying to convey. Otherwise, given that the literal assertion is almost inevitable, I wouldn't have said it.
Have you talked to many escorts to come to this conclusion? It really doesn't sound like it.
The "escorts" you're probably thinking of are not representative of the global prostitution industry. I know this is /. and an awful lot of lonely men have paid $200+ for an escort and assume that "talking to an escort" (who you are paying to say what you want to hear) is somehow singular for "data", but it isn't.
Stop forcing YOUR morality on others.
Knee-jerk. Arguing that funding the prostitution industry may be immoral is not forcing anything.
It's a choice, both by the service provider, and by the customer.
All work is free choice to the extent that you also have the options to lie down on the streets and starve or jump off a cliff and die more quickly.
So your morality may say that you need to spend money on fancy dinners and expensive trinkets, coming to a climax where a lavish party is thrown because you put a multi-carat diamond on some poor girls finger. It's all down hill from there. Will you cheat on her? Will she divorce you and take half of what you have?
You are bitter and angry, and it's showing. Not that your bitterness and anger detract from the worth of your argument, but you're not presenting a decent argument anyway. Healthy human relationships are continually symbiotic, not about paying to seduce a woman and then crying because she doesn't give you what you want.
Because of people like you, who have forced your morality on others, it's put these working women in danger. Legalization and acceptance of the industry is the only way to remove the bad elements of the industry.
You're about the 5th poster to assume that I was arguing for the banning of prostitution, even though I started the argument by acknowledging that there are good arguments for legalisation and making clear that "moral" is not the same as "legal".
Prostitution should be legal and well regulated. "Acceptance" is another matter. For example, let's say you're in an evil socialist European state and there's a job opening for a prostitute - should you lose unemployment benefits if you don't take the position? Geeks are so accepting of the scientific method except when it comes to studying humans themselves - in this particular case, no psychologist will argue that the effect of fucking 50 strangers a day is generally as benign as serving 50 burgers a day. But are you arguing that, and what is your extraordinary evidence?
so why single out prostitution as being somehow worse than the other ones?
Point 2. Also point 3.
Sure are a lot of people today defending why they pay for prostitutes! Why doesn't anyone just say, "I don't care about the welfare of the man/woman I'm fucking as long as I get my rocks off"? It would be far more honest than all these hand-wringing arguments about how women (always women...) are likely making a voluntary lucrative career choice.