Morality Concerning Prostitution

@stevecook172001,

stevecook172001 wrote:

Define "adult"

A person who is capable of critical thinking and willing to accept responsibility for their choices and actions.

Yes I do realize that some people never become adults.

But at the same time, i have met 12 year olds that had better critical thinking skills and a willingness to accept responsibility for their actions than many people in their 30s and 40s.

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@stevecook172001,

Define adults!!!!!!!!!!

A person who society said is fit by age and conditions to make their own choices in life and assume adult duties and rights.

By conditions I mean being fairly sane and with an IQ at a level that they are and should be able to take care of themselves.

For the vast majority of the population we pick an age where this occur by default unless it can be shown and proven to the courts otherwise you assume both adults rights and duties to the society by your age.

Now if you wish to set an economic level where you are not an adult and can be control as a child by society you are setting up a slave society but instead of the color of your skin it is the level of your and your family bank accounts that matter.

Not a society most of us would care to live in.

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@Krumple,

I for one am not willing to give society the power to do such individual judging as you seem to call for on a whole scale basic.

Never in history of the human race had such judging not gone bad in a big way and been used to suppress the rights of one group or another.

We now do have machineries in place to deal with the rare exceptions such as Howard Hughes being allow full adults rights and to take control of his father tool and die business before he had reach the normal age of adulthood or in the reverse direction Britney Spears adults rights being taken away from her and control given to her father.

Such events should be rare however.

1 Reply

@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

I for one am not willing to give society the power to do such individual judging as you seem to call for on a whole scale basic.

What are you saying here?

BillRM wrote:

Never in history of the human race had such judging not gone bad in a big way and been used to suppress the rights of one group or another.

This does not make any sense to me. Are you saying you don't want people to decide for themselves of what they should be doing? So the alternative is to have someone else dictate what others should be doing? And then on top of that you are sighting the problem with individual decision making has as a flaw, suppressing the rights of a group? Isn't dictation of behavior already the suppressing of rights? If I am wrong in assessing what you are saying, please clear it up because the alternative to what you are saying here seems to be even worse than what you are claiming is bad. So what are you trying to say?

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@Krumple,

Krumple wrote:

BillRM wrote:

I for one am not willing to give society the power to do such individual judging as you seem to call for on a whole scale basic.

What are you saying here?

BillRM wrote:

Never in history of the human race had such judging not gone bad in a big way and been used to suppress the rights of one group or another.

This does not make any sense to me. Are you saying you don't want people to decide for themselves of what they should be doing? So the alternative is to have someone else dictate what others should be doing? And then on top of that you are sighting the problem with individual decision making has as a flaw, suppressing the rights of a group? Isn't dictation of behavior already the suppressing of rights? If I am wrong in assessing what you are saying, please clear it up because the alternative to what you are saying here seems to be even worse than what you are claiming is bad. So what are you trying to say?

Yes, this is what is causing me problems. The "logic" of many of the typical "for" and "against" arguments about prostitution tend to fall apart when pushed more than a little.

For myself, my libertarian instincts inform me that I shoudi not object to a freely consenting contract to behave in a pa rticular way between two or more mentally capable people.

However, there is so much psychological damage that is correlated with prostitution that such a simplistic libertarian perspective begins to take in water pretty damned quickly.

On the other, hand, the legislative restriction on people's freedoms is the thin end of a very nasty wedge that has lots of historical precedents to make us want rail against it on principle.

No easy answers...

1 Reply

@stevecook172001,

I am strongly getting the impression that you would like to play big daddy to the poor lower classes.

Who are not fit or able to weight the harm to benefit ratio of any such course of actions such as taking or not taking part in Prostitution in your opinion.

One thing for sure your so call libertarian instincts seem very weak indeed.

1 Reply

@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

I am strongly getting the impression that you would like to play big daddy to the poor lower classes.

Who are not fit or able to weight the haram to benefit ratio of any such course of actions such as taking or not taking part in Prostitution in your opinion.

One thing for sure your so call libertarin instincts seem very weak indeed.

No, I'm just not ideologically hamstrung in the same way as you would appear to be. Whilst I start from the position of assuming that other people would not wish to have their freedom limited in the same way as I would not wish to have my freedom limited, I also am aware that limitations of freedom can be as a result of the chains that have been placed inside people's heads as much as the ones outside of them. In other words, there is rarely if ever a simple, singular ideological answer to the problem of the human condition.

In other words, I'm a pragmatist.

You should try it.

1 Reply

@stevecook172001,

Sorry, there is no bottom when you decide to be a big daddy to other adults.

We all have limits when it comes to life choices and power balances are hardly ever equal in any kind of a relationship.

Bill Gate and his now wife were not of equal standings when he began to court her, a middle level employee of his company.

Should her "chains" of a middle class background and the balance imbalance forbid her from consenting to a dating/sexual relationship with Mr. Gate?

Would you declare that you or the society as a whole have the right to interfere with their relationship as how can you proved without question that such factors as that he was her boss/boss/boss/boss did not force the poor woman in her own mind to be open to his advances when otherwise she would not had been?

Why would it be ok to interfere with a woman right to sell her body to feed herself and her family to a man and not all right to interfere with a billionaire and a middle level employee entering into a sexual relationship where it can not be proven does not have some of the same elements in play?

Why is it ok to take adult rights from a streetwalker but not from the now Mrs. Gates?

Note I am not picking on Mrs Gates nor do I have any reason to assume that her relationship with her now husband is not anything but what is is on it face. She is just the first person who came to mind when it come to a very very large power imbalance between two people at the start of a relationship.

1 Reply

@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

Sorry, there is no bottom when you decide to be a big daddy to other adults.

We all have limits when it comes to life choices and power balances are hardly ever equal in any kind of a relationship.

Bill Gate and his now wife were not of equal standings when he began to court her, a middle level employee of his company.

Should her "chains" of a middle class background and the balance imbalance forbid her from consenting to a dating/sexual relationship with Mr. Gate?

Would you declare that you or the society as a whole have the right to interfere with their relationship as how can you proved without question that such factors as that he was her boss/boss/boss/boss did not force the poor woman in her own mind to be open to his advances when otherwise she would not had been?

Why would it be ok to interfere with a woman right to sell her body to feed herself and her family to a man and not all right to interfere with a billionaire and a middle level employee entering into a sexual relationship where it can not be proven does not have some of the same elements in play?

Why is it ok to take adult rights from a streetwalker but not from the now Mrs. Gates?

Note I am not picking on Mrs Gates nor do I have any reason to assume that her relationship with her now husband is not anything but what is is on it face. She is just the first person who came to mind when it come to a very very large power imbalance between two people at the start of a relationship.

I don't particularly disagree with anything, in principle, you have posted here. Practice, however, can be a whole lot thornier.

In lieu of the above, I have a question for you. Should a human of say, age 10, be free to to work in the sex industry if they express an intention to do so and there is no immediate and direct evidence of coercion on them to do so.

If the answer is yes, why?. If the answer is no, why?

1 Reply

@stevecook172001,

Quote:

Should a human of say, age 10, be free to to work in the sex industry if they express an intention to do so and there is no immediate and direct evidence of coercion on them to do so.

As post after post of mine I had stated adults rights so why is the question of children being enter into this thread by you?

A ten years old is under both the protection and the control of his parents and the society as a whole! He is assume not to have the judgment yet develop within his brain and body to made major life decisions on his own.

Just as a legal adult is assume to be able to do so, unless proven in a court setting that is not the case.

Now if as it seem you feel it would be wise to take adults rights away from some sub-group of adults and treated them as children without the rights that you would wish to claimed for yourself I would be interested in hearing about it.

Would such protected adults be chosen by economic class or educational backgrounds or like in the good old days skin color or sex?

1 Reply

@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

Quote:
Should a human of say, age 10, be free to to work in the sex industry if they express an intention to do so and there is no immediate and direct evidence of coercion on them to do so.

As post after post of mine I had stated adults rights so why is the question of children being enter into this thread by you?

A ten years old is under both the protection and the control of his parents and the society as a whole! He is assume not to have the judgment yet develop within his brain and body to made major life decisions on his own.

Just as a legal adult is assume to be able to do so, unless proven in a court setting that is not the case.

Now if as it seem you feel it would be wise to take adults rights away from some sub-group of adults and treated them as children without the rights that you would wish to claimed for yourself I would be interested in hearing about it.

Would such protected adults be chosen by economic class or educational backgrounds or like in the good old days skin color or sex?

You make a judgement that the brain of a human of ten years old has not yet developed sufficiently to be responsible for making decisions for themselves. Given this lack of responsibility, there is also an accompanying lack of rights leading to others assuming those rights on behalf of the 10 year old.

Fair enough, I don't necessarily have a problem with the above.

However, the next question I have is what is the essential qualities of an adult mind are that make them capable of being responsible for their choices and the actions that follow as compared to the mind of a child? Further, when exactly does a human brain develop this capacity?

10 years? 15 years? 20 years?

What actual evidence can you provide for the point at which reponsibility for ones own actions occurs and, more importantly, what evidence do you have that it occurs in all humans to an equal extent and at precisely the same age?

What evidence do you have that environmental experiences do not have a limiting effect on the capacity of some humans to be able to be responsible for their actions no matter what their age? You have already admitted that some human brains are not responsible for their actions for developmental reasons. A significant part of psychological development, as I am sure you are aware, is environmentally determined. Given the above, can you absolutely guarantee that all humans recieve identical enviroments up to some arbitary age so that you can be certain they are all equally capable of being responsible for their actions?

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In The Netherlands prostitution is legal since last century. The taboo is still there. Prostitutes complain about their income-taxes...

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@stevecook172001,

So you would like to play games concerning the picking of the break points where we grant adults rights?

I frankly do not see how that relate in any way or in any manner to a 25 years old or 30 years for example rights to be a hooker but I will play your game for now.

In any case , we as a society had over the centuries had picked such cut off dates in a somewhat arbitrary manner using trial and error in so doing in order to get the best overall results.

In my own lifetime, the age of adulthood was move from 21 to 18 and then move back to the degree that you now need to be 21 to consume alcohol. Some other ages break point is the requirement that you need to be 35 to be President of the US come to mind.

We had also build into our system the rights of courts to grant adult rights before those cut off dates if it seem wise to the courts to do so in an individual case and to take away adult rights to those past that date if it can be shown that there is some impairment of that individual that foreclosed him or her from making adult decisions.

There is no magic number for the age of adulthood however, we do set a legal age that seem to work out fairly well on the whole.

No human system is perfect that does not however lead to the logical conclusion that we should not have a system if it can not be perfect.

1 Reply

@stevecook172001,

Quote:

Given the above, can you absolutely guarantee that all humans recieve identical enviroments up to some arbitary age so that you can be certain they are all equally capable of being responsible for their actions?

There is no logical requirement that all adults need to be equal in their ability to reach good decisions in all cases or any moral justification to removed their freedoms because someone had judge their abilities less then others. Only if the courts had rule that someone is so lacking in adult judgment that they can not take care of themselves in the day-to-day living and need a guardian should adult’s rights be removed.

Of course no system is perfect as I had already stated and what would you like to replaced it with?

An examination of all 300 millions persons in the US to see if they meet some arbitrary standards for adulthood that the people in power had set up?

That would somehow be better then an arbitrary age in your opinion?

Alternatively, just keeping full adults rights in a small sub-group that had declared themselves superior in some manner to the rest of us? Somehow I get the feelings you seem to think that you would belong to that sub-group if it was to be set up.

Seem that our current system is working fairly well if not in a perfect manner.

1 Reply

@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

So you would like to play games concerning the picking of the break points where we grant adults rights?

No, I am specifically accusing you of doing that

Quote:

I frankly do not see how that relate in any way or in any manner to a 25 years old or 30 years for example rights to be a hooker but I will play your game for now.

You do not see how that relates because you do not wish to since you know full well it opens a whole can or worms that your argument cannot deal with

Quote:

In any case , we as a society had over the centuries had picked such cut off dates in a somewhat arbitrary manner using trial and error in so doing in order to get the best overall results.

Appeals to authority don't work on a philosophy forum mister. You are going to have to do better than that I'm afraid

Quote:

In my own lifetime, the age of adulthood was move from 21 to 18 and then move back to the degree that you now need to be 21 to consume alcohol. Some other ages break point is the requirement that you need to be 35 to be President of the US come to mind.

More appeals to authority. Is your argument so weak?

Quote:

We had also build into our system the rights of courts to grant adult rights before those cut off dates if it seem wise to the courts to do so in an individual case and to take away adult rights to those past that date if it can be shown that there is some impairment of that individual that foreclosed him or her from making adult decisions.

More obfuscation. Dear oh dear. Address the central issues raised in my post why don't you

Quote:

There is no magic number for the age of adulthood however, we do set a legal age that seem to work out fairly well on the whole.

An argument to the contray could easily be mounted and, in any event, you are merely appealing here to precedent, not priciple. Not that I think there is any problem with having to compromise one's principles in the face of reality. The problem with your position to this point, though, is that on the one hand, you use fundamentalist libertarian principles, to defend the argument for absolute responsibilities of peole, but then go all fuzzy and pragmatic with your reasoning when suit suits you. If you are going to take the pragmatic approach then you must logically accept that the age of responsibility is fluid and indeterminate and depends on circumstance. You can't have it both ways.

Quote:

No human system is perfect that does not however lead to the logical conclusion that we should not have a system if it can not be perfect.

Who says we should not have some kind of system. Certainly not me. I would merely contend that any total adherence to any particular philisophical principle when organising human affairs is silly at best and downright evil at worst. The best we can do is pragmatically muddle along.

My question to you was what evidence do you have for the age of resp0nsibility you seem to feel is so absolute and so universal. You have not provided one jot of evidence.

Because you can't, and you know it.

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@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

Quote:
Given the above, can you absolutely guarantee that all humans recieve identical enviroments up to some arbitary age so that you can be certain they are all equally capable of being responsible for their actions?

There is no logical requirement that all adults need to be equal in their ability to reach good decisions in all cases or any moral justification to removed their freedoms because someone had judge their abilities less then others. Only if the courts had rule that someone is so lacking in adult judgment that they can not take care of themselves in the day-to-day living and need a guardian should adult’s rights be removed.

Of course no system is perfect as I had already stated and what would you like to replaced it with?

An examination of all 300 millions persons in the US to see if they meet some arbitrary standards for adulthood that the people in power had set up?

That would somehow be better then an arbitrary age in your opinion?

Alternatively, just keeping full adults rights in a small sub-group that had declared themselves superior in some manner to the rest of us? Somehow I get the feelings you seem to think that you would belong to that sub-group if it was to be set up.

Seem that our current system is working fairly well if not in a perfect manner.

Specifically referring to the USA , are seriously arguing that your system is "working fairly well"

Excuse me while I piss myself laughing

As for the rest of your strawmen, I'm not interested in defending them for you. I'm not the one who is arguing for a completely inflexible adherence to a rabid interpretation of libertarian principles here. You accused me, earlier of having a somewhat weak adhernece to libertariansim.

You are correct.

Whilst my core values are indeed libertarian, I also know that reality sometimes requires that you have to live with inconsistencies. The thing is, I am happy to admit that because it's the grown up thing to do.

The thing is, reality is a quite lot messier and less clear cut than your strict ideological beliefs lead you to currently conclude

1 Reply

@stevecook172001,

Quote:

Specifically referring to the USA , are seriously arguing that your system is "working fairly well"

Yes I surely do take that position we on the whole far better off as far as human rights are concern then any other major country in the world.

We are also the nation that had save Europe rear end three times in the last hundred years.

We are the nation that had advance technology more then all the other nations together have in the last 130 years or so including the very world wide computer system you are using to attack the US along with 99 percent of the computer technology and software now being used in the world.

Hell without the US and it system that is working fairly well indeed you would be writing a letter more then likely by whale oil lamps light.

We had smoke the rest of the world in almost all regards for over the last hundred years at the very least.

So feel free to piss all you care to.

1 Reply

I get a bit tired of this song and dance about how so many sex workers have been abused in their life that we get to assume that they are being re abused by sex work, we assume the making sex work criminal is protecting them. There are a good number of people on the street who have no contact with family who do sex work because they have no other choice, and a lot of them have been abused. The solution though is not to take away the one source of income that they have, but rather to prevent broken families and homelessness in the first place, and then to offer services if this prevention fails. Most of the rest do sex work for a wide variety of reasons....it is easy, does not take many hours a week to earn a living, it is a high to provide pleasure to another person, they like sex so doing sex work is following their bliss, they have a D/s itch they need to scratch and being a prostitute enables them to feel like they can power over men...

I think a lot of sex workers who were sexually abused as children do not do sex work because the are damaged and thus dont know any better than to let themselves be re-abused, I think that they learned early how important sex is, they learned early that sex and power are deeply interrelated and once they experience this they have a need to do it again...the genie does not go back into the bottle.

In answer to the OP: Sex work is not immoral. Criminalizing sex work is immoral.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

I get a bit tired of this song and dance about how so many sex workers have been abused in their life that we get to assume that they are being re abused by sex work, we assume the making sex work criminal is protecting them. There are a good number of people on the street who have no contact with family who do sex work because they have no other choice, and a lot of them have been abused. The solution though is not to take away the one source of income that they have, but rather to prevent broken families and homelessness in the first place, and then to offer services if this prevention fails. Most of the rest do sex work for a wide variety of reasons....it is easy, does not take many hours a week to earn a living, it is a high to provide pleasure to another person, they like sex so doing sex work is following their bliss, they have a D/s itch they need to scratch and being a prostituted enables them to feel like they can power over men...

I think a lot of sex workers who were sexually abused as children do not do sex work because the are damaged and thus dont know any better than to let themselves be re-abused, I think that they learned early how important sex is, they learned early that sex and power are deeply interrelated and once they experience this they have a need to do it again...the genie does not go back into the bottle.

In answer to the OP: Sex work is not immoral. Criminalizing sex work is immoral.

I would more or less agree with this post. however, I would be less certain about the lack of abuse involved in sex work. Quite a lot of sex work is tied up with violence and coercion. Either directly or indirectly.

However, I would agree with the general psychological observations surrounding the reasons why some women go into the sex industry and that the empahsis should be on ensureing as far as is possible that early environments are rendered as unabusive as possible in order to minimse later self destrucitve behaviour.

Finally, I would aslo contend that the criminalising of prostitution is just about the worst thing that could happen

In answer to the OP: Sex work is not immoral for the prostitues themselves. It is a morally ambiguous behaviour, though, for their customers. Finally, the abusive and poverty-blighted early environments of many prostitutes and the criminalizing of sex work is immoral.

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@stevecook172001,

It tie to violent is because it is illegal as there would be far less or zero room for pimps and violent johns if the service was being provided by way of legal companies and the women was not criminals and could turn to the police and the court systems for protection.

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