Women and children.

Women and children.

People can't seem to be able to differentiate between these groups. I'm watching a Penn and Teller show on legalizing prostitution. Most of the anti-prostitution groups seem to believe that if prostitution becomes legal, children will be forced into prostitution, or young girls will be forced into the lifestyle.

A lot of the anti-legalization energy that does not confuse adult women with children comes from two camps: economic and feminist. The economic camp are basically classic nimbys. They don't want prostitution, gambling, adult video stores or all-night diners anywhere near them, because it might bring down their property values, bring in an unsightly element, or might lead to uncomfortable conversations with children, when they catch sight of an unfamiliar business establishment.

The second camp is the feminists. Feminists see prostitution as an instance of female exploitation. And it is. In most of the world, prostitution is a degrading, dehumanizing state. It is commonly forced. Sex slavery occurs. Children are sold, male and female. In the United States, women addicted to drugs, impoverished, or otherwise open to exploitation may become prostitutes by economic coercion. They become virtual slaves to pimps. This is wrong. Both situations are very wrong; however, because a situation exists in which people are vulnerable to exploitation does not mean that a similar situation may exist where no person is exploited. Their second argument is that if prostitution exists, women who are destitute, undereducated, or naive will be forced into that life out of necessity.

One of the miraculous, lovely, wonderful things in the United States is that, by and large, our laws and legal system protect workers from exploitation. Even in the garment industry, mining, and farming industries, where many workers are exploited world-wide, the United States manages to create a climate of safety relative to developing countries, and manages to balance business and individual interests better than many E.U countries. We've got this labor law shit down.

It could be argued that legalization of prostitution in the United States would extend that climate of safety to sex workers. Which would be a good thing.

Safety + People = Something I like.

It could also be argued that women would be no more forced into prostitution than other relatively unskilled professions, such as garment manufacture, food service, and home health services. Women without skills will always be more prone to filling the physical needs of others than men without skills or women with skills; whether that need is sexual or medical should be a choice that a woman can make. Home health services are grimy, often demeaning jobs. They, like prostitution, are a shunting off of personal relationships onto professionals. Health aides turn the elderly, to prevent bed sores. They change the diapers of the profoundly retarded. They wipe stomas. They empty colostomy bags. This job seems much more horrible, to me, than providing sexual services. I couldn't do it. However, it is one of the jobs available to unskilled women, and taken largely by recent immigrants and the similarly disenfranchised.

I'd rather give handjobs than wipe somebody's grandpa's ass- wouldn't you?