|
Register | Sign In |
|
QuickSearch
Thread ▼ Details |
Member (Idle past 5849 days) Posts: 7405 From: satellite of love Joined: |
|
Thread Info
|
|
|
Author | Topic: Schraf and Satcomm hand in hand against victimless crimes | |||||||||||||||||||||||
nator Member (Idle past 2199 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
I've read the thread.
What a reaction.
quote: I can't disagree with your formal logic, I suppose. I don't object to the free expression of anyone's sexuality as long as people consent. If women and men want to sleep around for fun, I could care less. I disagree with the notion that (mostly) males seem to have that sexual access to females (or males) through the purchasing of their bodies is some kind of right; therefore, prostitution is normal. I think sex is normal. Buying sex is archaeic. "Can't court the females effectively? Can't learn the social skills that will get you some? Don't worry! You can simply buy the sex you always wanted, since it's now illegal to take it by force." Personally, I tend to think of prostitution as a product of restrictive, putitan social constructs because if people were simply able to have sex with a willing partner without feeling guilty or strange, people wouldn't feel the need to go buy a body to use.
quote: Of course it wouldn't, and I don't think this is a good example. Being raped as a child would seem to tend to have a pretty strong effect on what you grew up thinking sexuality was all about, while being raped as a child wouldn't have a lot to do with how you grew up thinking how typing or colating should be performed, don't you think? I wonder if you think it is possible for a prostitute to be raped? I mean, the customer is just getting what he paid for, right? What about the pimps? I do not deny the possibility of there being some prostitutes which are in their occupation out of a great feeling of self-worth. However, I am not as yet convinced, as you seem to be, that many, or most, are. According to the statistics I found (admittedly at a pretty over-the-top "everything is prostitution" site) it said that the average age of females entering prostitution was 13 years old. The sex trade in very, very young children overseas is quite popular with Western and tourists. The site also stated estimates for incest/childhood sexual abuse for prostitutes ranging from 65%-90%. You mentioned something about "all those studies" being debunked, but I think I missed where and by whom this debunking had been done. Can you please elaborate on which studies you specifically object to, and what subsequent studies have shown differing results? I did go looking for evidence which disconfirmed my ideas, and I found some, but most references were not actual studies but popular press books. Having said that, I am not a particular fan of certain kinds of feminist writing and research and there is a lot of really horrible crap passing as science in the social sciences.
quote: How many, holmes? What percentage of all the sex workers in the world, would you say, feel good about their jobs? Just because there are some people who feel good about being prostitutes doesn't mean that most, or even many, do. [This message has been edited by schrafinator, 02-17-2003]
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
nator Member (Idle past 2199 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: It's sexist, racist, and classist, for starters. I love America and I'm glad I live here, but "traditional" culture has a very definite dark side.
quote: Because liberal academics are often women, minorities, non-Protestant Christians, and other groups who study the history of the "Traditional" American culture which had excluded them from academia entirely until the recent past, and then restricted (and continue to restrict) their upward mobility.
quote: To criticize America is to perform a profoundly patriotic act, on the contrary. To be free from the tyrrany of the majority, and to feel free to stand up and say so without fear of reprisal, is the whole POINT of America!
quote: What, do you think that America should become a dictatorship or a Communist state in which only those who agree with the majority, or who are too afraid to oppose them, should live here? What a crazy un-American thinker you are, Satcomm!
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
nator Member (Idle past 2199 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: I don't think of our modern culture as the "traditional" American culture. I think of modern culture as being the product of "traditional" American culture being forced to be more inclusive due to the efforts of civil rights activists over the last 80 years or more. The "American Dream" used to only be available to WASPs in America, and before women won the vote, only to WASP men.
quote: You have yet to make your case that the people who don't believe as you do are "mindless neutral PC robots." That is a dismissive insult.
quote: I agree, except this is not what you indicated in your previous post. you were wanting to know what was wrong with traditional American culture, and I gave you a few examples.
quote: So, are you saying that discrimination doesn't or hasn't ever existed for women, minorities and other traditionally marginalized groups in America? To simply say we are all a bunch of complainers is to spit in the face of the past and present struggles for fair treatment that these groups have fought and died for. Also, it is an easy way for you to simply dismiss the complaints without having to find out if any of them might be legitimate. It is a form of insulating yourself from possibly having to change your views. Did it ever occur to you that the complaints are legitimate? If you don't think they are, why not? What is your evidence? A: To criticize America is to perform a profoundly patriotic act, on the contrary. To be free from the tyrrany of the majority, and to feel free to stand up and say so without fear of reprisal, is the whole POINT of America!
quote: A: What, do you think that America should become a dictatorship or a Communist state in which only those who agree with the majority, or who are too afraid to oppose them, should live here?
quote: But that's not at all what you said! You said that if people here don't like how things are, then they should leave. Now you are changing your tune, and that is good, but don't expect me to forget what you originally said. quote:What a crazy un-American thinker you are, Satcomm! quote: Which liberals, exactly, are you talking about? Which laws are you talking about? [This message has been edited by schrafinator, 02-17-2003]
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
nator Member (Idle past 2199 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
Some statistics. Are they worthy?
Finkelhor, David & Browne, Angela. "The Traumatic Impact of Child Sexual Abuse," American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 2/3 of prostitutes were sexually abused from the ages of 3-16. (The average age of victimization was 10). More than 90% of prostitutes lost their virginity through sexual assault. 70% of prostitutes believed that being sexually abused as children influenced their decisions to become prostitutes. Children who are sexually abused are 27.7 times more likely than non-victims to be arrested for prostitution as adults. Men and women who were raped or forced into sexual activity as children or adolescents were four times more likely to work in prostitution compared with non-victims. 57% of prostitutes reported having been sexually assaulted as children; 49% reported having been physically assaulted as children.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
nator Member (Idle past 2199 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
I have got to say, holmes, that you make a lot of claims in your post but do not back them up at all.
You say that most people going to prostitutes wnat a real person with feelings. Upon what do you base this? Your blow up doll analogy is not effective, because I would imagine that blow up dolls cannot really simulate a real vagina very well, nor can blow up dolls actively do anything. I actually don't buy your claim that sexual release with a partner is necessary. Sexual release feels good and has a lot of benefits, but it doesn't have to be with a partner other than your own hand to gain the benefits. If a 14 year old girl became a prostitute (as this is the average age of entry into prostitution) and stayed there until age 18, would the tricks she turned now that she is 18 be victimless?
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
nator Member (Idle past 2199 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: This brings me back to my original contention, then; you have this idealized idea of Disney-hookers loving their jobs, and even if it were true that most of them had been molested, that prostitution was still a wonderful thing. Do you deny that male desire for dominance and for feeling powerful is, or never has been, at the root of the sex trade, along with the historical exclusion of women from good-paying jobs? [This message has been edited by schrafinator, 02-17-2003] [This message has been edited by schrafinator, 02-17-2003]
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
nator Member (Idle past 2199 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
deleted post.
[This message has been edited by schrafinator, 02-18-2003]
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
nator Member (Idle past 2199 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: No, it was YOUR original contention that prostitution was a victimless crime, period. I asked you about the (not small number of) people who get into it because they have been sexually abused as children. You then proceeded to lecture me about all the wonderful things that prostitution does for people. I notice that most of your examples are the benefits to customers, not to the prostitutes. You also handed me a great many claims and assertions which you choose to put out there with no back up whatsoever. I don't know if your views are accurate or not. Oh, and I'd like to address your massage therapist analogy. You claimed that prostitution and massage therapists are practically the same thing, but I think there are some fundamental differences. The client of a massage therapist is completely passive. They do not do anything to the therapist. The therapist remains fully clothed. There is no vulnerability attached to being a massage therapist; in fact, it's the other way around.
quote: Why do you say that? Based upon what, exactly?
quote: quote: Do you deny my statistic that the average age of entry into prostitution for females is 13 or 14?
quote: This may be true, but so far all you have provided to me to counter my ideas are assertions and opinion rather than evidence.
quote: I don't think we should keep things the way they are, either, but I don't think selling one's body or buying another's body should be legal. I think we shuld be, as human beings, moving away from the comoditization of human beings.
quote: Actually, this might be a good intermediate step, but the fact reamains that the existence of prostitution simplly enforced the idea that men can and should have access to any kind of body to do almost whatever they want with with no responsibility other than payment. This, to me, is dehuminization of a very high degree. A: Do you deny that male desire for dominance and for feeling powerful is, or never has been, at the root of the sex trade, along with the historical exclusion of women from good-paying jobs?
quote: I think that it is becoming less and less a dominance issue as women and men figure out how to have egalitarian relationships. However, there are plenty of men and women today who use sex (or the witholding of) to punish, to reward, to coerce, etc. Rape is an extreme example of specifically sexual power and dominance. A man could beat a woman up if he wanted to be dominant, but to rape her is a powerful sexual domination that is also meant to humiliate. Sex is powerful. I don't think it is primarily a dominance issue between equal partners, but it is there. I think it has to be more of a dominance issue in the sex trade because customers (mostly male) can buy anything they want. That is power, plain and simple.
quote: What percentage of "Johns" are women or couples?
quote: First you would have to establish that the tendency of homo sapien males to want to sexually dominate females doesn't exist.
quote: I think that this behavior by women is wrong (albeit somewhat evolutionarily driven), too.
quote: Right now, it's the only occupation that has paid women better than it has paid men.
quote: They made it illegal, but they don't really enforce the laws.
quote:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
nator Member (Idle past 2199 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: I am curious about your claim that Bonobos use sex in a similar way as prostitution. I was not aware that chimps have anything like an economic system in their societies. Do you have an article or paper to reference?
quote: Pure bald assertion. You have no way of knowing if people who do not approve of prostitution are therefore more likely to manipulate their partner with sex.
quote: I agree that it is trade; it is manipulative and cowardly. [This message has been edited by schrafinator, 02-20-2003]
|
|
|
Do Nothing Button
Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved
Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024