Prostitution-what to do

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Did you remember the part where you said 'Having sex for money is Jon's dream job.'?

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Jar said it was, "every boy's dream job", and estimated that 99 44/100ths% of males would love to do it for a living.I guess you fall in the 56/100th of a percent category.Come on, Jon, stop playing games. You know damn well that Jar absolutely intended to say that practically all boys would think having sex for money was their dream job.Don't blame me if you disagree with Jar. He's the one who's putting you in that category, not me.I notice that you have ignored the rest of my questions, though, so I'll repost them (again).How many men would want to be prostitutes if it weren't for fear of the law?Would you consider it? Any of your male friends?If your father had to flee your mother because she threatened to kill him, would he sell his body for money just to keep himself and his kids alive since they were now on the streets?Edited by nator, : No reason given.

I guess we'll get to that later. According to my selfish way, yes. Not advocating it is not the same as supporting it. My main point has been that we should keep a look out for cases of force prostitution and victimization. What I am against is people passing judgement down on those that have chosen to be prostitutes. I know what you're trying to say, and I agree. But a little bit on the nitpicking side, I don't really consciously choose my friends like that. I have just as many selfish friends as I have selfless ones. I was only bringing your way of thinking one step further. You consider what I said to be extremes. I consider what you said to be extremes.Just because I don't speak against prostitution, or have a strong opinion about it, doesn't mean I support it. What I'm trying to tell you in too many words is sometimes we, as men, should leave a matter like this to people who understand it on a more personal level, people like women. Now, you're just being silly. Kids are a protected class of citizens. We as a society have decided that they shouldn't have as much rights as the rest of us and in the same way should be protected from the rest of us. Prostitutes are adults.Now, don't get me wrong. I have no doubt that many of them are mentally unstable and vulnerable to exploitation. That's why again I said I am against force prostitution and the like. But in the rest of the cases, who are we, as white men, to pass judgement on those who have chosen to be prostitutes? First of all, I'm not part of the women's rights movement of the 70's, 80's, and 90's. Second of all, I never said it was good for them.Look, what's "good" or not for somebody, while may seem as common sense that anybody ought to have, is still an opinion.Take a look at the issue of gay marriage, for example. You are against gay marriage largely because you don't believe that people will find happiness in gay relationship. I don't agree with your opinion there.On the other hand, I'm against christianity because I don't believe that religion, or any path of spirituality, will ever lead to true happiness or true good. Obviously, you don't agree with me there.The real difference here between you and me is that you feel that society ought to legislate your opinion while I don't ask that my opinion be made into the law.I'm sorry for side tracking a little, but I hope you see my point. We both agree that prostitution, force or not, is detrimental to physical and psychological well-being of a person as well as human dignity. What I am trying to get you to understand is that it is still only an opinion and the issue should be left to those that are closer to the issue. How about neither? I identify myself as a feminist because I believe that complete equality should be what we strive for and that in today's society a person's gender is still a very significant determining factor in what the person can achieve simply because of age old prejudices against the feminine half of our society.

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We are BOG. Resistance is voltage over current.

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Disclaimer:

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Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style.

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He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!

Flippant, lacking in seriousness, levity, casual. I agree, some of his posts are quite flippant. They were jokes, jokes about a subject that you find not a joking matter. Get over it, some topics about women or sex need some levity.I don't think I've seen anyone here disagree that there are many, many prostitutes that come from abusive situations and have no choice, that are being victimized and endangered. All any of your opponants seem to be saying is "Let's change the laws. The current illegality of the business is a large part of what is making it so dangerous."Has anyone here said that all prostitutes could decide who they service, what services they offer, or what to charge?No.Have people been discussing economic issues that could help some if there were legal recourse available?Yes.Yes there are many victimized women in the sex industry. Those who had no choice. But there are victimized men also.There are victimized, downtrodden people who make less than minimum wage for less than full time hours with no benefits who had no choice but to take the late night convenience store job in the bad part of town.Those same people who had no choice but to be victims of Walmart's lack of decency in their history of human relations. There are men and women who do things they don't like, humiliating things, dangerous things, degrading things that they have no choice but to do if they want to survive or keep a family alive.Instead of picking ridiculous arguments with those who basically agree with all that, why not calmly discuss legalizing a currently illegal job. This would fix "some" of the problems with it then we can discuss making life better for all the victimized, mistreated, and poor in our part of the world. Then we can move on to other parts of the world.Alison, I know that you are a smart woman, and I respect that highly.I understand that you had a terrible early life and I feel a great sympathy towards you and no small amount of understanding for some of what you have discribed over the years.I realize that you overcame these issues with a lot of blood, sweat, and tears and are a very strong woman now. You could be a role model for many. But you pick the damnedest battles to dig your heels in about.

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I identify myself as a feminist because I believe that complete equality should be what we strive for and that in today's society a person's gender is still a very significant determining factor in what the person can achieve simply because of age old prejudices against the feminine half of our society.

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And the male half.Societally-reinforced gender roles also limit men, even to the point of shortening their lives through depriving them of the ability to understand and deal with their human emotions.

I am calm, Asagara.I have always been calm and reasonable in this debate, as you will notice in my exchanges with Crashfrog.Jar apparently gets off on being a jerk to me, and I need to get better at disregarding him.I appreciate your support and respect, I truly do, if it is sincere.But I'm catching a whiff of an orchestrated intervention and I am finding it a teensy bit patronizing.I hope it is just a little paranoia, but I can't imagine what else but a side conversation with others (hmm, maybe jar?) would prompt you to write such a post to me out of the blue.

yes. it's generally a function of the individual in question's opinion of reproductive choice.

Calm? Yes. Reasonable? Not always from my perspective. I do not see where jar started off being a jerk to you.He made a joke.He made a second joke, and you have kept the issue going. You know he attempts to ignore you, he has said it before.You two rub each other the wrong way. It was the same with you and Holmes. I sometimes thought that you two would argue over what shade of blue the sky looked because neither one would back down.I'm sorry if you see my support and respect as something other than sincere. If you distrust my motives or think its patronizing then I'm sorry for that also.I'm going to let the not so veiled accusation slip by because frankly, whether or not I've talked to anyone concerning this issue has no bearing on what I feel about the issue, the debate, jar, you, or what I wrote. If you are catching a whiff of something a little off, or patronizing it may just be coming from something closer to home.I am an admin. I have been an admin for a long time. Whether or not I have slowed in my performance of late, I still attempt to read most if not all of the threads, and have been following this one from the beginning. My post was not out of the blue. It came from someone who read everything that has been said and came to a far different conclusion than you did about others' motives and meanings.

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I'm going to let the not so veiled accusation slip by because frankly, whether or not I've talked to anyone concerning this issue has no bearing on what I feel about the issue, the debate, jar, you, or what I wrote. If you are catching a whiff of something a little off, or patronizing it may just be coming from something closer to home.

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No, I don't think it is, but that's OK. There's no law that says that you can't discuss another member amongst yourselves (whomever they may be) and then one of you try to talk to them to try to fix or help what you perceive as a problem.I don't come here to be a role model for anybody. I don't come here to find best friends. I don't come here to do anything other than debate with people and to learn things. I do those things because I enjoy them.If my actions here disappoint you or others, that's regrettable, but I'm not going to lose any sleep over it....just as I am sure none of you will lose sleep if you discover that you have disappointed me.The internet is strange, isn't it? Years we've all been here, and I do feel a fondness and respect for and a familiarity with many people here, but we are really strangers.

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Whether or not I have slowed in my performance of late, I still attempt to read most if not all of the threads, and have been following this one from the beginning. My post was not out of the blue. It came from someone who read everything that has been said and came to a far different conclusion than you did about others' motives and meanings.

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What I thought was "out of the blue" was not that you posted your opinion. It was all the "I think you are a strong woman" stuff. I don't get why that was relevant, and it was that stuff that smelled funny to me. See, I am historically terrible at picking up manipulative undercurrents and guessing what is going on in the political wings and the like. I am by nature a trusting person and have been blindsided in the past, and it is entirely possible that I am barking up the wrong tree in this case. All those compliments seemed to be appeals to my ego to make the criticism go down easier.But hey, that's the internet for you, right? You and I can read the same thing and get really different takes on what's been said.

You're right, of course. It's not my fault I can't cry over little things, damn it. I can't help it. In fact, the last time I cried was about 3 years ago, and that was because I listened to Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto. If you don't cry while listening to that piece, you're not really a person and should be put into a zoo.

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We are BOG. Resistance is voltage over current.

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Disclaimer:

​

Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style.

​

He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!

Do I hold Judeo-Christian ideals in contempt? Which means nothing. Strawman. Your own little kid and a grown human being you don't know are far from the same. Of course I am. You're judging me too. But I don't mind . Being judged is a part of being human. Tell me:a) why is it bad?
b) what the hell does it have to do with the topic?
c) what does it mean to judge?Jon

This topic is street walking right down a dead end alley.The topic is Prostitution.

I have known three young people that were self proclaimed prostitutes.
One of them was a girl who was sexually abused by her step-dad. She had no boundaries left, and was ultimately involved in the murder of a wealthy client.One of them was a boy who later said he was really a girl. He too had been sexually abused in his youth.The third one was a boy who noticed my interest in him and could not understand why I didn't want to have sex with him. He was homeless and so I bought him a Motel room for a night. I have never seen him since, although I have heard that he frequents trance clubs.I think that all prostitutes have been hurt and are not in it only as a job.I believe that our duty as a society is not to support them by buying them for sex but, rather, helping them come to terms with the abuse of their past.

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Convictions are very different from intentions. Convictions are something God gives us that we have to do. Intentions are things that we ought to do, but we never follow through with them.
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“The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.”
--General Omar Bradley

There's no accounting for taste, I guess, but I wouldn't find it very likely. It's clear that, within a culture, individual judgments about attractiveness are not infinitely mutable.

I think we've been pretty much on topic. G-yam asked: Since we all agree that the solution is not (a) for everyone of us to go out and order a hooker, we are left with (b) 'a better way'. Hell, the whole question was just G-yam's failed attempt at a false dichotomy.We've all voiced our ideas of 'a better way,' and have been since debating whose 'better way' is actually better.One bump that's been hit is whether prostitutes are just like any other working person, or whether they are fundamentally different. Schraf has not come to realize that the former is true, and the last few posts have been directed at her inability to accept a so plainly obvious fact. Once we all come to an agreement on this, we can decide which regulations should be put in place”even if some would consider completely outlawing the business. Until we come to this agreement, we cannot really move on, which is why I see this as being completely on topic.It's not so much of a dead-end alley as it is a four-way stop, and no one can agree on who has the right-of-way. Please, don't make us all get out and ride our bikes into town; we're close to getting there. Jon

You came to this conclusion after analysing three confused kids? No one said the fix is for society to become Johns. Only G-yam offered this up as a false dichotomy because he's a Creationist fundie simply following Creationist fundie protocol. We should do this for everyone in every occupation. One could argue that every event of a person's past plays its own key role in determining their present lot. Some people were abused and it brought them to the life of a burger-flipper. It would be a great thing to help them deal with their past problems, but should we also take away their jobs or stop frequenting those establishments?Let me ask you this: If we fix all their problems and they still turn to prostitution as a form of income, then what can we conclude?Jon