Brothels - should they be legalised everywhere?

The legal upshot of it, unfortunately, was that rather than things getting better for women, the repeal of the legislation was used as a weapon to disband brothels and boarding houses - which were usually female run, and a lot less evil - and force prostitutes into street walking. It then went on to talk about how the Jack The Ripper hysteria was a product of this cultural shift...

Obv, in a perfect world, I'm against prostitution, because I do feel it's exploitative. But MOST professions are exploitative in one way or another. If people are going to be exploited, then they should be allowed to do so in a way which provides the most protection.

Even watching docu's about legal brothels, one is struck time and again by the *thickness* of the sex workers. It's sad that they end up sex workers, but I don't know what kind of other choice they would have.

However, if it's going to happen, they should be protected, and that points towards legalisation of brothels.

My brother told a story about a bunch of his colleagues wanting to go to a brothel in Nevada, but on the way there, my brother passed a place that offered helicopter rides through the Grand Canyon. It was about the same price. And he figured, hey, what was cooler, and any man could go to a prostitute, but how many men could say they flew through the Grand Canyon in a helicopter?

He was shocked and horrified and aghast that I'd even suggested. But he always was more of a prude than me, which is why he's an Ex.

(However, it's strange, because I would never ask the same thing of HSA, even the thought would really drive me nuts.)

(Perhaps this is because my emotions for HSA are more "real" or perhaps because I've now had the closest power-dynamics I could have had to going to a prostitute, in the form of the Whoreton debacle.)

kate's disparagement of ppl who view 'sex as a commodity' is one of the big things here - why shouldn't it sometimes be just that ?

we institutionalise lots of behaviour that also has more personal dimensions in other circumstances - eg caring for someone ill/incapable, paying to visit counsellors/therapists to discuss very personal emotional issues - are the ppl who provide those services being mistreated as 'commodities' ? Why should sexual behaviour be kept so sacred and unsullied ?
It's not even as if it actually is anyway - we are surrounded by appeals to our sexdrives as part of eg the pop business

If he was honest, and said something like "well, I was really lonely but I didn't have the time for a relationship, so I thought it was safer and more honest than having a series of one night stands or leading someone on into thinking that I wanted a serious relationship with them" then I would have more respect than someone who just said "Women ain't nothing but bitches and ho's anyway, marriage is just legalised prostitution, so are we gonna get it on or what?" or even worse "Hunh hunh well all the guys in the office were doing it, so I thought what the fuck, like I don't wanna look like a pussy or a queer in front of my mates".

I mean, sure, people pay to go to psychologists and therapists when they're having problems, when previous generations might have gone to a priest or a parent or a friend. But if a person had NO FRIENDS and ONLY EVER TALKED ABOUT THEIR EMOTIONS TO THERAPISTS, well, fuck, I wouldn't date them, either.

Sex as entertainment vs. exploitation. here we see a different aspect of the same divide right here on the relatively openminded ILX board. Also, men and women see sex differently, a different bio-evolutionary imperative. At least say some experts and I tend to believe it.

And repeating, I don't think there really are any freelance prostitutes, or not many. Almost all streetwalkers have pimps.

why wouldn't they choose to go legit? Do you really think prostitution would EVER be "just another career choice" legal or not? I can't imagine it.

And Blount, do you REALLY tell each sex partner your full history? I mean, even about that weekend in Panama City with the two cheerleaders, the truck driver, and the St. Bernard? I doubt if you do, at any rate YOU PROMISED YOU WOULDN'T TELL ANYONE!!!!

public health issues ?
control of social frameworks for possible pregnancies ?
sociobiological control of women's bodies/sexuality ?
daily mail family values/collapse of civilisation stuff ?
deep wired-in fears/conflicts of sanctioning a decoupling between sex,psyche,etc. by making it a 'commodity'?

most of this stuff looks like pre-tech patriarchal monkey-business strained through romanticism

in the characterisation of most possible punters as sad, bad, or arduous to know, there is still throughout this thread an underlying tendency that sex can't/shouldn't be regarded as 'just business', that to do so is to fail to understand human emotions/relationships properly, to undercut values by setting prices - that it is like equating sex with love

yeah, right, AS IF

kate i don't think it's an either/or scenario:
and if a person really only ever wanted to talk to therapists/counsellors about their inner lives because they found that experience more productive/enjoyable/useful, because they found paid professionals to be BETTER at certain aspects of the transaction that they were interested in (intellectualisation, articulation) - i'm not sure why, in the absence of this person committing any social ill or crime by their preferences, they should be worthy of contempt: yeah i'm not sure i'd want to know them either, and i might feel sorry for them because there are other possible dimensions missing from their interactions, but should we make it a legal/moral issue ?
(or is this what morality boils down to - insistence on a common set of fundamental needs/preferences/values in our psyches ?)

i think it would be pretty bizarre if they were denied access to confidants by law on the basis of 'endangering social cohesion' or 'failing to make proper personal connections' (i know in practice it is the desire/inability to cope with some aspect of the latter that often drives ppl to counselling, but if they want to keep paying instead, they're not going to be arrested for it)

shouldn't society provide for the awkward, the difficult, the lonely, the maladjusted, the anti-personal - not stigmatise them as a bunch of saddo losers ?

You talk like *everyone* has some kind of natural right to sex. They don't. That is the fundamental principle of Evolution. NOT everyone has a right to sex, sex is something that you have to earn. (Though not necessarily a monetary earn.)

kate is right that jack the ripper follows AFTER some measures of "cleaning up", when/where the interface between civil orderliness and slum energy is at its most raw (hence persistant myth that he's a doctor or a toff, i guess)

i just meant it wz a widespread rumour in the 1880s (cf commentary at the time, when the police kept saying "no no it is an escaped madman") and continues to be one today (cf endless LaYMoR retreads of the royal connection)

despite highly unpromising title, this book has lots of interesting background stuff relating to thread topic (eg leading anti child-prostitution journalist ended up in jail for SELLING a child, in order to prove that the practice was widespread and easy, and that clients were not hard to find) (also lots of good stuff on the politics of policing london in the 1870s and 1880s)

I am not necessarily doing so (though yes, I see your winky face) - just that the whole Darwinism aspect was something that I hadn't even thought about yet in my thinking about Brothels, and I need to take it into account. I need to think about it, and I can't do that while my trainee keeps popping into my office to find me typing away at a page entitled "Brothels!"

I know that there are as many reasons for having sex as there are for people that have sex - it's not JUST for procreation, but neither is it JUST for fun, and neither is it JUST to establish intimacy between two people. It's individual.

However, there are attitudes towards sex that - if people have them - make me not want to have sex with them. Ha ha.

Yes, Kate, there are as many reasons to have sex as there are people who choose to/are lucky enough to have sex. But there aren't that many reasons that have been sanctioned as acceptable by society. That's what you're getting at, I think. Maybe. And the idea of sex for fun is not something that most people support (most people being some kind of hypothetical cross section of society, I guess.).

ppl are maybe reacting against the practice of disengaging the Desire from the Behaviour: doing it for the material gain, just doing one's job, instead of because you want to shag THEM IN PARTICULAR on the basis of the person they are - even if that only goes as far as what they look like - is seen as somehow all wrong

(perhaps because most of us can't imagine being able to do that?)

FWIW, the strippers are beginning to unionize

Someone who is profoundly disabled, and/or as a result may find it very difficult to form regular relationships, this one brothel encouraged their patronage. A sort of "they deserve sex as much as the rest of us, theyre human too!" idea.

I thought it was really quite cool. I'm all for unionised, properly run brothels - esp if run by women - to prevent exploitation, organised crime etc. Or help prevent at the least.

similarly doesn't the extra-legality of a profession cut against ability to organize, etc.?

also the current shady system is about as coercively top-down as it gets in the worst poss. way.

also mark all this stuff about the third world seems somewhat true (i.e. conditions *are* much worse there, but also for say illegal immigrants BROUGHT from there to europe etc. to work in the same trade) but aren't you also presupposing some sort of constant quality of shady evilness which if disappated in one area just moves to another, like some sort of wack-a-mole? doesn't broad living standard, quality of life, degree of development of economy affect social attitudes towards sex &c as well?

Actually despite legal brothels here there is still a parallel illegal industry. There was a horrible case here recently in which it was found that a well paid tax inspector and his wife were bringing in young women from SE Asia illegally and basically holding them in bondage. It's horrible to think that men would frequent such places knowing the violence and exploitation that enables them to function.

The Lusty Lady has actually been unionized for several years, but more importantly it is employee-owned and co-operated, making it the first strip club of it's kind. There's a documentary about it called: "Live Nude Girls Unite!" that's pretty good (and funny!).

It's right across the street from the old Cocodrie Club and my favorite Italian restaurant in SF.

I had a girlfriend for some months who used a wheelchair. There are a few extra difficulties, but it is perfectly possible, though I guess if a man is paralysed below the waist there are some limitations, for example.

Owner seeks $7M for Chicken Ranch brothel
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=BRF%20Chicken%20Ranch%20Sale

I don't see how prostitution benefits society in the long run. Perhaps if you have real social handicaps, but prostitutes attract drugs and violence. I mean, I'm as libertarian as anyone, but practically speaking, a world without prostitution is more realistic than a world without, say, war.