Brothels - should they be legalised everywhere?

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and why did he refuse?

― teeny (teeny), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 15:37 (twenty-two years ago)

the thing is brothels are practically legal in the us, just look in the back of the sports pages

― cinniblount (James Blount), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 15:38 (twenty-two years ago)

But practically legal and legal aren't the same thing, no legal protections for one.

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 15:39 (twenty-two years ago)

ed is otm.

― Pinkpanther (Pinkpanther), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 15:40 (twenty-two years ago)

I was curious. I was genuinely curious, I wanted to see what it was like, and since I couldn't (Well, technically, I suppose I could have, but it wouldn't have been the same, since I'm a woman and the power dynamic wouldn't have been the same.) I thought he could do it and tell me what it was like.

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.)

― Citizen Kate (kate), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 15:41 (twenty-two years ago)

I could never condone a boy of mine going to a prostitute.

― Pinkpanther (Pinkpanther), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 15:42 (twenty-two years ago)

are whorehouses practically legal in the uk?

― cinniblount (James Blount), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 15:43 (twenty-two years ago)

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 15:43 (twenty-two years ago)

Exactly - I feel that way now. But at the time, I guess it bothered me less, or maybe my curiosity was stronger.

― Citizen Kate (kate), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 15:43 (twenty-two years ago)

X-post, I was replying to Pink with that "Exactly" there!

― Citizen Kate (kate), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 15:44 (twenty-two years ago)

but 'saunas' and 'massage parlours' are

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 15:44 (twenty-two years ago)

well, yeah that's what I meant

― cinniblount (James Blount), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 15:45 (twenty-two years ago)

Would anyone go to one of these places if it was legalised? Or would you go/have you gone even though it isn't legal?

― Pinkpanther (Pinkpanther), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 15:51 (twenty-two years ago)

Prostitution should absolutely be legal.

― don weiner, Wednesday, 12 November 2003 15:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Prostitution *is* legal in the UK. Soliciting and living off immoral earnings aren't.

― Ricardo (RickyT), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 15:55 (twenty-two years ago)

So you can be a prostitute so long as it isn't your principle source of income?

― Citizen Kate (kate), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 15:56 (twenty-two years ago)

But why should it be legal Don?

― Pinkpanther (Pinkpanther), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 15:57 (twenty-two years ago)

Living off immoral earnings basically equals being a pimp/madam. It should strictly speaking be called living off someone else's immoral earnings, I suppose.

― Ricardo (RickyT), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 15:59 (twenty-two years ago)

what about if you live off your own immoral earnings?

― Pinkpanther (Pinkpanther), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 16:02 (twenty-two years ago)

if they'd just stop dragging their feet on synthetic AI whores then this would be less of an issue

― stevem (blueski), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 16:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Weren't you paying attention? THe problem with the robot whores was when all their periods synched up they invaded small countries.

― Citizen Kate (kate), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 16:04 (twenty-two years ago)

And the fleshlight bit off my penis.

― Broken Record (brokenrecord), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 16:05 (twenty-two years ago)

kate-- last year one of the major unions welcomed 'sexworkers' in general to the union. TUC, maybe? i don't know if anything has come of it, but they were pretty excited to be accepted at the time.

― colette (a2lette), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 16:06 (twenty-two years ago)

Hey! Serious thread, for once!
x-post

― Pinkpanther (Pinkpanther), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 16:06 (twenty-two years ago)

Even serious threads can do with a few robots. ;-)

― Citizen Kate (kate), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 16:08 (twenty-two years ago)

well ok then, but no more! ;-)

― Pinkpanther (Pinkpanther), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 16:09 (twenty-two years ago)

::contrite::

― Citizen Kate (kate), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 16:10 (twenty-two years ago)

:-)

― Pinkpanther (Pinkpanther), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 16:16 (twenty-two years ago)

It was the GMB (General Manufacturing and Boilermakers) I believe.

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 16:36 (twenty-two years ago)

who the hell would program a robot whore to menstruate? i don't care if some guys claim to be turned out by that, it's too niche to be considered for generic specifications for common models

― stevem (blueski), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 17:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Ask RickyT, it was him wot did it!

― Citizen Kate (kate), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 17:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Hey, I never said anything about my self-replicating lego robots of doom being ho's.

I mean, just cos they dance the go-go...

― Ricardo (RickyT), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 17:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Apologies for apostrophe redundancy, my hands aren't following my brains instructions too closely today.

― Ricardo (RickyT), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 17:13 (twenty-two years ago)

who the hell would program a robot whore to menstruate? i don't care if some guys claim to be turned out by that, it's too niche to be considered for generic specifications for common models

have you been to germany?

― teeny (teeny), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 17:25 (twenty-two years ago)

Prostitution (and brothels) should be legal because the government has no legitimate interest in controlling the actions of consensual adults, assuming that the behavior is not fraudulent or otherwise criminal. There is no reasonable difference between paying for a fuck or paying for a massage; penetration is hardly relevant as long as it is on a consensual basis. Same with nudity. And assuming that these activities take place in private, community standards are an oblique legal ruse designed to patrol state-sanctioned morality.

― don weiner, Wednesday, 12 November 2003 17:35 (twenty-two years ago)

Pinkpanther,

I think you were misled on the program you watched. I was under the impression that prosititution and brothels have been legal in certain counties in Nevada for a quite a long time (ie, decades). Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

― gygax! (gygax!), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 17:39 (twenty-two years ago)

the argument here for legalized brothels seems to be the same one used for legalized drugs, ie people will still do it anyway so there might as well be some regulations over it in order to make it a safer activity---for those involved and for society as a whole.

― oops (Oops), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 17:42 (twenty-two years ago)

i just thinks it's s shite expolitative way to make a living and i saw these programmes - the 21-year-old who looked much younger seemed borderline retarded, one of the women had had a fucking horrendous life and was an alcoholic, i swear the guy who ran the place would have punched one of them if the cameras weren't there. it's not a choice anyone should have to make, really, regardless of whether they say the like it. i don't believe them.

I admit what I'm about to say is a bit of a stretch and uber-pedantic, but i can think of many office jobs in the U.S. that are analagous to this, yet never receive the same criticism or scrutiny. The only difference being the mental toll as opposed to the physical toll.

(disclaimer: i may severely regret this post later as those more wise than me will point out more obvious differences, but I'm starting to get more defensive of people who choose an "exploitive" career, when so many "accepted" career choices in america are just as "exploitive" but in different ways)

― donut bitch (donut), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 17:54 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm in favour of legalisation - I can't see too much drawback, but we lose one more case of the government making sex into a bad thing, we gain a better chance of offering protection and health care and health checks, of removing an awful lot of the worst dangers and risks of walking the streets and violent criminal pimps. Yes, we won't eliminate streetwalkers and underage prostitutes, but if you could legally and safely pay to fuck someone, how many will take the risk of going illegal? I think it will reduce those bad sides a good deal, and allow policing to focus much more on the really bad stuff.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 20:44 (twenty-two years ago)

gygax!, I think you are correct.

― tokyo rosemary (rosemary), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 21:06 (twenty-two years ago)

Even in places where prostitution is legal in BROTHELS it is usually illegal on a freelance, i.e. streetwalker basis. Amsterdam, Hamburg, Berlin, come to mind. I don't think that legalization, regulation, and, oh, please, unionization, will in the least affect the number of streetwalkers plying their trade.

Prostitution shouldn't be legal, it should be mandatory! Oh, wait, that sounds kind of.......

― Skottie, Wednesday, 12 November 2003 21:10 (twenty-two years ago)

I can imagine that these supposed legal brothels would need really good legal representation. And it would seem that, as a matter of safety, each prostitute should have a room monitor or some other way to ensure that a client could easily be kicked out and/or sent to jail if they stepped over the line.

Hmm... What about S&M? What if one woman in her contract says it is ok to, I dunno, bite her for example. And some client bites her neck too hard and she bleeds to death... Hmm...

― Sarah McLusky (coco), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 21:37 (twenty-two years ago)

Prostitution has been legal in NV for a while. Salon article...

Last roundup at the Mustang Ranch
Bordellos R Us: In the Nevada desert, a new management style is coming to the world's oldest profession.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Douglas Cruickshank

August 12, 1999 | "It's sure been a wild ride," said a former working girl on Monday as the feds shut down America's most famous legal brothel after its owners were convicted of fraud. "It's the end of the road for the Mustang Ranch," she sighed.

The Mustang, a 104-room bordello on a 440-acre spread near Reno, Nev., was established by Joe Conforte, a onetime cabdriver, in 1955. Sixteen years later, he won a court case that paved the way for the legalization of prostitution in Nevada -- where whether to sanction or forbid the establishments is left up to county government. Twelve of the state's 17 counties now permit the operation of bordellos. Indeed, not since New Orleans' legendary Storyville has prostitution in the United States had such a large, legal land base, and Storyville was a mere neighborhood on the edge of the French Quarter, not a vast slab of sagebrush-dotted desert.
http://www.salon.com/people/rogue/1999/08/12/mustang/

― Skottie, Wednesday, 12 November 2003 21:47 (twenty-two years ago)

Hmm... "$300 a pop and up..." I wonder what a "pop" would be?

Let's all have a bake sale to save Mustang Ranch.

― Sarah McLusky (coco), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 21:49 (twenty-two years ago)

you know damn well what a 'pop' is

― cinniblount (James Blount), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 21:50 (twenty-two years ago)

Oral?

― Sarah McLusky (coco), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 21:51 (twenty-two years ago)

Art Bell's compound is located next door to the Chicken Ranch outside Las Vega$.

― gygax! (gygax!), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 21:51 (twenty-two years ago)

that man is a saint

― cinniblount (James Blount), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 21:52 (twenty-two years ago)

Sorry dude, Art Carney already has dibs on "Saint Art."

― NA (Nick A.), Wednesday, 12 November 2003 21:53 (twenty-two years ago)

but what if ALL chicks decided to work in one

― dave q, Wednesday, 12 November 2003 21:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Skipping 78 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

Def. a lot of people would admit it, but it you posed it a different way, say, "Do you think there should be a place for men to go when they just wanted a little fun-sex?" I don't think you'd get a big "Yes" response, especially not from women as a group and not from parents as a group. But sure, many people would go for it. And even people who like the idea of having the option for themselves might not want to grant it to others. I don't know, of course. I'm hardly adamant about this! :-)

― Skottie, Thursday, 13 November 2003 16:39 (twenty-two years ago)

but i think there's also something specifically going on to do with 'sex for fun' only being sanctioned on the basis of one-night-stand type 'mutual desire' - as if only on the basis of that can the deal be 'equitable'

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?)

― Snowy Mann (rdmanston), Thursday, 13 November 2003 17:01 (twenty-two years ago)

so one person's 'sex for fun' is another's 'here we go again' - just like in alot of 'fun' industries

― Snowy Mann (rdmanston), Thursday, 13 November 2003 17:03 (twenty-two years ago)

mickey mouse's fun-slave misery => disneyland made illegal

― Snowy Mann (rdmanston), Thursday, 13 November 2003 17:07 (twenty-two years ago)

Of course, sex with Mickey Mouse is a whole 'nother kettle of ...mice.

― Skottie, Thursday, 13 November 2003 21:48 (twenty-two years ago)

(very belated reply to Pink: right about honesty in serious relationships and about health risks)

― M Matos (M Matos), Thursday, 13 November 2003 21:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Would perhaps unions for prostitutes be better, whether they are in brothels or on the streets? I am actually being serious here.

FWIW, the strippers are beginning to unionize

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Friday, 14 November 2003 02:19 (twenty-two years ago)

I read an interesting article (or was it on TV?) once about the better end of the brothel market here in Melbourne (legal I think?) and how among other things, they provide a valuable service I'd never thought of myself - sex for the disabled.

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.

― Trayce (trayce), Friday, 14 November 2003 02:44 (twenty-two years ago)

that should say and/or somehow disfigured, I missed a word.

― Trayce (trayce), Friday, 14 November 2003 02:45 (twenty-two years ago)

And I by no means mean to imply the disabled cant get sex, before anyone jumps on me.

― Trayce (trayce), Friday, 14 November 2003 02:45 (twenty-two years ago)

haha nice choice of words

― oops (Oops), Friday, 14 November 2003 02:48 (twenty-two years ago)

DOH :(

― Trayce (trayce), Friday, 14 November 2003 04:25 (twenty-two years ago)

*cries*

― Trayce (trayce), Friday, 14 November 2003 04:25 (twenty-two years ago)

okay try a contrast to say, immigrant labor. isn't citizenship right a precondition for organized labor, mainly? (tho ppl wanting citizenship and organizing for it is a step towards it too, obv.)

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?

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Friday, 14 November 2003 09:15 (twenty-two years ago)

Trayce, I also saw an article in which some disabled men in Melbourne who were complaining because some of the prostitutes in a brothel they went to refused to have sex with them. They felt it was discriminition. They didn't seem to understand that just because someone is a prosititute it doesn't mean they lose their right to decide who they have sex with!

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.

― Amarga (Amarga), Friday, 14 November 2003 10:07 (twenty-two years ago)

it's also horrible to think that men AND women take certain drugs knowing the violence and exploitation that enables them to function

― stevem (blueski), Friday, 14 November 2003 12:46 (twenty-two years ago)

Wasn't it in one of those vietnam movies, coming home or the deerhunter, that one of the characters was in a wheelchair and hired hookers to visit him at home? There was an incredibly intense sex scene with the guy in the wheelchair. Not exploitative but very real, by hollywood standards. how does a wheelchair confined person have sex? Actually a moving scene.

― Skottie, Friday, 14 November 2003 20:47 (twenty-two years ago)

Elvis Telecom writes:
FWIW, the strippers are beginning to unionize

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.

― gygax! (gygax!), Friday, 14 November 2003 21:00 (twenty-two years ago)

how does a wheelchair confined person have sex

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.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 14 November 2003 21:16 (twenty-two years ago)

six months pass...

prime real estate for sale !

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

― DJ Martian (djmartian), Tuesday, 8 June 2004 15:14 (twenty-two years ago)

seven years pass...

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.

― โตเกียวเหมียวเหมียว aka Bulgarian Tourist Chamber (Mount Cleaners), Wednesday, 23 May 2012 02:29 (fourteen years ago)

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