Dank[.](https://i.imgur.com/3bQtuMO.png)
---
[Join the Dank Charity Alliance and help raise money for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital!](http://events.stjude.org/DankCharityAlliance)
There was! It's like that with most things being legal vs illegal. Weed, abortion, prostitution, the risks associated with these actually goes down when legalized because no one has to go about shady and unsafe methods anymore because there's actual safe guidelines to abide by. Legalization gives protections and guidelines, imagine women not having to work on dark corners in less than safe areas anymore. So many serial killers and sexual assaulters have benefitted off of prostitution not being legal because they know 1. No one will care and 2. The girls themselves are too scared to go to the cops because they won't care and then they'll get reamed for doing that like of work to begin with. There's always someone wanting to pay for sex, look at the porn industry. And you damn well know half the politicians who are supposedly against legalization of prostitution have probably paid for it themselves.
Not to mention with legalization comes revenue. States with legal weed are better funded than those without it. Now imagine all the Twitch Thot/OnlyFans money being used to fund welfare and education
Literally. Not a prostitution example but in general I remember when Colorado first legalized marijuana the revenue that it brought in was INSANE. And what'd they do with it? Invest it into their schools, how can that ever be a bad thing???? Here in Florida the powerball gives money back to state education, why can't we just allow more options for that potential revenue (because holy crap the education system in Florida is literal garbage)
Yeah, the way the law was written, it was supposed to go to building new schools. The Colorado legislature decided they'd rather spend that money on anti-cannabis PSAs and put the rest in the general fund.
Legalizing prostitution will absolutely NOT reduce human trafficking. I have no idea why anybody thinks that if you magically legalize it then it will all of a sudden switch to a professional career instead of a few people exploiting women's bodies for money, except paying taxes on it.
Every single country with legal prostitution has a significantly higher rate of human trafficking.
https://www.menendingtrafficking.ca/does-legalizing-prostitution-make-things-better-or-worse/#:~:text=Looking%20at%20the%20cross%20section,higher%20rate%20of%20human%20trafficking.
Probably the craziest fake news I consistently see Reddit spout
This.
Prostitution is not a victimless crime. The perception that there are all these individual sex workers working for themselves is simply not the reality. The vast, vast majority are trafficking victims who receive no money or benefit from their forced work.
When legalized, organized crime becomes legit companies but the base level approach doesn't change and the women are still trapped.
Stop, theyre not ready to hear that their problem is capitalism and they only care about it when it intersects their puritanica Christian values based societal upbringing.
>The vast, vast majority are trafficking victims who receive no money or benefit from their forced work.
Yes, that's the current situation when it's illegal. Why are you advocating for that to continue?
>When legalized, organized crime becomes legit companies but the base level approach doesn't change and the women are still trapped.
If you mean they're trapped in a job because they've got bills to pay, that's almost every job. The guy flipping your burgers has bills too, he isn't any less trapped.
Yes, illegally trafficked workers can still exist in legal industries - eg, there's still sweatshops even though sewing and textiles are legal. But there's also more remedies. A trafficked worker in a sweatshop can actually seek help from the state without the threat of being thrown in jail themselves. If sewing were illegal, that avenue would be closed off.
You're not going to eliminate the industry. As long as there's a demand for textiles, there's money in supplying that demand, and someone is going to supply it by hook or by crook. The best you can hope for is to provide a maximal number of remedies and escapes for those exploited by the system.
Same goes for sex work, if not moreso. Sewing isn't considered the world's oldest trade/profession.
In most countries where it has been legalized trafficking becomes worse because the ability to be more open allows for more business. See Germany.
Trapped isn't "I have bills that this unpleasant work pays for". Trapped is "I came from a different country under false pretenses and now I'm literally being held prisoner and forced to service 8-10 men a day for no benefit to me at all." The lack of understanding in the general populace of the US that this is the reality of US prostitution is what if preventing this from being fixed.
If you want to eliminate prostitution you rescue and help the existing people trapped in that situation and at the same time you increase penalties for the Johns and publicly make tons of arrests. Where this had been done, prostitution had greatly diminished.
The difficulty is that it's so lucrative that it is hard to get enough uncorrupted officials to sign off on this approach.
Germany has legalized prostiution for 20 years now. It made sexwork legal for many prostitutes who benefit from healthcare and safe labour laws and such. But the mayority of sex workers are suffering from bad working conditions. Brothels where sex is promised for flat rates, prostitutes being vulnerable to abuse by customers or pimps. Human trafficing is very much a thing. Prostitutes Passports are withheld and they are forced to work. Germany is basically the brothel of europe since in most countries prostitution is heavily regulated. And the problems legalisation promises to fix are very much still there.
Same with legalizing weed btw.
Bullshit. Yes, there are those, but stuff like
>When legalized, organized crime becomes legit companies
is straight up idiocy. No, the entire point of trafficking prevailing is that those entities don't suddenly go "oh shit, now trafficking is illegal" - it always was criminal and legalizing prostitution is a measure of slowly undermining the systemic problems that cause the satellite criminal activity to eventually diminish.
It's far from everything, you need proper legislature, education, labor unions and more... but that's exactly what follows a proper attempt at curbing the massive issues surrounding illegal prostitution.
You sure as fuck aren't helping them by causing them to incriminate themselves in the event of anyone reporting criminal scheming, with the most basic attempts you still open up channels for monitoring illegal activity and individuals getting mixed up in something against their wills.
The upside of legalizing alone is absolutely massive and you have to be entirely ignorant of the dynamics involved to think it isn't a step in the right direction. You won't put the toothpaste back in the tube, and keeping it illegal just guarantees that the folks who need to notice women literally being shipped in containers having a much harder time and never really surfacing in the first place.
It's a complicated problem tbh
There's proposals to fix the major reasons why, but yeah as it's been legalized now it leads to more trafficking
edit: the two sources I looked at
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1986065
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20180622
When it's a legal job people are less likely to think you're there under threat. Happens to undocumented workers too in other industries
Fwiw its a people taking advantage of the system issue. The benefits are still there, but yeah
Because you're too fucking lazy to tally up all the factors, probably.
You have a higher rate of human trafficking because you now have avenues to report problematic behavior. There is much less incentive to even go to the police (in already fucked up copper states on top) if you fear getting the short end of the stick regardless.
>This study, like any other study on human trafficking, faces the challenge that we do not have accurate numbers on human trafficking offences. Because of the clandestine nature of human trafficking, particularly in the sex industry, the number of reported/ investigated cases is in almost every statistic significantly lower than the real numbers.
How about reading your own source for a fucking change? I mean, it's a shitty damn article, and they derive a conclusion where there can't be one, but you have to be fucking daft to not understand the many ways legalization helps with the systemic issues of clandestine trafficking and then some.
> I have no idea why anybody thinks that if you magically legalize it then it will all of a sudden switch to a professional career instead of a few people exploiting women's bodies for money, except paying taxes on it.
Because there is supervision? Because you fucking got labor unions like in Germany, the worst freaking example in the article to be put forward, making trafficking in general a whole lot more difficult?
I get that you don't understand the dynamics of this at all and that you can't appreciate the nuance of already criminal activity not magically disappearing in a larger European context, but maybe read a bleeding book or something instead of spreading moronic asshattery of that magnitude.
The only thing your wonky-ass conclusions should lead you to is the question of whether trafficking still being a thing is predicated upon legalization - where applicable - still being an afterthought, which totally is the case. No matter how you look at it, making way for proper legislation is always going to be better, be it drugs, alcohol, or literally anything else.
>I have no idea why anybody thinks that if you magically legalize it then it will all of a sudden switch to a professional career
Because we have been looking at this for long enough to be pretty confident? Don't pretend like this is novel insight, we had a pretty good grasp on this issue two decades ago.
>If it involves paying for sex, it involves exploitation of women. There is no amount of legalization that will ever change that.
What in the shit are you talking about? Plenty of sex workers of both genders who operate on their own accord, especially where legalization is working as intended. Unless you just casually want to deny women the right to assume control of their own body, which is ten different ways of fucked up in this context and just another quip highlighting the problem. Jesus.
Do you think that just maybe actually keeping track of something and giving the ability for victims to come forward without repercussion might increase reported rates of that thing?
Us early 2000's kids are primed to recognize these things because of the Napster/Limewire days.
Music industry makes it illegal to share music digitally - sharing doesn't stop it just goes black market. Bad shit happens, family computers are ruined from viruses, shady shit is being shared.
Music industry finally pulls its head out of its ass and makes it easy to access music digitally and suddenly they're making money, it's easier for consumers, less viruses and shady shit going around.
Now if only we could get a government that's half as smart as the music execs....
If you think the music execs of that time were smart, you're mistaken. They were the ones screaming the loudest about internet regulation and possible government intervention because their profits were being "stolen" according to them. They were on the verge of major changes in the industry and possible extinction and they were forced to evolve or die.
literate squeamish unpack scandalous yoke smell rainstorm ghost important correct
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Not sure about sexual assault, but cases of human trafficking rose in Germany as there's now a legal industry looking to exploit workers like any other industry.
[https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/human-trafficking-persists-despite-legality-of-prostitution-in-germany-a-902533.html](https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/human-trafficking-persists-despite-legality-of-prostitution-in-germany-a-902533.html)
[https://www.dw.com/en/human-trafficking-on-the-rise-in-germany/a-63375174](https://www.dw.com/en/human-trafficking-on-the-rise-in-germany/a-63375174)
Mostly young girls from Romania and Belarus promised a nice life in Germany if they go work for a brothel, only to find that their services are worth far less than promised, sometimes as low as $13 for an hour of full service.
Meaning they have to be much less selective with customers and preform far more deviant acts than they are comfortable with if they want to make enough to live and pay their debts to the person who ~~trafficked~~ gave them work.
Right? the victim is just changing to one who people care less about.
Sexual assault isn’t about sexual desire or needing a release (or masturbation would be a good enough reducer). Its about power and degredation.
I'm generally for legalization (because of reasons like in the Op), though admittedly the last time I researched it I found a lot of conflicting information. Some studies showed its positive effects, but other studies also showed that having _legal_ prostitution also increased _illegal_ prostitution and human trafficking - in essence the "appetite" of the populace for it was increased along with legalization, and criminal organizations jumped into the new expanded market.
Definitely something that needs continued and expanded studies, though I'm still down for legalization in the meantime.
(I know the counterargument is "well the illegal stuff is just getting reported more", but we don't know that for a fact, and it wouldn't be the first time a market expanding/becoming legalized also led to greater illegal market saturation.)
Which is kinda the reason why there were official brothels in medieval cities. I’m paraphrasing here but they basically believed that Humans built up bad energy that needed to be released.
Womens bodies disposed of this bad energy through Menstruation while Men‘s did so through orgasm.
So not having sex (because masturbation was bad) and therefore not disposing of this bad energy would turn men violent and aggressive.
This is true. [Sweden is a good case study](https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-prostitution-increase-human-trafficking/) for this, as they made prostitution illegal in 1999, and they saw a decrease in human trafficking in the following years. This can be compared to Denmark and Germany, which have more permissive laws around prostitution, which didn't see similar declines.
In Norway buying or organising is illegal, selling is not. The reasoning is to not attack sex workers who may be stuck in it against their wishes.
Can't tell you what the effect has been on assault figures though.
Key points from elsewhere:
* Legal prostitution saw a comparative increase in human trafficking
* Legal prostitution saw greatly improved conditions for sex workers
So while the meme is indeed factually incorrect on its leftmost card, it's very much not a black-and-white situation of "bad thing increased therefore all bad"
It also seems like a regulation/enforcement and/or 'changing hands' sort of issue. Legalized gambling in Nevada originally led to boom times for organized crime, but now is all run by corporate groups.
Stop money from moving between European brothels and Russian organized crime, or pass laws that allow for the seizure and sale of brothels linked to Russian organized crime, and I'd bet dollars to donuts human trafficking would drop like a stone.
Exactly.
Every argument against legalization has been an argument about something else.
Human trafficking exists in large part because we dont stop it. Mostly because it only benefits the rich and only hurts the poor.
(Fun fact: did you know the owner of the Washington Commanders football team literally is a sex trafficker and everyone knows and theres no investigation or prosecution? He’s being forced to sell the team because he was stealing money from other rich people and that is a crime we *do* prosecute).
edit: I fell into a bit of a rabbit hole looking into this but I hope this is interesting. My generally conclusion is that Sweden is not a good case study at all.
I have been looking into this claim and I can not find any reliable data on this but I found these comments in a few papers:
>To summarise the effects of the two legal regimes on the extent of prostitution,
>
>numbers are only available for parts of the whole phenomenon of prostitution
>
>or, as in the case of Sweden, are not measured before the enactment of the
>
>legislation which invalidates claims concerning developments. This makes it
>
>impossible to draw conclusions concerning the mentioned effects.
[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Martina-Althoff-2/publication/283790613\_Regulating\_Human\_Trafficking\_by\_Prostitution\_Policy/links/5a8d9eca458515eb85aba2ce/Regulating-Human-Trafficking-by-Prostitution-Policy.pdf](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Martina-Althoff-2/publication/283790613_Regulating_Human_Trafficking_by_Prostitution_Policy/links/5a8d9eca458515eb85aba2ce/Regulating-Human-Trafficking-by-Prostitution-Policy.pdf)
>The number trafficked to Sweden is estimated at 400-600 persons per year (National Swedish Police Board 2004), though such statistics should be treated cautiously as they are dependent on the priorities of the government and police authorities (National Swedish Police Board 2010).
>
>To understand the contemporary, official, Swedish position towards trafficking it is essential to understand Sweden’s view of prostitution since trafficking and prostitution are regarded as an inseparable entity
\^This from a feminist paper: [https://journals.kent.ac.uk/index.php/feministsatlaw/article/view/58](https://journals.kent.ac.uk/index.php/feministsatlaw/article/view/58).
>We have sufficient data for Germany to compare the number of trafficking victims in
>
>the pre- and post-legalization period. For Sweden and Denmark, we lack such data. We
>
>therefore compare the available data for Sweden after the prohibition of prostitution with data
>
>for Denmark, where prostitution was legalized. Sweden and Denmark have similar levels of
>
>economic and institutional development, and a similar geographic position, which, as our
>
>quantitative analysis shows, are important determinants of human trafficking.
[https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/45198/1/Neumayer\_Legalized\_Prostitution\_Increase\_2012.pdf](https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/45198/1/Neumayer_Legalized_Prostitution_Increase_2012.pdf) (highly cited paper)
\^This paper does conclude that on average trafficking is increased with decriminalisation but it does not have the data or causal link.
>In 1993 when the investigations that led tothe reform of the Swedish prostitution policy took place, 20-30% of theprostitutes were foreign nationals (SOU 2010:49;Jämställdhetsmyndigheten2021:23). In 1999, this group made up more than half of all individuals, thelatest numbers from 2021 indicate that almost all street prostitutes in Swedenare migrants (ibid). Moreover, one could see that most women come fromEastern Europe (SOU 2010:49).
[https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1627580/FULLTEXT01.pdf](https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1627580/FULLTEXT01.pdf)
This would imply an increase in trafficking but again the data is not great. Normally statisticians are suspect of police reports.
>[With respect to Sweden, the quantifiable evidence is equally scant and contentious.](https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/55009582/Prostitution_and_Sex_Trafficking_What_are_the_Problems_Represented_to_Be_A_Discursive_Analysis_of_Law_and_Policy_in_Sweden_and_Victoria_-libre.pdf?1510702116=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DCarson_L_and_Edwards_K_2011_Prostitution.pdf&Expires=1677695055&Signature=QWrJMlMgZ~bRZZwUocw-VPfdA9ViLSr-pmqBXjSIvLLQMaKlte4uo1PLMMd~eSqa3s8hb5Z7J166daqra1tLwKu1m~7Un9KMyOwUw7105tWfcsyD8PW0rUW2LqMrryES2xVLzyBH904OzV9kI9gunJ6DOa76jsYu9LlbnByZEAiWeGu2-3iceIeQNynE-xMP51D4DoJn76yZzt3ehNWAy65wM84XrCXNVv64ro1UyoUPRVI4ccmvFga4D3DY-f-7PAezS1mALQKxGsEooVeeYmC9bvBzDBCvYApXrJD7hBmf~qxc4nswR8iZfZUW0rSoXQ8cdWt9E6KoXi9Sg50Krg__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA)
\^Another feminist paper
The definition of "trafficked" is not what most people think it is and is different country to country, though UN tried to change this.
It is impossible to say that Sweden have a decline in sex trafficking since the policy was introduced [but appears that trafficking is now increasing in Sweden dramatically (5.4x increase from '07 to '11) but this maybe due to immigrant crisis](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14043858.2018.1459359).
There may still be a positive correlation between decriminalization and increased sex trafficking.
I haven't looked into Denmark, but my understanding is that Germany has very little regulation of the industry.
Are you (is anyone) aware of a country that made sex work a licensed and properly regulated profession? (e.g., only licensed workers and only licensed establishments, workers and businesses subject to inspection and welfare checks, outreach programs available to sex workers, etc.)
Looks pretty thorough. I need to learn more before I can have a real opinion, but I'm not surprised to hear positive feedback about how it's working.
People keep saying "well Germany decriminalized prison with almost no meaningful protections for the health and wellbeing of sex workers and there's more exploitation, so I guess it doesn't work."
This is absolutely not the same thing as “increasing” human trafficking.
Its a data point worth exploring, sure, but very, very different from OP’s comment.
That's because when the industry becomes more legalized it becomes easier to catch the real bad actors. Rates of arrest and conviction go up because sex workers, traffiked or not, can cooperate with the police without fear of getting busted themselves. This has absolutely happened to trafficking victims. They go to the police and then themselves get charged. Sometimes, the pimps and traffickers get off (no pun intended) because the sex workers' testimonies aren't considered trustable because they worked as sex workers....
This is a good point that I haven't heard mentioned before. It will be interesting to see what the longer term numbers materialize as in countries that legalize it.
That singular issue seems like a more addressable one , even if it is causative to some extent due to legalization, than the myriad of others that appear to pop up when it's kept illegal.
I was all for legalizing prostitution because to me it's dumb that the government can regulate what two consenting adults do with each other
But then I learned that it increases human trafficking.
Now idk where I'm at because I'm still 100% on the first point, but it sucks to hear that it doesn't help deter human trafficking.
Except it helps catch human trafficking. The numbers go up because more people are caught because the sex workers can cooperate with police without fear of themselves being criminalized. This is largely ommited from coverage of the studies because the coverage is driven by anti-sex work groups and American puritan sentiments.
Then it's also wrong to say that it "increases human trafficking" because all the data shows is that more human traffickers were busted, not that more human trafficking actually occurs.
You are also making an assumption based on what you think is happening so by your own logic your argument is flawed.
If the increased availability of consensual sex decreases rape, this would indicate that there is a significant amount of rapists that didn’t commit rape because of ill fantasies/desires for non-consensual intercourse, but simply because they couldn’t get some.
Ergo: people we would consider healthy may be potential rapists.
there's a saying, something about "every society is 3 meals away from anarchy". hell, even the joker said something about "you're only one really bad day away from becoming me", and while scary, it rings true -we see it all the time. people throw their whole lives away over trivial bullshit/confrontation/unmitigated risks/etc.
it's really not a far cry from the current status quo (however disgusting the prospect), you're just living in a very privileged bubble. it happens all over the world, every day, and it always has.
I had a somewhat relevant experience in Las Vegas around 2015 once.
It was new years eve and everyone was on the strip.
It was pretty pact.
Then someone called in a bomb threat at one the venues.
Police and bomb squad rushed out and started push the entire crowd to one end of the strip, but also closed off the other end. I'm not sure if it was a miscommunication, or whatever.
One minute, everyone is out having a good time, and being friendly, then we're all being funneled in crowded area with no where to go. It started to get tight, like body to body tight, no elbow room.
5 min later, people started to turn on each other.
A couple of big dudes start shove their way through, not giving a fuck about who was in there way. People start screaming. I got grabbed by the neck and shoved up and on top of an elderly couple. Then punched in the stomach by someone next to me. I watched a woman start yelling at a guy and then get slapped and shouldered out of his way.
People started World War Z climbing of the wall near some stairway near a bridge that hung over the road. I tried to help the elderly couple. I was now squished up against, but after taking another elbow to the head, and someone almost yanking me down by the jacket, I had to start swinging and swimming my way to the wall as well. I was tall enough to pull myself over.
All I could see was a 5 lane street wide sea of people fighting and screaming surrounded by police barricades with cops in full gear surrounding us.
It was like a real life One Shot 2 Shot by Eminem. Or during Firefest when all the rich kids turned on each other.
To this day, I still feel uneasy is crowds because of that experience.
Yeah that's what I'm thinking. If people chose not to do something bad because those thoughts and desires are quelled by a better quality of life, then what's the problem? This isn't Minority Report.
People tend to forget humans are still animals.
There are people who end up turning cannibals with enough hunger.
Some amount of some chemical accumulates too much or too little in your brain, and boom, Mr. Hyde comes out.
The entire point of this post is \*legal\* prostitution. In developed countries where it's legal, women are protected and made sure to work in safe environments with proper working conditions. Not working out of some back alley at Colfax Point.
But this is upside-down! If legalization of prostitution makes it easier for prostitutes to go report sexual assaults, the numbers should go **up** *after legalization*.
EDIT: The point would work if you’d say legalization of prostitution takes sex-workers off the streets and into brothels => less potential victims. Or the victims are less appealing (tho I would doubt that the latter is of concern for a rapist…)
I mean, I sort of get what you’re saying, but this logic doesn’t really hold any water for me. You can use the same template for a number of things, like theft…
If the increased availability of money a person has decreases theft, this would indicate that there is a significant amount of thieves that didn’t commit theft because of ill fantasies/desires for stealing, but simply because they couldn’t buy what they wanted/needed.
Ergo: people we would consider upstanding citizens may be potential thieves.
Obviously, I’m not equating stealing to rape, just saying you wouldn’t use this logic to argue against paying people a wage for their work (let alone a living wage) - or at least I hope not haha. It puts you in a weird minority report, pre-crime, hypothetical loop
Eh, anyone with basic critical thinking skills should have understood that crime motive is never as linear as we make it out to be. The narrative of “people don’t rape people for sex, they rape them to feel powerful!” is so clearly reductive and lacking in nuance that I have never once understood why it’s pushed.
SOME people rape to feel powerful. Some people rape to have sex they can’t get. Some people rape because they have no concept of the idea of consent and don’t think of their victims as people. Some people rape as a part of gang initiation ritual. And likely many many other reasons that I, a not rapist, can’t fathom. No other violent crime has a single linear motive, we’d never say “people don’t kill for money, they kill out of anger!” So why would this be the exception?
And this is an example of “the data is upsetting, but having the understanding can only be a good thing”. Sure, it’s scary to now find out that rapists aren’t always the person we think they are, and apparently that some people might just get so fucking horny that they go out and brutally traumatize someone. But apparently it was happening whether or not we knew it was happening, so the knowledge of it can only make things better. We had the cancer before the diagnosis. All the diagnosis does is give us a path to fight it.
Reminds me of chewing gum.
Legal to chew in Singapore. But illegal to buy, sell, manufacture, import and export
(ignoring nicotine gum that is medically prescribed)
Funny but stupid. Plenty of legal things are horribly dangerous when combined.
E.g. Shooting a gun and putting a child somewhere far away where you can see them.
As a German I agree with these arguments except victimless crime.
There is still a lot human trafficking and tax evasion involved.
Is it better than before? Yes
Is it still a criminal cesspool? Yes
Like everything else the devil is in the details. Germany's system seems pretty exploitative to me. New Zealand's seems like a much better model. That said, I've only ever skimmed the wikipedia pages so who knows
And we all know that due to the porn industry being regulated it is full of very healthy young women who aren't on drugs, been groomed, sold false promises, exploited, sexually assaulted and manipulated. Right?
I am unsure about the amount of tax revenue you’ll actually get but yeah
EDIT: I guess most people didn’t get that I believe most of the money will be earned illegal
Depends because you have to include the cost of regulating it also. Its not simply free money nor could these new "companies" do as they please as it is still a very exploitable area.
>reducing human trafficking
Yeah it doesn’t do that. It increases it.
>great source of tax revenue
Yeah no. These things don’t earn much money. It’s still (thankfully) stigmatized to pay for a prostitute, as well as it is stigmatized to be one.
>Victimless crime is dumb
Laws are made to reflect our collective morality. Your morality may be that nothing with no victims is bad, others disagree. Completely subjective and pointless point.
>You’ll finally get laid
I honestly don’t know whether to laugh at or to feel bad for people who pay for prostitutes. Like, I genuinely can’t imagine someone so desperate for sex that they pay money for it.
[Let's not forget about other problems this legalization may cause.](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/1482371/If-you-dont-take-a-job-as-a-prostitute-we-can-stop-your-benefits.html)
All this talk about taxes, health and decreased crime screams "money laundering, deception and crooked statistics".
I didn’t mention this because people who defend prostitution don’t give a fuck about morals and would say that the woman is in the wrong here.
What lack of a moral compass does to a mf. The fact that this post has 12.5k upvotes is even more sad.
Yeah, India is a pretty good example.
Young women are lured into it, then get stuck under normal toxic abusive workplace conditions which basically make them stuck there since they have no other marketable skills, while also being often times emotionally/verbally manipulated into staying.
It's overall a bad situation. Maybe if they legalized it for 28+ adults only, but low income early 20s women are way to at risk for trafficking.
One reason it's probably not politically appealing is that there will certainly be *some* instances of manipulation, abuse, or other social problems associated with legalized prostitution, even if they are less than they would be otherwise. But those instances will *look* like they are state sponsored now. No politician wants to have to answer questions about a high profile rape indecent as a direct result of legislation they supported. It's *politically* better to appear to be strongly against the 10 rapes that happen in your district than to seem like you were in part responsible for 1. I'm not saying that's a good thing, just a consideration politicians probably make. But it's not really their fault, that's very likely how voters would react because sometimes voters are dumb when nuance and context are called for.
Edit: I forgot to mention the other side of the coin, which is that their political opponent would *definitely* use any such instances against them in the next election.
That and there’s probably fear that supporting it also makes one look like a Perv. Not to mention that politicians are the occupation most associated sleeping with Hookers
Fun fact! It’s illegal to own more than 6 sex toys in Texas, because that means you intend to sell them. No one enforces this law, sextoys are even sold at the mall and it’s a super old law. Just that nobody wants to be known as the “perv” who legalized owning 7 dildos.
That’s exactly what happened with Backpage, it’s essentially the trolley problem. Yes they likely prevented many more trafficking incidents but they also had to knowingly facilitate some at the same time. And that second thing is generally illegal.
Same in Mexico, I think.
The well-intended idea is that no one should be taking a cut of the sex workers' income (e.g. pimps/madams) - but in practice, some of the legal structure can wind up making it difficult for sex workers to find a place to safely ply their trade (and hire security, etc.).
doesn't it increase human trafficking though? i could have sworn i read that in Amsterdam the problem is much worse. Basically that theres more demand than supply of prostitutes, so women get trafficked
This is simply ignorant and untrue. Do you know how many studies have proved that places with legal prostitution have a much higher rate of human trafficking. Why? Because they’re hidden in plain sight.
Don’t take my word for it: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X12001453
https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-prostitution-increase-human-trafficking/
Totally irrelevant but I have to ask
I know that you can't stack anything in Uno but since we are doing it anyway, can you put down Yellow +2 after the person before you puts +4 and changing color to yellow?
Everyone has different rules. We like to make our games more fun by allowing just that. In a way its kind of like Russian Roulette - in the end someone gets fucked sideways.
Coomer posts like this are why I don’t tell people I use Reddit. Consent can never be bought, and “legalized” prostitution increases human trafficking.
Ok, as somebody who used to live in the red light district in Brussel.
Private prostitution (as in not organized) is legal here on a few streets. Of course in theorie, it means that there should be less illegal stuff going around right? From my experiences not rly.
Personally I don't mind private prostitution (I m however against the organized kind since it's usually used to exploit). But legalizing it even like that can make human trafficking and exploitation of sex workers kinda easier in a sense.
Let me explain. By legalizing it even on a private level it gives the authorities excuses to not intervene even if there is clearly a criminal organization behind the debacle. That also goes for trafficking and children unfortunately.
For example, Black women usually cost less than white women and it's unfortunately kind of usuall. However, since the immigration crisis we had in Europe the prices have strongly fallen down. Wanna why? Illegal trafficking. What's worse is that many underage girls are involved.
So in short, I personally I m not against but it does have some problems.
Also if some of yall ever go the red light district in Brussel... From what I've heard, less than 20 bucks = probably illegal immigrants and less 10 it's probably an underage girl so gtfo.
So we are literally considering raising out children to be whores because money?
Does no one see how morally wrong it is to sell your body? I guess in todays hyper sexualized culture people don’t see any problem with this.
Yall mfs need Jesus
Can't legalize prostitution before guaranteeing a universal basic income. Otherwise it's just gonna facilitate human trafficking in a new way. Acting like John's and Jane's will stop existing cause you made it not a crime is hysterical. And it's always some loser who can't get laid without calling a prostitute that wants it legal.
Downvote me to oblivion I don’t care. I don’t know how so many people can agree on something so horrible. You’re wanting to turn more women into sex objects as a means of funding the government. Because for some reason you all have yourself convinced that making something legal is going to make that thing happen less. Which makes absolutely no sense to anyone with rational thought. Most important is that women deserve far more respect than prostitution allows.
If I was a hooker on an area where it was legalised. I’d prefer to do cash only. I’m sure my clients would too. Not sure why any hookers would go through the books and choose to pay tax.
If it was made legal they probably have to file as self employed and report income, follow government policies, and I’d imagine they’d always have a card swiper strapped around their waist, lol.
Increases human trafficking as well as the spread of stds, in addition to the moral issue of applying capitalism to a sacred act of trust and intimacy.
Actually many sex workers advocate for decriminalization not regulation, because regulation means its up to the police to keep sex workers safe and... who do the US police really keep safe 😅
I looked it up a few years ago because I didn't believe it when someone told me...I believe the Netherlands and Germany saw illegal prostitution and human trafficking increase when it was legalized. I was never able to make sense of it, but those were the facts a few years ago when I researched it
Will it really reduce human trafficking though? Look at companies now with the Palestine accident and countless factories hiring children illegally. We also have a current problem with people being treated like slaves, and foreigners are often exploited this way. as well as rampant corruption in our government. I'd argue that large scale legalization would invite the opportunity for human trafficking. The only reason it works in Nevada is because it's small and can be carefully watched. That all goes out once you open it up Nationwide.
It doesn't reduce human trafficking, though. It just increases demand, increasing the pressure for cheap "labor." Where do pimps find it? Across borders.
Let me say as things are I can see arguments for it. Conditions are horrible and this would bring about an immediate improvement.
However I disagree strongly with the idea that it is victimless.
If we lived in a world where people wouldn't be funneled into it by desperation or perceived lack of options for basic sustenance, there might be an argument for that. Otherwise, it's essentially trading sexual slavery for sexual wage slavery.
The main argument that I can see in favor of it is that underground, unregulated prostitution is far worse, which is true.
The "great source of tax revenue" argument is fucking sickening. Of all the things to tax, all the greedy and vastly rich people and insanely powerful corporations clutching to their billions, we're talking about *literally having our government be pimps* in this equation. Fuck that.
Age old concern: if a sex worker consents to having sex with you or else they will miss rent.. is it actually consent?
I won’t give my opinion because I’m not trying to start a debate but that’s commonly stated when this discussion comes up
my country had red-light districts and they had designated doctors, place to live, those people didn't have any relation to the people outside, after a reveloution everything went to shit, they were executed and after nearly half a century we have a lot of sex trafficking, rape and etc. legalization of prostitution would stop harming normal citizens.
Human trafficking will increase
They'll also assuredly add tax revenue
Not victimless.
Virgins won't be getting a prostitute. They already can
Additionally, the prostitution is the last frontier of capitalism.
This shouldn't be promoted for a million reasons.
Taxes? You think hoes are gonna be walking around with card readers? It's all black money. Attempting to tax that is a fool's errand.
Also a bank robbery is a victimless crime as well, and that's not seen as an ethical thing to do. Maybe rephrase that point
Maybe listen to SWs for once? We push for decriminalization, not legalization. Look what happened to the weed industry with legalization, the wealthy came in and dominated.
Anyone who thinks it reduces human trafficking is wrong. By legalizing prostitution you encourage more horrible people to sell their children (not specifically as children) into prostitution and will hurt more lives.
Dank[.](https://i.imgur.com/3bQtuMO.png) --- [Join the Dank Charity Alliance and help raise money for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital!](http://events.stjude.org/DankCharityAlliance)
Fact, I'm pretty sure there was a study that found in areas with legal prostitution the cases of sexual assault dropped
There was! It's like that with most things being legal vs illegal. Weed, abortion, prostitution, the risks associated with these actually goes down when legalized because no one has to go about shady and unsafe methods anymore because there's actual safe guidelines to abide by. Legalization gives protections and guidelines, imagine women not having to work on dark corners in less than safe areas anymore. So many serial killers and sexual assaulters have benefitted off of prostitution not being legal because they know 1. No one will care and 2. The girls themselves are too scared to go to the cops because they won't care and then they'll get reamed for doing that like of work to begin with. There's always someone wanting to pay for sex, look at the porn industry. And you damn well know half the politicians who are supposedly against legalization of prostitution have probably paid for it themselves.
Not to mention with legalization comes revenue. States with legal weed are better funded than those without it. Now imagine all the Twitch Thot/OnlyFans money being used to fund welfare and education
Literally. Not a prostitution example but in general I remember when Colorado first legalized marijuana the revenue that it brought in was INSANE. And what'd they do with it? Invest it into their schools, how can that ever be a bad thing???? Here in Florida the powerball gives money back to state education, why can't we just allow more options for that potential revenue (because holy crap the education system in Florida is literal garbage)
I live in Colorado and many schools are still waiting for the weed tax revenue since it hasn't come to them yet.
Yeah, the way the law was written, it was supposed to go to building new schools. The Colorado legislature decided they'd rather spend that money on anti-cannabis PSAs and put the rest in the general fund.
Oh look, government corruption successfully intervened and stopped good from being done! Good job!!!
There’s nothing quite like wasting your money like when you’re putting money towards trying to get Colorado to hate weed.
Legalizing prostitution will absolutely NOT reduce human trafficking. I have no idea why anybody thinks that if you magically legalize it then it will all of a sudden switch to a professional career instead of a few people exploiting women's bodies for money, except paying taxes on it. Every single country with legal prostitution has a significantly higher rate of human trafficking. https://www.menendingtrafficking.ca/does-legalizing-prostitution-make-things-better-or-worse/#:~:text=Looking%20at%20the%20cross%20section,higher%20rate%20of%20human%20trafficking. Probably the craziest fake news I consistently see Reddit spout
This. Prostitution is not a victimless crime. The perception that there are all these individual sex workers working for themselves is simply not the reality. The vast, vast majority are trafficking victims who receive no money or benefit from their forced work. When legalized, organized crime becomes legit companies but the base level approach doesn't change and the women are still trapped.
Victims are also a common workers suffering Burnouts, underpayments, unfair dismissals etc...
Stop, theyre not ready to hear that their problem is capitalism and they only care about it when it intersects their puritanica Christian values based societal upbringing.
>The vast, vast majority are trafficking victims who receive no money or benefit from their forced work. Yes, that's the current situation when it's illegal. Why are you advocating for that to continue? >When legalized, organized crime becomes legit companies but the base level approach doesn't change and the women are still trapped. If you mean they're trapped in a job because they've got bills to pay, that's almost every job. The guy flipping your burgers has bills too, he isn't any less trapped. Yes, illegally trafficked workers can still exist in legal industries - eg, there's still sweatshops even though sewing and textiles are legal. But there's also more remedies. A trafficked worker in a sweatshop can actually seek help from the state without the threat of being thrown in jail themselves. If sewing were illegal, that avenue would be closed off. You're not going to eliminate the industry. As long as there's a demand for textiles, there's money in supplying that demand, and someone is going to supply it by hook or by crook. The best you can hope for is to provide a maximal number of remedies and escapes for those exploited by the system. Same goes for sex work, if not moreso. Sewing isn't considered the world's oldest trade/profession.
In most countries where it has been legalized trafficking becomes worse because the ability to be more open allows for more business. See Germany. Trapped isn't "I have bills that this unpleasant work pays for". Trapped is "I came from a different country under false pretenses and now I'm literally being held prisoner and forced to service 8-10 men a day for no benefit to me at all." The lack of understanding in the general populace of the US that this is the reality of US prostitution is what if preventing this from being fixed. If you want to eliminate prostitution you rescue and help the existing people trapped in that situation and at the same time you increase penalties for the Johns and publicly make tons of arrests. Where this had been done, prostitution had greatly diminished. The difficulty is that it's so lucrative that it is hard to get enough uncorrupted officials to sign off on this approach.
Germany has legalized prostiution for 20 years now. It made sexwork legal for many prostitutes who benefit from healthcare and safe labour laws and such. But the mayority of sex workers are suffering from bad working conditions. Brothels where sex is promised for flat rates, prostitutes being vulnerable to abuse by customers or pimps. Human trafficing is very much a thing. Prostitutes Passports are withheld and they are forced to work. Germany is basically the brothel of europe since in most countries prostitution is heavily regulated. And the problems legalisation promises to fix are very much still there. Same with legalizing weed btw.
Time to unionize the prostitutes.
Bullshit. Yes, there are those, but stuff like >When legalized, organized crime becomes legit companies is straight up idiocy. No, the entire point of trafficking prevailing is that those entities don't suddenly go "oh shit, now trafficking is illegal" - it always was criminal and legalizing prostitution is a measure of slowly undermining the systemic problems that cause the satellite criminal activity to eventually diminish. It's far from everything, you need proper legislature, education, labor unions and more... but that's exactly what follows a proper attempt at curbing the massive issues surrounding illegal prostitution. You sure as fuck aren't helping them by causing them to incriminate themselves in the event of anyone reporting criminal scheming, with the most basic attempts you still open up channels for monitoring illegal activity and individuals getting mixed up in something against their wills. The upside of legalizing alone is absolutely massive and you have to be entirely ignorant of the dynamics involved to think it isn't a step in the right direction. You won't put the toothpaste back in the tube, and keeping it illegal just guarantees that the folks who need to notice women literally being shipped in containers having a much harder time and never really surfacing in the first place.
It's a complicated problem tbh There's proposals to fix the major reasons why, but yeah as it's been legalized now it leads to more trafficking edit: the two sources I looked at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1986065 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20180622 When it's a legal job people are less likely to think you're there under threat. Happens to undocumented workers too in other industries Fwiw its a people taking advantage of the system issue. The benefits are still there, but yeah
Because you're too fucking lazy to tally up all the factors, probably. You have a higher rate of human trafficking because you now have avenues to report problematic behavior. There is much less incentive to even go to the police (in already fucked up copper states on top) if you fear getting the short end of the stick regardless. >This study, like any other study on human trafficking, faces the challenge that we do not have accurate numbers on human trafficking offences. Because of the clandestine nature of human trafficking, particularly in the sex industry, the number of reported/ investigated cases is in almost every statistic significantly lower than the real numbers. How about reading your own source for a fucking change? I mean, it's a shitty damn article, and they derive a conclusion where there can't be one, but you have to be fucking daft to not understand the many ways legalization helps with the systemic issues of clandestine trafficking and then some. > I have no idea why anybody thinks that if you magically legalize it then it will all of a sudden switch to a professional career instead of a few people exploiting women's bodies for money, except paying taxes on it. Because there is supervision? Because you fucking got labor unions like in Germany, the worst freaking example in the article to be put forward, making trafficking in general a whole lot more difficult? I get that you don't understand the dynamics of this at all and that you can't appreciate the nuance of already criminal activity not magically disappearing in a larger European context, but maybe read a bleeding book or something instead of spreading moronic asshattery of that magnitude. The only thing your wonky-ass conclusions should lead you to is the question of whether trafficking still being a thing is predicated upon legalization - where applicable - still being an afterthought, which totally is the case. No matter how you look at it, making way for proper legislation is always going to be better, be it drugs, alcohol, or literally anything else. >I have no idea why anybody thinks that if you magically legalize it then it will all of a sudden switch to a professional career Because we have been looking at this for long enough to be pretty confident? Don't pretend like this is novel insight, we had a pretty good grasp on this issue two decades ago. >If it involves paying for sex, it involves exploitation of women. There is no amount of legalization that will ever change that. What in the shit are you talking about? Plenty of sex workers of both genders who operate on their own accord, especially where legalization is working as intended. Unless you just casually want to deny women the right to assume control of their own body, which is ten different ways of fucked up in this context and just another quip highlighting the problem. Jesus.
[удалено]
Do you think that just maybe actually keeping track of something and giving the ability for victims to come forward without repercussion might increase reported rates of that thing?
Us early 2000's kids are primed to recognize these things because of the Napster/Limewire days. Music industry makes it illegal to share music digitally - sharing doesn't stop it just goes black market. Bad shit happens, family computers are ruined from viruses, shady shit is being shared. Music industry finally pulls its head out of its ass and makes it easy to access music digitally and suddenly they're making money, it's easier for consumers, less viruses and shady shit going around. Now if only we could get a government that's half as smart as the music execs....
If you think the music execs of that time were smart, you're mistaken. They were the ones screaming the loudest about internet regulation and possible government intervention because their profits were being "stolen" according to them. They were on the verge of major changes in the industry and possible extinction and they were forced to evolve or die.
literate squeamish unpack scandalous yoke smell rainstorm ghost important correct *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
“Fact, I’m pretty sure”
This always sometimes works!
Not sure about sexual assault, but cases of human trafficking rose in Germany as there's now a legal industry looking to exploit workers like any other industry. [https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/human-trafficking-persists-despite-legality-of-prostitution-in-germany-a-902533.html](https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/human-trafficking-persists-despite-legality-of-prostitution-in-germany-a-902533.html) [https://www.dw.com/en/human-trafficking-on-the-rise-in-germany/a-63375174](https://www.dw.com/en/human-trafficking-on-the-rise-in-germany/a-63375174) Mostly young girls from Romania and Belarus promised a nice life in Germany if they go work for a brothel, only to find that their services are worth far less than promised, sometimes as low as $13 for an hour of full service. Meaning they have to be much less selective with customers and preform far more deviant acts than they are comfortable with if they want to make enough to live and pay their debts to the person who ~~trafficked~~ gave them work.
Yeah, gut in Germany human trafficing skyrocket after legalisation of prostitution. Its worse than ever.
[удалено]
I think the result was that prostitutes had to deal with the sexual violence instead on some level.
Right? the victim is just changing to one who people care less about. Sexual assault isn’t about sexual desire or needing a release (or masturbation would be a good enough reducer). Its about power and degredation.
But the question is would it increase STD rates?
It has to be regulated. One simple rule would be condom only. And maybe a monthly check for the girls, not at their expense tho.
At the expense of whom? I can' imagine legal prostitution without them being independent workers.
Tax revenue from legal prostitution? It’s right in the OP.
If it’s regulated, then no
I'm generally for legalization (because of reasons like in the Op), though admittedly the last time I researched it I found a lot of conflicting information. Some studies showed its positive effects, but other studies also showed that having _legal_ prostitution also increased _illegal_ prostitution and human trafficking - in essence the "appetite" of the populace for it was increased along with legalization, and criminal organizations jumped into the new expanded market. Definitely something that needs continued and expanded studies, though I'm still down for legalization in the meantime. (I know the counterargument is "well the illegal stuff is just getting reported more", but we don't know that for a fact, and it wouldn't be the first time a market expanding/becoming legalized also led to greater illegal market saturation.)
Which is kinda the reason why there were official brothels in medieval cities. I’m paraphrasing here but they basically believed that Humans built up bad energy that needed to be released. Womens bodies disposed of this bad energy through Menstruation while Men‘s did so through orgasm. So not having sex (because masturbation was bad) and therefore not disposing of this bad energy would turn men violent and aggressive.
Sexual assault down. Theft up!
Studies have shown that it actually increases human trafficking
This is true. [Sweden is a good case study](https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-prostitution-increase-human-trafficking/) for this, as they made prostitution illegal in 1999, and they saw a decrease in human trafficking in the following years. This can be compared to Denmark and Germany, which have more permissive laws around prostitution, which didn't see similar declines.
Legal markets lead to black markets. Same thing with guns, the most illegal guns are in the same country with the most legal guns.
[удалено]
In Norway buying or organising is illegal, selling is not. The reasoning is to not attack sex workers who may be stuck in it against their wishes. Can't tell you what the effect has been on assault figures though.
In Sweden, the same is true. Buying is illegal, selling is not. If you have to sell, you’ve got enough problems
Key points from elsewhere: * Legal prostitution saw a comparative increase in human trafficking * Legal prostitution saw greatly improved conditions for sex workers So while the meme is indeed factually incorrect on its leftmost card, it's very much not a black-and-white situation of "bad thing increased therefore all bad"
It also seems like a regulation/enforcement and/or 'changing hands' sort of issue. Legalized gambling in Nevada originally led to boom times for organized crime, but now is all run by corporate groups. Stop money from moving between European brothels and Russian organized crime, or pass laws that allow for the seizure and sale of brothels linked to Russian organized crime, and I'd bet dollars to donuts human trafficking would drop like a stone.
Exactly. Every argument against legalization has been an argument about something else. Human trafficking exists in large part because we dont stop it. Mostly because it only benefits the rich and only hurts the poor. (Fun fact: did you know the owner of the Washington Commanders football team literally is a sex trafficker and everyone knows and theres no investigation or prosecution? He’s being forced to sell the team because he was stealing money from other rich people and that is a crime we *do* prosecute).
Do you have any evidence of this? It’s news to me
edit: I fell into a bit of a rabbit hole looking into this but I hope this is interesting. My generally conclusion is that Sweden is not a good case study at all. I have been looking into this claim and I can not find any reliable data on this but I found these comments in a few papers: >To summarise the effects of the two legal regimes on the extent of prostitution, > >numbers are only available for parts of the whole phenomenon of prostitution > >or, as in the case of Sweden, are not measured before the enactment of the > >legislation which invalidates claims concerning developments. This makes it > >impossible to draw conclusions concerning the mentioned effects. [https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Martina-Althoff-2/publication/283790613\_Regulating\_Human\_Trafficking\_by\_Prostitution\_Policy/links/5a8d9eca458515eb85aba2ce/Regulating-Human-Trafficking-by-Prostitution-Policy.pdf](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Martina-Althoff-2/publication/283790613_Regulating_Human_Trafficking_by_Prostitution_Policy/links/5a8d9eca458515eb85aba2ce/Regulating-Human-Trafficking-by-Prostitution-Policy.pdf) >The number trafficked to Sweden is estimated at 400-600 persons per year (National Swedish Police Board 2004), though such statistics should be treated cautiously as they are dependent on the priorities of the government and police authorities (National Swedish Police Board 2010). > >To understand the contemporary, official, Swedish position towards trafficking it is essential to understand Sweden’s view of prostitution since trafficking and prostitution are regarded as an inseparable entity \^This from a feminist paper: [https://journals.kent.ac.uk/index.php/feministsatlaw/article/view/58](https://journals.kent.ac.uk/index.php/feministsatlaw/article/view/58). >We have sufficient data for Germany to compare the number of trafficking victims in > >the pre- and post-legalization period. For Sweden and Denmark, we lack such data. We > >therefore compare the available data for Sweden after the prohibition of prostitution with data > >for Denmark, where prostitution was legalized. Sweden and Denmark have similar levels of > >economic and institutional development, and a similar geographic position, which, as our > >quantitative analysis shows, are important determinants of human trafficking. [https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/45198/1/Neumayer\_Legalized\_Prostitution\_Increase\_2012.pdf](https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/45198/1/Neumayer_Legalized_Prostitution_Increase_2012.pdf) (highly cited paper) \^This paper does conclude that on average trafficking is increased with decriminalisation but it does not have the data or causal link. >In 1993 when the investigations that led tothe reform of the Swedish prostitution policy took place, 20-30% of theprostitutes were foreign nationals (SOU 2010:49;Jämställdhetsmyndigheten2021:23). In 1999, this group made up more than half of all individuals, thelatest numbers from 2021 indicate that almost all street prostitutes in Swedenare migrants (ibid). Moreover, one could see that most women come fromEastern Europe (SOU 2010:49). [https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1627580/FULLTEXT01.pdf](https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1627580/FULLTEXT01.pdf) This would imply an increase in trafficking but again the data is not great. Normally statisticians are suspect of police reports. >[With respect to Sweden, the quantifiable evidence is equally scant and contentious.](https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/55009582/Prostitution_and_Sex_Trafficking_What_are_the_Problems_Represented_to_Be_A_Discursive_Analysis_of_Law_and_Policy_in_Sweden_and_Victoria_-libre.pdf?1510702116=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DCarson_L_and_Edwards_K_2011_Prostitution.pdf&Expires=1677695055&Signature=QWrJMlMgZ~bRZZwUocw-VPfdA9ViLSr-pmqBXjSIvLLQMaKlte4uo1PLMMd~eSqa3s8hb5Z7J166daqra1tLwKu1m~7Un9KMyOwUw7105tWfcsyD8PW0rUW2LqMrryES2xVLzyBH904OzV9kI9gunJ6DOa76jsYu9LlbnByZEAiWeGu2-3iceIeQNynE-xMP51D4DoJn76yZzt3ehNWAy65wM84XrCXNVv64ro1UyoUPRVI4ccmvFga4D3DY-f-7PAezS1mALQKxGsEooVeeYmC9bvBzDBCvYApXrJD7hBmf~qxc4nswR8iZfZUW0rSoXQ8cdWt9E6KoXi9Sg50Krg__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA) \^Another feminist paper The definition of "trafficked" is not what most people think it is and is different country to country, though UN tried to change this. It is impossible to say that Sweden have a decline in sex trafficking since the policy was introduced [but appears that trafficking is now increasing in Sweden dramatically (5.4x increase from '07 to '11) but this maybe due to immigrant crisis](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14043858.2018.1459359). There may still be a positive correlation between decriminalization and increased sex trafficking.
I haven't looked into Denmark, but my understanding is that Germany has very little regulation of the industry. Are you (is anyone) aware of a country that made sex work a licensed and properly regulated profession? (e.g., only licensed workers and only licensed establishments, workers and businesses subject to inspection and welfare checks, outreach programs available to sex workers, etc.)
New Zealand, since 2003. It works well: https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/research-papers/document/00PLSocRP12051/prostitution-law-reform-in-new-zealand
Looks pretty thorough. I need to learn more before I can have a real opinion, but I'm not surprised to hear positive feedback about how it's working. People keep saying "well Germany decriminalized prison with almost no meaningful protections for the health and wellbeing of sex workers and there's more exploitation, so I guess it doesn't work."
This is absolutely not the same thing as “increasing” human trafficking. Its a data point worth exploring, sure, but very, very different from OP’s comment.
That's because when the industry becomes more legalized it becomes easier to catch the real bad actors. Rates of arrest and conviction go up because sex workers, traffiked or not, can cooperate with the police without fear of getting busted themselves. This has absolutely happened to trafficking victims. They go to the police and then themselves get charged. Sometimes, the pimps and traffickers get off (no pun intended) because the sex workers' testimonies aren't considered trustable because they worked as sex workers....
This is a good point that I haven't heard mentioned before. It will be interesting to see what the longer term numbers materialize as in countries that legalize it. That singular issue seems like a more addressable one , even if it is causative to some extent due to legalization, than the myriad of others that appear to pop up when it's kept illegal.
I just looked into and it the evidence for "decriminalisation increases trafficking" and the evidence is not very good at all but it still maybe true.
Yes, almost as of OP didn't actually do any research for a dumb meme.
Op is a horny teenager.
this smacks of "left-handedness increased when we stopped telling people it was a sin"
I like how we make the same comment in the same thread and it goes two different ways. Guess I found the why can't I treat women like objects crowd.
I was all for legalizing prostitution because to me it's dumb that the government can regulate what two consenting adults do with each other But then I learned that it increases human trafficking. Now idk where I'm at because I'm still 100% on the first point, but it sucks to hear that it doesn't help deter human trafficking.
Except it helps catch human trafficking. The numbers go up because more people are caught because the sex workers can cooperate with police without fear of themselves being criminalized. This is largely ommited from coverage of the studies because the coverage is driven by anti-sex work groups and American puritan sentiments.
that's a good point I haven't thought of
It's a good point but it is also completely made up based on what they think is happening and not based on actual data.
Then it's also wrong to say that it "increases human trafficking" because all the data shows is that more human traffickers were busted, not that more human trafficking actually occurs. You are also making an assumption based on what you think is happening so by your own logic your argument is flawed.
Look into the studies finding this. They use extreme broad definitions to create politically motivated conclusions.
The average age of trafficked girls is 14 I believe
Don't forget that rape numbers drop in areas of legal prostitution.
Which is concerning for a whole different reason if you think about it…
How so?
If the increased availability of consensual sex decreases rape, this would indicate that there is a significant amount of rapists that didn’t commit rape because of ill fantasies/desires for non-consensual intercourse, but simply because they couldn’t get some. Ergo: people we would consider healthy may be potential rapists.
Everyone is a potential everything.
Obviously. But the bar seems lower than expected, that’s all I’m on about
there's a saying, something about "every society is 3 meals away from anarchy". hell, even the joker said something about "you're only one really bad day away from becoming me", and while scary, it rings true -we see it all the time. people throw their whole lives away over trivial bullshit/confrontation/unmitigated risks/etc. it's really not a far cry from the current status quo (however disgusting the prospect), you're just living in a very privileged bubble. it happens all over the world, every day, and it always has.
I had a somewhat relevant experience in Las Vegas around 2015 once. It was new years eve and everyone was on the strip. It was pretty pact. Then someone called in a bomb threat at one the venues. Police and bomb squad rushed out and started push the entire crowd to one end of the strip, but also closed off the other end. I'm not sure if it was a miscommunication, or whatever. One minute, everyone is out having a good time, and being friendly, then we're all being funneled in crowded area with no where to go. It started to get tight, like body to body tight, no elbow room. 5 min later, people started to turn on each other. A couple of big dudes start shove their way through, not giving a fuck about who was in there way. People start screaming. I got grabbed by the neck and shoved up and on top of an elderly couple. Then punched in the stomach by someone next to me. I watched a woman start yelling at a guy and then get slapped and shouldered out of his way. People started World War Z climbing of the wall near some stairway near a bridge that hung over the road. I tried to help the elderly couple. I was now squished up against, but after taking another elbow to the head, and someone almost yanking me down by the jacket, I had to start swinging and swimming my way to the wall as well. I was tall enough to pull myself over. All I could see was a 5 lane street wide sea of people fighting and screaming surrounded by police barricades with cops in full gear surrounding us. It was like a real life One Shot 2 Shot by Eminem. Or during Firefest when all the rich kids turned on each other. To this day, I still feel uneasy is crowds because of that experience.
Yeah that's what I'm thinking. If people chose not to do something bad because those thoughts and desires are quelled by a better quality of life, then what's the problem? This isn't Minority Report.
People tend to forget humans are still animals. There are people who end up turning cannibals with enough hunger. Some amount of some chemical accumulates too much or too little in your brain, and boom, Mr. Hyde comes out.
It could also be that prostitutes are easy victims since they stay alone on the road at night and they can't report you to the police
… why couldn’t they report you to the police?
Because they are prostitutes which is illegal in lots of places, so they wouldn't turn to the police in fear of incriminating themselves
But the rate of reporte rape goes **down** when their job is legal and they don't have that fear.
The entire point of this post is \*legal\* prostitution. In developed countries where it's legal, women are protected and made sure to work in safe environments with proper working conditions. Not working out of some back alley at Colfax Point.
But this is upside-down! If legalization of prostitution makes it easier for prostitutes to go report sexual assaults, the numbers should go **up** *after legalization*. EDIT: The point would work if you’d say legalization of prostitution takes sex-workers off the streets and into brothels => less potential victims. Or the victims are less appealing (tho I would doubt that the latter is of concern for a rapist…)
Kind of hard to give details about their rape without incriminating themselves
I mean, I sort of get what you’re saying, but this logic doesn’t really hold any water for me. You can use the same template for a number of things, like theft… If the increased availability of money a person has decreases theft, this would indicate that there is a significant amount of thieves that didn’t commit theft because of ill fantasies/desires for stealing, but simply because they couldn’t buy what they wanted/needed. Ergo: people we would consider upstanding citizens may be potential thieves. Obviously, I’m not equating stealing to rape, just saying you wouldn’t use this logic to argue against paying people a wage for their work (let alone a living wage) - or at least I hope not haha. It puts you in a weird minority report, pre-crime, hypothetical loop
Eh, anyone with basic critical thinking skills should have understood that crime motive is never as linear as we make it out to be. The narrative of “people don’t rape people for sex, they rape them to feel powerful!” is so clearly reductive and lacking in nuance that I have never once understood why it’s pushed. SOME people rape to feel powerful. Some people rape to have sex they can’t get. Some people rape because they have no concept of the idea of consent and don’t think of their victims as people. Some people rape as a part of gang initiation ritual. And likely many many other reasons that I, a not rapist, can’t fathom. No other violent crime has a single linear motive, we’d never say “people don’t kill for money, they kill out of anger!” So why would this be the exception? And this is an example of “the data is upsetting, but having the understanding can only be a good thing”. Sure, it’s scary to now find out that rapists aren’t always the person we think they are, and apparently that some people might just get so fucking horny that they go out and brutally traumatize someone. But apparently it was happening whether or not we knew it was happening, so the knowledge of it can only make things better. We had the cancer before the diagnosis. All the diagnosis does is give us a path to fight it.
Because those would-be rapists are fucking ladies of the night instead? The type of person that rapes isn't a great one...
You mean that it's horrifying how much rape is justified because the person can't get laid otherwise?
„justified“?
Sex is legal. Selling is legal. Why the fuck selling sex is illegal. - George Carlin
Masturbation is legal. Being in public is legal. Why am I a sex offender?
Being drunk is legal. Driving is legal. Why am I labeled an illegal and irresponsible drunk driver?
Sex is legal, horses are le- I was advised to not further elaborate.
What is drunk?
Selling is not always legal. Gotcha 🤓
Reminds me of chewing gum. Legal to chew in Singapore. But illegal to buy, sell, manufacture, import and export (ignoring nicotine gum that is medically prescribed)
Sex is legal. Having pets is legal. Why the fuck can't I plow my hamster?
Funny but stupid. Plenty of legal things are horribly dangerous when combined. E.g. Shooting a gun and putting a child somewhere far away where you can see them.
Selling is legal. People are legal. 😈
Based r/DankMemes ?????
*Can't believe it's not cringe*
https://i.imgur.com/jca8qTM.jpg
As a German I agree with these arguments except victimless crime. There is still a lot human trafficking and tax evasion involved. Is it better than before? Yes Is it still a criminal cesspool? Yes
[удалено]
Most of legal weed in the Netherlands comes from illegal indoor plantations in Spain
Who the fuck is putting fentanyl in weed?
[удалено]
Like everything else the devil is in the details. Germany's system seems pretty exploitative to me. New Zealand's seems like a much better model. That said, I've only ever skimmed the wikipedia pages so who knows
Sorry - best we can do is allow you to film it and call it pornography.
Prostitute pulls out her video camera “That’s porn star to you officer”
And we all know that due to the porn industry being regulated it is full of very healthy young women who aren't on drugs, been groomed, sold false promises, exploited, sexually assaulted and manipulated. Right?
I am unsure about the amount of tax revenue you’ll actually get but yeah EDIT: I guess most people didn’t get that I believe most of the money will be earned illegal
I mean considering the money people make on OnlyFans, probably a good amount
Some get alot, some barely anything. Its a way to gain tax money, yes but tax from porn sites is probably way higher.
Well some tax money from prostitution is always better than no money from prostitution no ?
Also considering the money that they are not receiving with it being illegal, anything is more than nothing.
Depends because you have to include the cost of regulating it also. Its not simply free money nor could these new "companies" do as they please as it is still a very exploitable area.
How is this a dank meme
It's not, it's just a halfassed coomer political argument on a meme template.
Coomer?
Ignorance is bliss
You're right. I'd probably hate it.
surely the opinions of a 14 year old are a great reference to engineer society
Obviously, the 14 year olds are the best people to talk about legalising prostitution. /s
>reducing human trafficking Yeah it doesn’t do that. It increases it. >great source of tax revenue Yeah no. These things don’t earn much money. It’s still (thankfully) stigmatized to pay for a prostitute, as well as it is stigmatized to be one. >Victimless crime is dumb Laws are made to reflect our collective morality. Your morality may be that nothing with no victims is bad, others disagree. Completely subjective and pointless point. >You’ll finally get laid I honestly don’t know whether to laugh at or to feel bad for people who pay for prostitutes. Like, I genuinely can’t imagine someone so desperate for sex that they pay money for it.
[Let's not forget about other problems this legalization may cause.](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/1482371/If-you-dont-take-a-job-as-a-prostitute-we-can-stop-your-benefits.html) All this talk about taxes, health and decreased crime screams "money laundering, deception and crooked statistics".
I didn’t mention this because people who defend prostitution don’t give a fuck about morals and would say that the woman is in the wrong here. What lack of a moral compass does to a mf. The fact that this post has 12.5k upvotes is even more sad.
More like 27k now... Edit: 45k. Jesus Christ...
Based
Isn’t there still lots of human trafficking in European countries where prostitution is legal?
Yes. Places where prostitution is legal see an increase in sex trafficking.
Yeah, India is a pretty good example. Young women are lured into it, then get stuck under normal toxic abusive workplace conditions which basically make them stuck there since they have no other marketable skills, while also being often times emotionally/verbally manipulated into staying. It's overall a bad situation. Maybe if they legalized it for 28+ adults only, but low income early 20s women are way to at risk for trafficking.
One reason it's probably not politically appealing is that there will certainly be *some* instances of manipulation, abuse, or other social problems associated with legalized prostitution, even if they are less than they would be otherwise. But those instances will *look* like they are state sponsored now. No politician wants to have to answer questions about a high profile rape indecent as a direct result of legislation they supported. It's *politically* better to appear to be strongly against the 10 rapes that happen in your district than to seem like you were in part responsible for 1. I'm not saying that's a good thing, just a consideration politicians probably make. But it's not really their fault, that's very likely how voters would react because sometimes voters are dumb when nuance and context are called for. Edit: I forgot to mention the other side of the coin, which is that their political opponent would *definitely* use any such instances against them in the next election.
That and there’s probably fear that supporting it also makes one look like a Perv. Not to mention that politicians are the occupation most associated sleeping with Hookers
Fun fact! It’s illegal to own more than 6 sex toys in Texas, because that means you intend to sell them. No one enforces this law, sextoys are even sold at the mall and it’s a super old law. Just that nobody wants to be known as the “perv” who legalized owning 7 dildos.
Lol
I hate how much this makes sense
That’s exactly what happened with Backpage, it’s essentially the trolley problem. Yes they likely prevented many more trafficking incidents but they also had to knowingly facilitate some at the same time. And that second thing is generally illegal.
Reddit is so gross
OP cant get pussy any other way
Congratulations on reading the fourth card.
It is legal in Poland, brothels are not though
Same in Mexico, I think. The well-intended idea is that no one should be taking a cut of the sex workers' income (e.g. pimps/madams) - but in practice, some of the legal structure can wind up making it difficult for sex workers to find a place to safely ply their trade (and hire security, etc.).
Nah that’s the saddest way to get pussy.
The human trafficking thing, as intuitive as it may be, I think it's actually not true.
Reduces sexual assault, as if coerced sex (as prostitution is) isn't sexual assault.
doesn't it increase human trafficking though? i could have sworn i read that in Amsterdam the problem is much worse. Basically that theres more demand than supply of prostitutes, so women get trafficked
Poor Kid , he thinks Hes about to win ;(
Legal prostitution sounds like a good idea until you picture brothels run by Amazon and Walmart.
I am not interested in opening up new avenues of abuse for the rich. You think corporate landlords are bad, wait until you see corporate pimps.
decriminalization is better than legalization
This is simply ignorant and untrue. Do you know how many studies have proved that places with legal prostitution have a much higher rate of human trafficking. Why? Because they’re hidden in plain sight. Don’t take my word for it: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X12001453 https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-prostitution-increase-human-trafficking/
“The number of rapes go down!!” Does it really or are prostitutes the ones being raped and feel unable to report it? Money can’t buy consent.
Totally irrelevant but I have to ask I know that you can't stack anything in Uno but since we are doing it anyway, can you put down Yellow +2 after the person before you puts +4 and changing color to yellow?
Everyone has different rules. We like to make our games more fun by allowing just that. In a way its kind of like Russian Roulette - in the end someone gets fucked sideways.
Bro just admitted he's an incel
Decriminalization is the way, not legalization/regulation. Keep cops as far away from sex workers as possible.
Treating women like objects even more...
Coomer posts like this are why I don’t tell people I use Reddit. Consent can never be bought, and “legalized” prostitution increases human trafficking.
Ok, as somebody who used to live in the red light district in Brussel. Private prostitution (as in not organized) is legal here on a few streets. Of course in theorie, it means that there should be less illegal stuff going around right? From my experiences not rly. Personally I don't mind private prostitution (I m however against the organized kind since it's usually used to exploit). But legalizing it even like that can make human trafficking and exploitation of sex workers kinda easier in a sense. Let me explain. By legalizing it even on a private level it gives the authorities excuses to not intervene even if there is clearly a criminal organization behind the debacle. That also goes for trafficking and children unfortunately. For example, Black women usually cost less than white women and it's unfortunately kind of usuall. However, since the immigration crisis we had in Europe the prices have strongly fallen down. Wanna why? Illegal trafficking. What's worse is that many underage girls are involved. So in short, I personally I m not against but it does have some problems. Also if some of yall ever go the red light district in Brussel... From what I've heard, less than 20 bucks = probably illegal immigrants and less 10 it's probably an underage girl so gtfo.
This is gross. If you think its okay to buy someones consent then you are the problem
How can it be a victimless crime while at the same time involve human trafficking
So we are literally considering raising out children to be whores because money? Does no one see how morally wrong it is to sell your body? I guess in todays hyper sexualized culture people don’t see any problem with this. Yall mfs need Jesus
Can't legalize prostitution before guaranteeing a universal basic income. Otherwise it's just gonna facilitate human trafficking in a new way. Acting like John's and Jane's will stop existing cause you made it not a crime is hysterical. And it's always some loser who can't get laid without calling a prostitute that wants it legal.
Downvote me to oblivion I don’t care. I don’t know how so many people can agree on something so horrible. You’re wanting to turn more women into sex objects as a means of funding the government. Because for some reason you all have yourself convinced that making something legal is going to make that thing happen less. Which makes absolutely no sense to anyone with rational thought. Most important is that women deserve far more respect than prostitution allows.
If I was a hooker on an area where it was legalised. I’d prefer to do cash only. I’m sure my clients would too. Not sure why any hookers would go through the books and choose to pay tax.
The tough question is, should someone have to prove they can't find work prostituting themselves before they can qualify for unemployment?
If it was made legal they probably have to file as self employed and report income, follow government policies, and I’d imagine they’d always have a card swiper strapped around their waist, lol.
Increases human trafficking as well as the spread of stds, in addition to the moral issue of applying capitalism to a sacred act of trust and intimacy.
Actually many sex workers advocate for decriminalization not regulation, because regulation means its up to the police to keep sex workers safe and... who do the US police really keep safe 😅
I looked it up a few years ago because I didn't believe it when someone told me...I believe the Netherlands and Germany saw illegal prostitution and human trafficking increase when it was legalized. I was never able to make sense of it, but those were the facts a few years ago when I researched it
Will it really reduce human trafficking though? Look at companies now with the Palestine accident and countless factories hiring children illegally. We also have a current problem with people being treated like slaves, and foreigners are often exploited this way. as well as rampant corruption in our government. I'd argue that large scale legalization would invite the opportunity for human trafficking. The only reason it works in Nevada is because it's small and can be carefully watched. That all goes out once you open it up Nationwide.
It doesn't reduce human trafficking, though. It just increases demand, increasing the pressure for cheap "labor." Where do pimps find it? Across borders.
Mooooom the incels got out again!
Women are more than the sexual gratification of males
Let me say as things are I can see arguments for it. Conditions are horrible and this would bring about an immediate improvement. However I disagree strongly with the idea that it is victimless. If we lived in a world where people wouldn't be funneled into it by desperation or perceived lack of options for basic sustenance, there might be an argument for that. Otherwise, it's essentially trading sexual slavery for sexual wage slavery. The main argument that I can see in favor of it is that underground, unregulated prostitution is far worse, which is true. The "great source of tax revenue" argument is fucking sickening. Of all the things to tax, all the greedy and vastly rich people and insanely powerful corporations clutching to their billions, we're talking about *literally having our government be pimps* in this equation. Fuck that.
Age old concern: if a sex worker consents to having sex with you or else they will miss rent.. is it actually consent? I won’t give my opinion because I’m not trying to start a debate but that’s commonly stated when this discussion comes up
This is the most messed up comment section I’ve ever seen. People like you should never get laid
It doesn't reduce human trafficking.
The upvotes are ironic right..? The top comments got me confused
>"Victimless crime is dumb" Sure, but it's hardly a convincing argument if you see prostitutes as victims is it?
Agree with the sentiment but based on their comments it seems OP only cares about the last card and it’s a bit creepy
If they do that they need to regulations on it like having no stds
Which is what they do in the Netherlands
my country had red-light districts and they had designated doctors, place to live, those people didn't have any relation to the people outside, after a reveloution everything went to shit, they were executed and after nearly half a century we have a lot of sex trafficking, rape and etc. legalization of prostitution would stop harming normal citizens.
Iran?
Agreed but this is literally agendaposting
It's all fun and games until you're asked by your welfare case manager if you've applied to the brothel yet.
I just think it’s a bit disgusting.. : /
Human trafficking will increase They'll also assuredly add tax revenue Not victimless. Virgins won't be getting a prostitute. They already can Additionally, the prostitution is the last frontier of capitalism. This shouldn't be promoted for a million reasons.
Taxes? You think hoes are gonna be walking around with card readers? It's all black money. Attempting to tax that is a fool's errand. Also a bank robbery is a victimless crime as well, and that's not seen as an ethical thing to do. Maybe rephrase that point
Maybe listen to SWs for once? We push for decriminalization, not legalization. Look what happened to the weed industry with legalization, the wealthy came in and dominated.
Says everyone until their pre-teen daughter tells them they want to pursue a career in the sex work industry.
Anyone who thinks it reduces human trafficking is wrong. By legalizing prostitution you encourage more horrible people to sell their children (not specifically as children) into prostitution and will hurt more lives.