I felt very sorry when she said it's difficult to take deposits because payment processors are cruel, that she can't report a horrible client to police, that the govt refuses to acknowledge the work but takes the taxes, and all the precautions escorts have to take against cops. This work should be legal.
> You can in fact get issued an escort license in some cities (e.g., San Francisco or Grand Chute, or Jefferson County, WA). I don’t know if this is a good idea, neither I nor anybody I know has applied for this, though I seriously considered. It’s possible it might grant you some legal protection, but also possible it might give you some legal issues, as it puts a lot of information about you in a government file that clearly states you are in fact an escort.
Based on that, from an escort viewpoint, the legal protections are not a worthy tradeoff for privacy.
Ultimately, in the context of the country/culture, legal protection is a progressive position, but it's not sufficient, unless complemented by a degree of anonymity. Not sure how that could work, though!
It seems clear to me anyway that what she was referring to is a similar trap marijuana growers have here in CA and other legal states. Namely that just because SF gives you a permit doesn’t make it legal (in that everyone who could come arrest you would not), and it may actually make it worse by putting you in a database of ‘known offenders’ for the next higher level of law enforcement to come after you. The state of California doesn’t recognize any permit in SF, and neither do the Feds, and if she crosses state lines in her work, the feds could go after her for it.
Would they do that right now? Probably not. Would some future different administration? Possibly.
And, since it’s required to use legal names and the like, and these records are permanent, it could be a decade or whatever in the future when politics have changed, or there could be a records leak and now your real legal name and occupation and home address or whatever is all over the Internet, and who knows when or if something weird happens.
Gun owners recently started having their records shared with various universities for instance, which include home addresses, names, and what they own - and have no legal recourse near as I can tell.
> Ultimately, in the context of the country/culture, legal protection is a progressive position, but it's not sufficient, unless complemented by a degree of anonymity. Not sure how that could work, though!
Legal, non-anonymous and socially respectable escort services used to exist, you know. It existed in south india as a practice for hundreds of years before the british came.
"before the british came."
More accurately - before Islamic conquerors came. The Vijayanagara empire was utterly destroyed by the Sultanates.
Devadasi as an institution was shattered first by Islamic invaders - who even record this in their journals. In-fact most Islamic historians explicitly declaim this as liberation of women in India and how Islamic conquest uplifted backward society in that era.
Yes, this is why I've mentioned "in the context of the country/culture". Surely in the country you mention, or I suppose others (e.g. Netherlands) there is no social stigma, but in the USA, there is, and it needs to be taken into account.
Devadasi system :) but it's erased history at this point and I also didn't know about it growing up. For historical sources I'd recommend Domingo Paes's book on Vijayanagara empire and Chola inscriptions in the Tanjore temple.
You can also look up Bangalore Nagarathnamma, Veena Dhanammal, Mylapore Gowri ammal, Coimbatore Thayi, Balasaraswathi, Muddupalani. Some of them have books written on them.
If you'd like more sources, plz let me know -- I'll send some book titles your way.
> Legal, non-anonymous and socially respectable escort services
You can still hire no-sex escorts to accompany you to an event - such as a work event, or anything where you don't want people to think you're a saddo who can't get a girlfriend. I can imagine a closet queen employing such a service.
> the legal protections are not a worthy tradeoff for privacy.
I don't think it really conveys any meaningful legal protections. I suspect it allows you to operate, but it won't mean that you will be treated with the same respect that a non escort would have got.
They are still not allowed to use normal payment providers, they cannot form companies, they cannot operate their own premises, with security (as that would border on prostitution, which is a stupid distinction)
Think of it as the police allowing pot dealers, even though it was still illegal to posses.
She describes in the article how she was essentially raped. Can you explain how legalized prostitution would have helped her in that situation? Because it seems to me that there is no way the guy would have been convicted of rape. Furthermore, future johns would avoid her if they knew that she had filed charges against a previous customer. Having sex with men for money is inherently dangerous and I don't think legalization really makes it much safer.
Why would the guy not have been convicted of rape if he raped her? You're making lots of assumptions to "show" how legalizing prostitution would not make it "much safer", but common-sense tells us that legalization is a good first step to making it a bit safer. In the Netherlands police and social workers sometimes protect the outdoor areas in which prostitutes work (e.g. car parks). Why would that not make their workplace safer?
> future johns would avoid her if they knew that she had filed charges against a previous customer
So maybe she wouldn't tell them. Obviously, legalization should also imply a certain protection of their identities (e.g. if they are witnesses in a trial).
I think you don't know how the justice system operates if you think every charge of rape leads to a conviction. In some jurisdictions prostitution is legal, such as Germany, but, afaik, that has not led to a higher number of johns being sentenced. The idea that legalization would somehow make prostitution seem to me to not be grounded in reality. More it seems like make believe for the customers: "It's not us clients making prostitutes unsafe, it's the damn police!"
Social workers and police can of course make outdoor areas in which prostitutes work safer even if prostitution is not legalized. So that is not an argument in favor of legalization.
I don't think every rape charge leads to conviction, though. Moreover, saying that clients make prostitution unsafe is like saying that drivers make the roads unsafe. What's the point of that?
I didn't present an argument for the legalization of prostitution. In my opinion, there is no need for an argument since it's completely obvious to any normal human being that it is not a crime. Why on earth would selling sex for money be crime? Is it the sex that makes it a crime? What's wrong with sex?
There is a lot of hypocrisy in the discussion of this question, though. People frequently confound other crimes with prostitution that already are crimes and would continue to be crimes after legalization such as human trafficking, rape, coercion, sexual assault, etc.
Besides, it is completely obvious that legalization improves the working conditions of prostitutes. Contrary to what you state, the police cannot make outdoor areas where sex workers work secure if prostitution is illegal, since the police is forced to persecute crimes. They'd have to arrest these sex workers. Consequently, these will conduct their business far away from the police, which is exactly what makes their work particularly insecure when it is illegal. This is just one issue. There are many other reasons why illegal activities are generally less secure than the same activities when they are legal. Illegality attracts all kinds of shady people you can avoid if you are allowed to go legit. That's not even a controversial thesis.
You are using phrases such as "completely obvious", "common-sense", and "not controversial" where they aren't warranted. What is obvious to you may not be obvious to others.
In Europe, laws around prostitution varies a lot. In some countries buying and selling sex is legal, in some only buying sex is illegal, and in others prostitution is completely forbidden. There appears to be no correlation between prostitutes' working conditions and the legality of prostitution. In Germany prostitution is legal, yet a massive number of women are trafficked from Eastern European countries to Germany, ostensibly because they are willing to sell sex cheaper than German women.
Yes, police and social workers can make outdoor areas safer whether or not prostitution is legalized. That's a false dichotomy.
No, these phrases are the right ones and I used them in a very literal sense and deliberately. However, being obvious and not controversial does not imply that there isn't someone who doesn't (want to ) get it. That even happens with mathematical proofs. What annoys me, however, is that you committed the very same fallacy in your reply that I mentioned in the post you replied to - deliberately mixing up highly illegal human trafficking with prostitution in order to somehow argue against the legality of prostitution.
> There appears to be no correlation [...]
Citation needed - but in any case that wasn't the point and you know it. There is no sound argument why people shouldn't sell sex for money, besides religious and other ideological arguments which are not sound (otherwise, why not use them in mathematical proofs, too?). Usually at this point people with ulterior motives shift their rhetoric to arguing that the clients rather than the prostitutes are committing a crime - aka "the Swedish model", where you order a very expensive pizza and it gets delivered by an attractive woman. They then go on to lay out that those clients cause great harm. That's not true either, they cause small harm like in many other stressful customer-oriented jobs such as working as a stewardess. But I'm resting my case here. Suffices to say that going from very high income to zero in a short time is problematic...
> There appears to be no correlation between prostitutes' working conditions and the legality of prostitution. In Germany prostitution is legal, yet a massive number of women are trafficked from Eastern European countries to Germany, ostensibly because they are willing to sell sex cheaper than German women.
The prostitutes country of origin somehow proves that it being legal does make it safer? Where do you take information about this or that country prostitution working conditions from?
> Yes, police and social workers can make outdoor areas safer whether or not prostitution is legalized. That's a false dichotomy.
But that is different topic. The area being safe for general public is not the same thing as prostitutes being protected or able to call cops or able to use those social services.
So if trafficking is illegal why not just crack down harder on trafficking? Your argument is like "online fraud is rampant" let's make purchasing items online illegal because we can't stop the fraud.
Legalization would make it much easier for escorts to coordinate on john screening. See for example the research done by Cunningham/Deangelo/Tripp on the effect of Craigslist shutting down their Erotic Services section. And that paper wasn't even on legalization, just a small piece of normalization that allowed coordination. There is also a paper by Cunningham on the accidental legalization of indoor prostitution in Rhode Island and its effect on crime and violence. Fascinating stuff.
