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Comment by hiram112 | Hacker News Reader

It isn't just the religious right that pushes for backwards prostitution laws. It is also... feminists.

Aren't feminists always going on about "my body, my right" when it comes to abortion and other forms of contraceptives? Of course, but when it comes to prostitution, they seem to take a 'differing' view.

Why?

When prostitution is decriminalized, the price of sex goes down, as would be expected in any market where the product / service carries less legal risk and societal stigmas than before. Thus, men are far less likely to pay large premiums for sex with non-prostitutes including 'courting', dating, marriage, etc.

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Why not look at numbers rather than anecdotes?

A poll by YouGov in 2016 found that Republicans were 7% more likely than Democrats to believe sex work should remain illegal: https://www.vox.com/2016/3/11/11203740/prostitution-legal-me...

But the real gap was between the genders. Women were 14% more likely to say sex work should be illegal than men. They were also 18% more likely to say it's immoral.

Now what "feminists" think is another question, I doubt that has been studied, and that term means a lot of things to a lot of people. But according to the polls the majority of the opposition in the US to legalizing and tolerating sex work comes from women, regardless of their political orientation.

One can extrapolate that electing more women would lead to harsher laws about sex work and indeed both have happened in the past decade.

Your numbers confirm rather than refute parent's hypothesis. Prostitutes sell what men want more cheaply than other women sell it. Some other women disapprove. Some portion of those other women are feminists.

You could frame this a some kind of regulatory capture by the current monopolists.

YouGov's numbers neither confirm nor refute the parent's hypothesis because women and feminists are not the same thing.

No evidence has been presented to support the parent's anecdotal belief about what feminists think. I have spoken to plenty of feminists over the years and have found them to be split pretty evenly over this issue. My point was that the opposition to legalizing sex work is mostly from females, and may or may not be from feminists (whatever that word even means in 2020).

Some feminists surely do, but conflating some with all is a fallacy of composition that hinders discussion. Your reasoning in the rest of the comment seems rather questionable and veers into seeming even more like a generalization.

There's even a well known shorthand for the subset of feminists that carve out exceptions for sex workers: SWERF. Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminist.

This is not a new issue.

However GP didn't say "all feminists", only "feminists".

If I say "Germans eat bread for breakfast" that's generally understood to mean "In general Germans eat bread for breakfast" or "A majority of Germans eat bread for breakfast". Treating it as if I said "Every German eats bread for every breakfast" would be constructing a straw man. People generally understand that there is variation in every group, even if they don't explicitly put that disclaimer on every sentence.

It is not exactly comparable. Prostitution is an important issue in feminism. Statement "environmentalists support nuclear power" would be a better analogy, because many environmentalists are for nuclear power and many are against.

I'm not convinced the comment I replied to is a valid generalization capturing what the majority of feminists believe.

I thought we’d decided “not all X” arguments were inadmissible?

not all Hacker News posters are full of shit? Help out, I'm kinda lost now.

This is untrue rather than inadmissible.

You're treating feminism as a simplistic monolith rather than a multifaceted movement across different cultural groups and sects. There are plenty of differing opinions and trends within the umbrella of feminism that don't always agree with one another, often the divisions seem to fall across generational and national boundaries. It seems to me though that feminists, and the left in general, in the US are very much in favor of the decriminalization of sex work.

There are always outliers with strange opinions in any sufficiently large movement, but a much more common feminist position is to be strongly in support of sex workers rights and safety.

I can just point to Sweden. The meaning of prostitution has change in the public discussed to be the same as rape, regardless of consent. Being pro-prostitution here is the same as being pro-rape which is very anti-feminist in eye of the Swedish public and people with such views are seen as far-right.

The two arguments that people here use is that a person that do sex for money would not had done so voluntary, thus there no consent. The second argument is that paying a person to do something with their body is the same as buying a human being, which would be slavery.

How do either of the arguments not apply to every single job or task that anyone does for renumeration? I would not do my job without being paid, therefore I am being forced to work against my will?

I have seen multiple feminists make the argument that the phrase "selling their bodies" also applies to football players, chemical workers[1], coal miners. I find it fairly persuasive.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edAxujKev1I

I would not suggest applying logic to most political positions.

Views are formed in the gut, not the brain.

People are against prostitution because they find it disgusting. Their justifications are all ex post facto.

And this applies to most views, including ones I hold (although that's difficult to admit).

> The meaning of prostitution has change in the public discussed to be the same as rape, regardless of consent.

As a Swede, I say that that is an exageration. But it is true that very few, if any, public figure dare to speak up for legalizing prostitution. On the other hand, it's not a crime that the police prioritize, and last time I heard, no one have been more than fined for paying a sex-worker.

When the RFSL and Amnesty made their announcement to work for legalization there was a lot of media focus on the question. There was a lot of anger from people and articles about people leaving Amnesty and the Swedish branch making statement against the decision.

It was also not many months ago that V (the most left leaning party) suggested that the punishment for paying a sex-worker should be increased to similar levels as rape, with jail time as minimum.

We could say that V views are a fringe part of the feminist movement in Sweden, but I am not sure that is actually a correct assessment. As you say, few, if any, public figure dare to speak up with opposing views on the topic. It is hard to estimate popular opinion outside of political polls.

>The second argument is that paying a person to do something with their body is the same as buying a human being, which would be slavery.

Being compensated for your work is the extreme opposite of slavery.

> I can just point to Sweden. The meaning of prostitution has change in the public discussed to be the same as rape

is this really representative of how the public thinks or just a small pocket within a pocket of politically correct snowflakes? Knowing plenty of Swedes (most are much closer to the far left than to the far right). I'm familiar with Sweden's (strange) view of what constitutes rape (see Assange), and personally think that is a step forward. But I never met anyone argue that "all prostitution is sex slavery" or "anti-feminist".

> paying a person to do something with their body is the same as buying a human being, which would be slavery.

This seems like a gross simplification. If I offer my body in exchange for money without a middle-man/pimp then it is still my choice. Consider an individual with below avg IQ unable to find meaningful work using his head but equipped with an unusually strong body/frame. Is it slavery if I freelance myself out to a moving company and lug around boxes and furniture all day? What about a male gay prostitute who voluntarily makes money on the side. It is even besides the point if the person is supporting a drug-habit or not.

You can't pretend to be pro choice and feminist if at the same time the system under which you think socially outcasts everyone who thinks differently.

I don't think it is representative of the public's view. See my other comment.

I think the problem with many feminists in Sweden are that they are a rather theoretical kind, centered around gender studies at the universities. And they think that they know better than the poor uneducated women who sell sex what they want and need themselves.

>paying a person to do something with their body is the same as buying a human being, which would be slavery

Just make a law so that persons must do something with payers bodies, not vice versa. It solves two problems with one shot: it’s no slavery anymore and finally you get some service.

It seems like neither outliers nor the consensus. Rather, it seems like lots of people call themselves feminists but there are passionate disagreements among those people about

- the rights of sex workers

- the status of trans people

and a bunch of other things.

Perhaps the most prominent feminist in Germany (Alice Schwarzer) is vehemently against it, although not for the stated reasons of the gp.

> She has written in favor of the continued legality of circumcision of male children.[6]

She's really not very likeable.

Yeah I mean she is a pathological liar, she stated publicly twice that she had an abortion and admitted decades later that in fact she didn't. She also evaded taxes by keeping a bank account in Switzerland and paid employees of EMMA far worse than the common market price, all while renting a huge publicly owned property in cologne for the magazine for almost nothing.

Some self-described feminists think prostitution should be legal, and some don’t. There’s not one uniform “feminist opinion” on the subject.

As for those who are against it, sure, maybe some reason in the cynical way you describe. But I think the lion’s share are motivated by other reasons. Typically they argue that prostitution is coercive, as you can’t call something “consensual” that someone needs to do to survive.

Personally I think prostitution should be just as legal as any other kind of work; but that’s not a license to grossly misinterpret the arguments of those who disagree.

Some feminists. I doubt that is a majority view.

There's strong factions on both sides.

Feminism is the advocacy of women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes.

That's your definition of feminism...

Ah this comment sums up perfectly.

You don’t need complex market forces. It is fairly common for people to disallow other people from doing things:

* for their own good

* for perceived externalities

This is common enough for drugs, heavy metal, child employment, and contracting that it doesn’t surprise me they would apply it to prostitution. In fact, I think the probability of women wanting to corner the market for sex is low.

For context, I'm a left-wing Canadian socialist.

1. Drugs should all be legal as Portugal's legalization of all drugs has shown us the war on drugs is a massive boondoggle. [1] So has Canada's legalization of marijuana.

2. Child employment is legislated on the basis that children aren't able to make their own decisions, and that sounds ok.

3. Heavy metals, I assume you don't mean the music, is regulated to protect the welfare of the entire population.

4. Contracting?

> I think the probability of women wanting to corner the market for sex is low.

I can't think of a single reason to legislate consenting adults exchanging money for sex. It's not for me, but as with the war on drugs, the medicine is so much worse than the cure it's time we dropped it. The only thing harmed by regulated, clean and safe prostitution is property value and puritanical sensibilities.

Especially when scientists taught monkeys the value of money and they first thing they did was exchange it for sex. [2] That might be the most fitting epitaph for humanity yet, actually haha.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-radic...

[2] https://www.zmescience.com/research/how-scientists-tught-mon...

A created an account just to tell you that you are wrong about Portuguese laws. It's a common mistake.

Here in Portugal drug use is what we call ”decriminalized”. It's forbidden but not persecutted/punishable.

But I agree that going after drug users is a waste of effort, and more contries should do like us and just go after dealers and distributors.

The only way you could go after users is if you use an extreme islam way, death penalty. Not very ethical.

Indeed, I'm usually more careful to distinguish legalization and decriminalization. Marijuana is however legal in Canada.

Marijuana is still illegal in USA.

Well, not federally, I guess it's an opinion question re: how you feel about states rights.

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