Sex for Money
Does it make sense that hardcore pornography is legal but prostitution is not? No really, I'm asking.
posted by kStyle @ 12:07 PM
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the original kStyle blog.
Sunday, November 07, 2004
Does it make sense that hardcore pornography is legal but prostitution is not? No really, I'm asking.
float
the original kStyle blog.
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3 Comments:
Never made sense to me. I understand why prostitution is illegal--that is, I comprehend the reasons why people want it so--but I don't agree with any of them. Mostly it boils down to prostitution=wrong, therefore government shouldn't give its stamp of approval.
But government shouldn't be in the business of making things illegal just for fear of seeming to approve of them. And in this case it's the ultimate victimless crime, more so even than marijuana use. I mean, a government forbidding two consenting adults from coming to any terms they like regarding sex? It's not right. And the benefits of legalizing include the fact that prostitutes could have access to health care, which would cut down considerably on the risks associated with the practice today. Heck, they could even unionize. In any case it would put the violent pimps out of business, put the money in the hands of the women doing the work, and generally become a much safer--pardon the word--proposition.
And given the prevalence of prostitution despite its illegality--like many "vices" the government has seen fit to ban--it's hardly a risk that legalizing it will lead to a new thriving business for otherwise unlikely businesswomen.
As for pornography, it might be only a matter of time before Bush 2.5 decides to have a go at banning that too, and as this is one of the very very few issues on which he and some avenues of feminism find common ground, it might even be possible to achieve.
To answer your question, there's nary a reason that I can think of why one is legal and the other isn't: I guess the idea is that it's okay to pay someone to have sex with someone else if there's a camera in the room, but it's not okay to pay someone to have sex with you if there's no camera in the room.
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.
Later on today after I get some work done, I'll post the story of when your humble Commenter was solicited on the streets of the big city.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean--Do you mean that the conditions under which porn is made are more controlled and safer than prostitution? The thing that's so strange about porn is that the actors are actually having sex. it's fiction, but it's not...
Eric here, again:
I see Ann's point, but the very thing that makes pornography safer is that it's legal. In other words, its being legal allows the industry to have an association and to self-regulate, etc., in the way other industries do. And to have a free market, so that an employee (actor, actress, whatever) who isn't being treated well can go elsewhere. None of this is true in prostitution because everything is done basically in secret.
There are definitely issues in the porn industry (only the film itself is caught on tape--the business side of it can still be prickly), but there have been huge strides in the last ten years, specifically with regard to the health and safety of the actors. If prostitution were legal, it could avail itself of some of the same possibilities.
I think part of the answer to Karen's question might be this: pornography earns billions and billions of dollars a year. It's become mainstream in nearly every possible way, while prostitution--which is inherently more illicit, in terms of people doing it in secret regardless of the illegality--is not only NOT going to generate that kind of cash flow, but which is sort of unable to be audited in the same way anyway.
That said, if it were legal, they could have clubs and other places one could go, officially registered or whatnot, that would guarantee a minimum health standard and that could keep books. Maybe prostitution WOULD generate as much $$$ as porn. Who knows?
I have a friend who did both, incidentally--porn actress and "escort"--and wrote a very interesting book about it. Both lines of work are quite fascinating, particularly on the day-to-day level.
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