Prostitution to be made il/legal

It's de-criminalising the women (& possibly men) who are prostitutes, and making the act of paying for prostitution illegal.

It's a very positive thing.

OU812 wrote: »

It's de-criminalising the women (& possibly men) who are prostitutes, and making the act of paying for prostitution illegal.

It's a very positive thing.

Why not regulate it with licensing (vetted, strict licensing) and criminalise people who pay for unlicensed prostitution?

Thereby decreasing demand for trafficked prostitutes and therefore less trafficked people to suffer and then also allowing those who choose of their own free will to continue to make a living from it?

anniemcl wrote: »

Legalised prostitution increases the slave trade in sex industry.

No doubt it's great news for anyone who can't get laid but it's bad news for eh...slave girls I suppose from poor countries and families who feel the need to sell their daughter off to pay some bank debts.

But hey...capitalism is the best.

Capitalism rocks for bankers with small dicks.

Why do you think men go to Thailand?

Eh is this in response to my post? Legalised and vetted prostitution would reduce illegal trafficked women more imo than criminalising the use of prostitutes by decreasing the actual desire for the black market sex trade. It would also allow women and men who wished to take part to do so with safeguards in place for both sides.
How you license and vet it I don't have details to mind but I'm sure we could look to other states who have such legislation in place.

Laws are made to prevent a person's actions from having a negative affect on another person. A person that chooses to be a prostitute harms nobody. A person that chooses to buy sex from a willing prostitute harms nobody. That's why it should be legal.

Trafficking does hurt people but it isn't prostitutes or the people that avail of the service, that are doing the trafficking. Its like cigarettes, thousands are brought into the country illegally each year but this doesn't affect the transaction between the person in the shop and the shop owner.

pablomakaveli wrote: »

Also the figures regarding prostitution Ruhama give never seem to be backed up with evidence. For example, if we take what Ruhama say as a fact then trafficking is endemic in Ireland. Yet almost everytime i read about prostitutes being charged by the gardai in the papers they always seem to mention that the women were working of their own free will. This contradicts what Ruhama say as surely we'd be finding these cases of traffickingall the time if it was that widespread.

Also borne out by this http://www.turnoffthebluelight.ie/information/brothel-keepers/ which shows that in 2006-09, 21 women were convicted of "brothel keeping", and just 4 men were. Many of the women convicted were essentially running a co-op.

Pawwed Rig wrote: »

Do we know the origins of the turnofthebluelight site? I wouldn't like to support something to subsequently find out it is set up by some dubious source.

Seems to make sense to consult with the industry themselves rather than some old woman in rural Ireland who is never affected by this issue.

Funny story. My Dad was a Garda and he told me that the busiest time of the year for Prostitution was the Ploughing Championships. He said that women travel from England especially for it due to the hight demand for hookers.

I've heard the same about the Fianna Fail Ard Fheis...

Can I ask: how many people contributing to this thread are not male?

I expect an insignificant minority. Not exactly a balanced discussion.

I've discussed this at length before in other threads. Many in this thread are scapegoating one organisation to avoid discussing the the real issue.

It's childish because the evidence for the efficacy of this approach is actually coming from other European countries.

The fact is that none of you have accurate figures for the structure of the sex market in this country because it is an illicit market. Therefore, many here are exploiting this to place an irrational and unrealistic burden of proof on those figures in order to preserve their preconceived beliefs. But while statistics are useful, more important are the personal testimonials from sex workers who have left the business for whatever reasons, because these tell us about what life is actually like for sex workers (male and female) in this country.

Someone here said, and many agreed by the looks of things, that the 'majority' of sex workers of their own free will. That's one way of putting it. Another is that people become sex workers out of desperation, because they have found themselves in a bad situation without the resources (psychological, economic, human) to adequately feed and shelter themselves - that family, friends, community, society and the state have let them down. If someone has evidence to the contrary, please correct me, but as a human being with a wife who values her body very much and shares it only with me, I suspect, as an average human being in Irish society, that this is not something anyone but the most unusual would choose entirely out of their own volition as an aspirational 'career move'.

And they're the sex workers who aren't trafficked which numerous United Nations reports (and reports from Interpol, etc.) say is one of the fastest growing industries, not just illicit industries, in the world.

So let's call a spade a spade and say that, in the sex industry here, the likelihood is if you purchase the services of a sex worker, you're either sticking your manflesh in a woman in very desperate times (and working for a pimp) or a woman who is a prisoner and an illegal immigrant also in very desperate times. (I would say different statistics pertain to male sex workers of various types.) But you might get lucky. You might get a lovely Dublin 4 girlie who's selling sex because she thinks it's a good career move. No, you see, prostitution generally is a business borne out of vulnerability.

So, what's all this about? This legislation. Based on experience from other countries, empowering women to report without fear of arrest, in the first instance, is a practical measure to get more data on the industry. This will inform more strategic and effective responses, whatever they may be. The second is, yes, to criminalise the procurement of sex as a deterrant because it as been deemed that prostitution is, as reality rather than theory has it, bad for the sex workers (and probably beyond). This is a complex issue because this legislation involves not only codifying a pragmatic response to a perceived problem which is designed to protect people, but it involves value judgements which reflects the state of our social mores, morals and political reality.

I believe strongly that on these boards and beyond, the topic of prostitution takes place in a vacuum. There is a tendency of posters here to begin with a priori the assumption that prostitution is a simple economic exchange, therefore eliding the moral issues (out of self-interest), and so when discussing the pragmatic, political issues, they become meaningless.

Full legalisation and regulation is a sensible consideration, like similar strategies to deal with other illicit cargo by making them legitimate. But evidence from other countries shows that this alone cannot solve the problem - as in the Netherlands and Germany, prostitution remains an underground industry, meaning that sex workers right now are in desparate trouble and, therefore, sex workers need to be empowered to get support when needed, and to escape if necessary.

So: I support this legislation (even if I despise FG's Christian/Catholic rhetoric). I think the very fact that it gets so much snarling attention from men (I'm one, too) means that the legislation must already be working!