Is it right that prostitution is illegal?

this is arse

sure all their trying to do is earn a crust...

OutlawPete

Bet they have to deal with a few as well.

orourkeda

OutlawPete wrote: »

Bet they have to deal with a few as well.

Yeah. Big crusty growler

Dravokivich

No you're wrong, prostitution is legal, solicitation is illegal.

deirdre_dub

this is arse wrote: »

sure all their trying to do is earn a crust...

Em, someone with the username this is arse asking if prostitution sould be legal?

Sorry - I just had a vision of "this is arse, this is ..." :pac:

orourkeda

It is the oldest profssion after all. Legalisation can't be any worse than what we have at the moment

this is arse

OutlawPete wrote: »

Bet they have to deal with a few as well.

crusties, like hippies?

mikemac

"Any payment is for time and company, anything extra that happens is just between two consenting adults"

That's what they tell me each time :pac:

Celly Smunt

i'm nearly sure it's legal,as far as i know people can only get done for public indecency or trespassing,but if you bring a prostitute home it's legal.I think!

Leelaa22

It hink it should be because then it can be monitered better and safe for the women and the clients.

orourkeda

Dravokivich wrote: »

No you're wrong, prostitution is legal, solicitation is illegal.

So it's legal to sell sex but not to buy it?

Isn't solicitation the act of buying banned goods

PandyAndy

feelingstressed wrote: »

"Any payment is for time and company, anything extra that happens is just between two consenting adults"

That's what they tell me each time :pac:

And your name is feelingstressed? Should you not be feelinggood?

mikemac

gotta relieve the stress

admiralofthefleet

i dunno lol, ask yore ma

chin_grin

feelingstressed wrote: »

gotta relieve the stress

Unless doing the act is what stresses you out in the first place. What a vicious circle!

mahamageehad

As far as i know prostitution is legal. As in the paying for sex part. (I mean we all end up paying for it one way or another right?? :pac:)
It's illegal to run a brothel and to advertise yourself as a prostitute. However an "escort" is legal.

Basically you can't flaunt it on the street or in a brothel, but anywhere else is cool :cool:

OutlawPete

this is arse wrote: »

crusties, like hippies?

Was thinking more of crusty boxers that I hear so much about. Not something I have ever been responsible for as wear silk briefs and have exemplary hygiene and grooming practices.

JimmyCrackCorn

Its legal if you video it not that that's the real point.

Knasher

orourkeda wrote: »

So it's legal to sell sex but not to buy it?

Isn't solicitation the act of buying banned goods

Correct. The idea is that if a prostitute gets into trouble she will still be able to seek protection from the law. While the law still goes as far as it can to restrict prostitution. It's meant to ensure that women who are forced into prostitution are able to get out, though I have no idea how effective it is, probably a lot of people who are trafficked have no idea what their rights are.

Dravokivich

orourkeda wrote: »

So it's legal to sell sex but not to buy it?

Isn't solicitation the act of buying banned goods

Not too sure on the legalese behind it, but the issue is with "making the availablity of it known and/or actively searching for it..."

It, itself is not actually illegal.

mahamageehad wrote: »

As far as i know prostitution is legal. As in the paying for sex part. (I mean we all end up paying for it one way or another right?? :pac:)
It's illegal to run a brothel and to advertise yourself as a prostitute. However an "escort" is legal.

Basically you can't flaunt it on the street or in a brothel, but anywhere else is cool :cool:

Again comes down to solicitation... no escorts advertise an anything that's registered in Ireland for a reason ;P

Knasher wrote: »

Correct. The idea is that if a prostitute gets into trouble she will still be able to seek protection from the law. While the law still goes as far as it can to restrict prostitution. It's meant to ensure that women who are forced into prostitution are able to get out, though I have no idea how effective it is, probably a lot of people who are trafficked have no idea what their rights are.

Not all prostitutes / escorts are trafficked or forced into the sex trade. I'd go as far to say the minority of them would be.

leggo

As far as I understand, though, the laws are so convoluted that there is no regulation of the industry. And, thus, it leads to those stories we hear of women being trafficked under tragic circumstances and so on.

Full legalisation, taxation and regulation is what is needed. Like stripping, if women choose to do it then it's their call and does nobody any harm. If it is fully regulated with set legal guidelines (e.g. a woman can refuse a client, and call the gardai if he refuses to leave, companies have to be fully audited and their clients' pasts are transparent etc...I'm just trying to come up with problems that I'd imagine would be commonplace), and given some good PR to show there's no shame in it or women who choose to do it...then yeah, why not?

The problems we hear about prostitution come from the fact that it is of questionable legality and, thus, vulnerable to criminality.

It's a political minefield though. Not even Ming Flanagan would touch it with a bargepole.

Gunmonkey

Regulation would be more important than legalisation at this point. just making it legal would only explode the situation as it stands now when groups dont have to hide shipping women in to sell them on.

Even restricting it to licensed premesis at first would be something, with mandatory health screenings to prevent STD and Aids spreading, and inspectors to make sure its not just some group of guys with a dozen women locked in a basement.

But your right, politically you would endure far less pain pushing your feet into a woodchipper than the vitrol the "its destroying the moral heart of the country" brigade would dredge up. At least you might get the Womens Rights groups on your side as it would lead to a far safer enviorment for the current "escorts" in the country.

Badgermonkey

I'm with 'The Myers' on this one.

Ruhama et al have been staggeringly disingenuous on the subject for far too long.

By Kevin Myers
Tuesday February 08 2011
According to its justice spokesman, the Labour Party will introduce the "Swedish" laws on prostitution -- by which it is illegal to buy sexual favours, and the male client commits the crime, while the woman remains innocent. And so, thanks to Rampantte Rabbitte, we are back to sex again.

What is it about this subject that causes such widespread irrationality? Why is it laudable for me to pay a woman to massage my scalp or my feet, but if I pay her to massage the parts half-way between, it's disgusting and wicked and someone should dial 999? Yet if no money is involved, this middle-massage is regarded as healthy and normal, and when done by a man on a woman is now regarded as a mandatory part of sex.

However, this almost universal activity becomes uniquely taboo the moment that money is introduced into it. But I can pay for similar services to any other part of my body, and no one says a word. Odd, isn't it?

And once middle-massage becomes unlawful, it is usually controlled by criminals, and professional middle masseuses are usually beyond the protection of the law. Indeed, the whole business is so corrupted by prohibition that many middle masseuses are allegedly "trafficked" in the way that hairdressers and pedicurists seldom seem to be. Though I could be wrong: possibly containers with manipulators of tonsure and toe are smuggled in through Dublin docks at night, and their human cargoes secretly distributed to underground hairdressing and foot-rubbing parlours across the country.

At which point, enter the chorus of disapproving shrieks: I am making light of the trafficking of women as slave-prostitutes! I am trivialising the exploitation of the victims of organised rape! I am being flippant about a crime against humanity!

No I'm not. What I'm actually saying is that there is little or no involuntary trafficking of sex-workers, notwithstanding the allegations by John Cunningham of the Immigration Council of Ireland. He speaks of women and girls "being collected at Dublin Airport and taken to apartments where they were gang-raped for days". After being given "a few days to pull themselves together", they are put into brothels operating across Ireland.

Well, since every single aspect of this -- the kidnapping, the mass-rape, the forcible prostitution -- is already both against the law and comprehensively evil, why is another law needed? And anyway, most of his allegations are fable. A police survey in Britain was unable to find one single authentic case in which a foreign girl had been forcibly trafficked into the country for prostitution against her will. Allegations of kidnap and rape there have usually been made by illegal-immigrants in order to substantiate asylum-seeking claims.

Three years ago, the Swedish government appointed a judge, Anna Skarhed, to examine its anti-prostitution laws. Its directive stated that the inquiry could not suggest, or point in any direction other than that buying of sex should be criminalised. They chose the right person, for she ruled: "Based on a gender equality and human rights perspective . . . the distinction between voluntary and non-voluntary prostitution is not relevant."

This is classically Orwellian double-speak, in which the ideologically-defined abstracts of "equality" and "human rights" entirely invalidate the only absolute human concept, that of personal freedom. So, by Skarhedian standards, a working girl who genuinely chooses to provide middle massages for a living is no "freer" than a sexual galley-slave. Yes, she might think she is, and the galley slave will certainly think she is, but old Skarhed doesn't, and she's the thought-police and so her opinion counts.

Some women are "forced" into prostitution for economic reasons, goes the complaint. Possibly, says Pye Jakobsson, of the Rose Alliance of Swedish sex workers -- but is that any worse than having to clean up faeces in an old people's home?

Supporters of the Swedish whore-law declare that it has reduced the amount of prostitution there. But this is not a "fact", so much as a statement of faith. The Socialstyrelsen -- the Swedish Department of Health -- doesn't know how many sex workers in Sweden there are, and accepts that internet-driven prostitution is almost impossible to calculate or control.

Because this is usually a "crime" without a complainant, the claim that fewer clients are visiting middle masseuses is based on questionnaire-surveys of Swedish men. This surely is a criminological first: that a government tries to measure the levels of "crime" by asking the criminals to own up. Therefore -- no admission, no crime: QED. What a surprise.

The real intention of the Swedish law is certainly not to make life better for the middle masseuses. Anna Skarhed again: "We don't work with harm reduction in Sweden. Because that's not the way Sweden looks upon this. We see it as a ban on prostitution: there should be no prostitution."

Quite so. But history shows that moralising prohibitions upon human appetites never work. The likely consequences of the Swedish prohibition of prostitution will be that: a) prohibitionists feel very pleased with themselves, which of course is most important, and b) prostitution is driven deeper underground, so that yet even more middle masseuses will be controlled by violent pimps. How wonderful.

- Kevin Myers

hatrickpatrick

Only forced prostitution should be illegal. Nothing should be illegal as long as all sides consent to whatever it is.

pablomakaveli

Arent Ruhama linked to the Catholic Church. I've been taking there statistics and views on prostitution with a pinch of salt since i found that out.