Prostitution Will Be a Lot More Interesting If It Ever Stops Being a Crutch

The passionate and erudite I Am Curious Blue seems to reflect the general consensus that this pox on both your houses post about the endless prostitution wars fell flat. Eh, it probably did. Can't win 'em all.

I feel *passionately* that prostitution should be legal, and I think almost all anti-prostitution arguments are fatuous. I just happen to think a lot of pro-prostitution arguments are fatuous as well. And the point of my post --which I obviously didn't communicate well -- was that by hammering obsessively and exclusively at each other's *fatuous* arguments the pro and anti sides are overlooking a surprising amount of common ground.

I probably should have just said that.

Now just for the record, I think those a lot of pro-prostitution arguments, and accompanying attitudes, *damage* prostitution and increase resistance to acceptance, as well as embarrass customers, which brings me to one quibble with a further point in IACB's post. He quotes me and then attempts an interpretation I disagree with.

In my original post I said

Unlike too many other people, though, I *also* have a problem with participation in a system that so directly reinforces the "no-sex" class paradigm that says *all* heterosexual sex is asymmetrical: women want only money, men want only sex, and everything else is just haggling over the price. Which is bullshit, of course, which is why the dominant paradigm itself is bullshit.

IACB takes this to mean

This, to me, is not that far off of the standard anti-porn argument that porn is harmful because it reinforces a harmful paradigm about gender, and may actually predispose men to sexual violence as a result. And, certainly, there are many radical feminists and prostitution abolitionists who extend that argument to say that the mere existence of prostitution does the same thing.

...

The above statement comes damn close to a 'blame the sex industry' argument for men's bad behavior...

If one mean close as in just inside vs. just outside the gate to Fort Knox then yes, my statement would be close to blaming the sex industry for men's behavior. At best I "blame" men's bad behavior for prostitution. More accurately while there are exceptions** to every rule, men are indoctrinated to uncritically accept a set of highly questionable assumptions.

For instance I think it's laughable that men think there are some activities they can only women to do. I'm really not too crazy about the notion that men have to "buy up." And most of all I just *hate* this whole myth of sexual scarcity that leaves men thinking we have to *buy* our way out.

Should prostitution be left illegal while we sorted all that other crap out? No, it should be every bit as legal as dentistry or computer consulting or any other skills-based service profession. Should we sort out all the other crap anyway? Yes, because otherwise it's going to look kind of stupid skulking off to obtain a legal service we believe our spouses and other partners are too angelic to enjoy voluntarily. Will there still be prostitution after we sort all the other crap out? Yes, just like there would still be dentistry after we sorted out completely avoidable tasks they do like treating tooth decay and gum disease. Would there be 1000th the amount of trafficking and targeted rapes, robberies, assaults, and serial murder of street/subsistence prostitutes once customers sorted themselves out? No, there might even be less.

[** If you're really an exception then I'm obviously not referring you. --fl]