Playboy Magazine in it's articles often
RANTS about

1.Legalizing and Regulating Prostitution
2.Ending the insane "War on Drugs"
3. The RIGHT to Die,


But why doesn't Hugh Hefner and Playboy actually do something about it, and start a LOBBY to Fight
for what it believies in.

Does anyone else agree with me.

Well for starters he must be doing "something" about it, after all he puts it in a very famous mag.

{1} prostituion should be legal as long as it is between 2 {or more} adults. Their bodies, their lives, their business.

{2}this is a hard one, some drugs should still be illegal, but if your going to stop one drug then they all should be stopped, beer, diet pills, uppers & downers, pot, cocaine, etc....

{3} the right to die???????????????

I find that the more informed people are about realities of prostitution the more they realize it is a gross violation of human (usually children's and women's) rights.

www.prostitutionresearch.com

In no country where legalization has been attempted have conditions for prostitutes actually improved. Not a single one. In fact legalization has made the situation in each place worse.

The best case scenario is the Netherlands (as opposed to dramatic failures like in Australia, New Zealand, etc.), where the sex industry increased 25% and it is estimated 80% of women being prostituted are trafficked foreign women, mostly from Eastern European countries. However, in Sweden where decriminalization has been implemented, there have been terrific successes in a very short time as social policy changes go.

The End of Prostitution in Sweden?
http://www.sweden.se/templates/Article____2295.asp

Please, I implore you to look at the painstaking research done that led Sweden's female-laden parliment to conclude that prostitution is not a form of work or a choice, but gender-based slavery and a violation of the right to sexual autonomy, bodily integrity and human dignity.

I used to be pro-porn, stripping, and prostitution back before I had read any books on the subject, knew any victims of the sex industry personally, or had come to see the power patterns of gender as a strong marker for class analysis. I have since thrown out my porn collection, said prayers for prostituted friends in NYC died or dying of AIDS, and began volunteering for the Lola Baldwin Greene Foundation www.prostitutionrecovery.org to help survivors with the massive amounts of mental and physical trauma that results from prostitution. I now question any mindset that holds men have a God-given right to masterbate themselves with and deposit their human fluids inside the vaginas, anuses and mouths of poverty-stricken women.

Please keep in mind that there is no such thing as risk-free sex. The only 100% effective methods of pregnancy prevention are abstinence and hysterectomy, and if prostitutes are not sterilized, they eventually get pregnant and require repeated abortions (plus, STDs can harm developing fetuses and result in stillbirths.) Considering reports from Australia have found 1 out of 5 men offers to pay more money to not use a condom when using a woman, it is no surprise gonnorhea increased 100% in the time prostitution was legalized there. Also, genital herpes are a leading cause of cervical cancer whose spread is not contained by condoms.

And why are we risking women's health and lives with genital warts, herpes, HIV, syphillis, unwanted pregnancies? "Entertainment for men?" The glory of capitalism which says vaginas are rental properties available to the paying public and a potential source of increasing GNP if properly taxed and managed? Sorry, but those are truly inadequate excuses for the extremely well documented physical and mental horrors of prostitution.

A note:
I will have this conversation/debate with anyone who respectfully wants to, but I strongly urge anyone who's considering posting on the pro-legalization side to get their mental house in order. I know what I'm talking about and while I welcome a challenge, rude or flaming posts will be ignored while respectful and genuinely concerned ones will be responded to in that same manner.

No takers? I didn't meant to scare the pro-legalization folks off, just providing the frame from which I operate. Hope some of you looked at the links I provided.

FYI, as an Oregon resident, I am in favor of a strictly regulated right to die and am myself a patient in Oregon's medical marijuana program (if that is the 'drugs' referred to in the first post like I suppose it is).

Thank you Thalia for your smart and informed reply about legalizing the sex undustry.

I am all for legalizing marijuana, but I have some trouble with cocaine and heroin and other addictive and harmfull drugs.

I also am a resident of Oregon and am 100% behind the right to die. My love of 23 years is dieing of cancer right now. He has chosen to see it through to the end, but if he changes his mind I will support him 100%.

Hi Thalia and Echo2. Nice to read your contributions to this forum. We lacked feminists ! And Echo 2's contributions always seem interesting and balanced.
Sorry Thalia but I'm not going to argue with you about prostitution - I 100% agree.
I also beleive that everyone's sexual practices should be their business, as long as people are adult and willing, but I do not belive prostitutes are facing a real choice.

Are you aware that prostitution is legal and highly regulated in Nevada? There are no such problems that I'm aware of with trafficking in foreign women or slavery issues.

I don't know the situation of human traffic in the USA. Maybe it's not so bad since USA have few borders and a rather restructed immigration. But I can tell you that in France it's really a pity to see poor girls from Africa or Eastern Europe who are forced to prostitute themselves in most big towns.

If it were to be legalized I quess it would be like any other job find out what the heck you are getting into before you get into it.

Thalia;

You bring up a very good post but it still comes down to responsibility, if you don't want to take the risk then find another line of work. As far as the part about slaves???? slavery is illegal, that is why I said legalized prostitution not legalized slavery BIG BIG difference. Once again a persons body is their business and they should be able to do with it as they please as long as it doesn't hurt another.

Originally posted by LionelHutz
There are no such problems that I'm aware of with trafficking in foreign women or slavery issues.

The "that I'm aware of" is the relevant part here. I suggest reading more about the failures of the legalization model in Nevada. None of the criteria that would support legalization have been met (less street prostitution, less child prostitution, less gang violence, less STDs transmitted). Even pro-legalization authors have had to admit that rape has increased in the legalized Nevada counties and the supposed benefits of legalization have not been realized (they still hold out hope though, which I consider misguided). There is testimony from San Francisco prostitutes saying street prostitution is better than the Nevada brothels where women are kept 'imprisoned' in the brothels for several days (they are not allowed to leave on their own) and 'work fees' cut into their profits.

There's international trafficking, and there's interstate trafficking. Both effectively isolate and keep powerless their victims. There is a huge circuit of organized crime which traffics children and women up and down the West Coast, and an even bigger one in the South/Southwest.

But if it's international trafficking you're thinking of, estimates put the number of illegally trafficked people at about 1,000,000 a year into the USA. Dominant ethnicity depends on where you are (West has more Asian and Mexican slaves, East more Russian/East European slaves).

Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, trafficking in USA section
http://www.catwinternational.org/fb/usa1.html

"Trafficking in women plagues the United States as much as it does underdeveloped nations. Organized prostitution networks have migrated from metropolitan areas to small cities and suburbs. Women trafficked to the United States have been forced to have sex with 400-500 men to pay off $40,000 in debt for their passage. (Avita Ramdas, president of the Global Fund for Women sponsoring a recent prostitution conference, Brad Knickerbocker, "Prostitution’s Pernicious Reach Grows in the US" Christian Science Monitor, 23 October 1996)"

"25 distinct Russian organized crime groups are operating in the United States in the areas of prostitution, fraud, money laundering, murder, extortion and drug trafficking and the Federal Bureau of Investigation has approximately 250 pending investigations targeting Russian gangs in 27 states. (Barbara Starr, "Former Soviet Union a playground for organized crime: A gangster’s paradise," ABC News, 14 September 1998)"

In Los Angeles, the three most common gang activites are:

1. drugs
2. prostitution
3. kidnapping

They are not kidnapping their own kids cause they didn't get custody, they are kidnapping children and women because men pay hundreds of dollars to other men for sexual access and power over others. Pimps are aware of a "cow's" short "shelf life" because prostitution destroys people physically and mentally, so new bodies are always needed.

a persons body is their business and they should be able to do with it as they please as long as it doesn't hurt another.

The average of of entry into prostitution in the USA is 13 years old. It's estmated 90% of prostitutes have pimps.

By this info (and much more), your standard of "doesn't hurt another" when it comes to prostitution fails and the word slavery is quite appropriate to the situation.

Everywhere prostitution has been legalized child prostitution has increased, gang activity has increased, and street prostitution has increased. Sweden had legalized prostitution for about 30 years, and the oodles of research that came out of that legalization trial all pointed to the inherent abuse and harm of prostitution. I highly recommend the above link about Sweden ending legalized prostitution in favor of decriminalizing prostitutes but not the predatory behaviors of pimps and johns.

Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, prostitution in the USA section
http://www.catwinternational.org/fb/usa2_prost.html

The last I new it is illegal to molest children, anywhere in the states. I do understand what you are saying, but your mixing things together. Example; lets get rid of city's because we know there is more crime in them then in a small town. When you are talking about legalized sex it would be between consenting adults. You are using arguments that are in different catagories. Kind of like saying if Bobby drinks beer, it will lead to pot, then it will go on to stronger drugs, and from there he will turn into a hard criminal. Do things happen because of other things? yes, but does that give us enough reason to stop one thing to MAYBE prevent another?

Your question was about legalized sex, not sex with children, slavery, or kidnapping. I also have concerns about the things you are speaking of, but they would be in a different topic. Consenting adults is the key word, everything else you are speaking of is harmfull to others and VERY illegal as it should be.

lets get rid of city's because we know there is more crime in them then in a small town.

I'm lost on this...can you explain how this relates to ending the widespread bodily and emotional harms of prostitution by refusing to grant men the right to masterbate themselves in the bodies of mostly very young, homeless, drug addicted, poverty-stricken, dark female bodies?

When you are talking about legalized sex it would be between consenting adults.

There's no need to talk about it in hypothetical 'would be'. Right now, legalized sex is happening in several countries around the world, but all the credible evidence I've seen shows it is not helping prostitutes at all and is actually making things worse. If we are to say women have the freeedom to choose prostitution, we must then ask why it is those women with the least choices open to them who 'choose' prostitution.

One Canadian study found sex workers had a mortality rate 40 times that of non-sex workers. A 2002 EU study found porn actors had a suicide rate 6 times that of other non-porn actors. There are mountains of records showing that the harms of selling sex for survival are intrinsic.

Your question was about legalized sex, not sex with children, slavery, or kidnapping.

The two have proven themselves inseperable in Germany, Australia, The Netherlands and other places. Don't you think many studies have been done in places where prostitution has been legalized to see what effects it has had? If the results were positive, if they showed less street prostitution instead of more, less child prostitution instead of more, less gang activity instead of more, don't you think the extraordinarily wealthy men who want it legalized would spread their proof around?

There have been some marginal successes in the Netherlands, mostly regarding lower STD transmissions for women checked in brothels. But the immense increase in illegal sex slaves trafficked into The Netherlands plus the increased and unchecked street prostitution, child prostitution (Amsterdam is notorious worldwide for paedophilia), drug addicts and more far outweigh the small benefits that would also come from ending men's right to rent other people's bodies for masterbatory entertainment like Sweden has done. The 1999 Swedish law has worked to reduce trafficking and pimping while some Swedish prostitutes even praise the more thoughtful and concerned treatment from specially-trained police. These police are trained to help sexually exploited people and offer counseling and services to help them leave "the life". Johns seeking to exploit another person's relative powerlessness are considered sexual predators and arrested in an attempt to curb the demand that fuels the inexhaustible supply.

Please go poke around the CATW world factbook to get a clearer picture of global prostitution and the failures of legalization.

Boost for the info

and I'm not sure why the Authentic Fan started another thread on prostitution after abandoning this one which isn't very old.

TAF did have a rather irritating habit of posting repeat threads and/or threads that made no sense...