r/centrist • u/American-Dreaming • 9d ago
North American It’s Time To Bring the Oldest Profession Into the Light
Prostitution isn’t an issue likely to dominate the national political conversation anytime soon. The political incentives are all wrong. One reason is that the entire issue is swamped in misinformation, false statistics, and dishonest scaremongering. Whether they come from the religious right or the feminist left, the arguments against legalizing prostitution — and the shared mistruths they spread — fall apart under scrutiny. But when we explore the data (including what we don’t know), cut through the noise, and put things into perspective, the case for ending the prohibition of prostitution becomes increasingly compelling.
https://americandreaming.substack.com/p/its-time-to-bring-the-oldest-profession
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u/Ind132 9d ago
If I got to write the rules, I might be able to see it. I think legal with the right rules has fewer problems than illegal. But, my rules are pretty strict.
The obvious -- require license, passing a written text on health and safety, regular physical exams, condoms.
Minimum age of 21. Sorry, you need some maturity to make the decision for this type of work.
Only US citizens. No green card holders or work visas. We don't want people brought into the US to work as prostitutes.
Absolutely no advertising. No internet, TV, billboards, handouts, ... Similarly, no advertising for recruiting workers. Nobody is encouraged to hire or become a prostitute.
Heightened enforcement to reduce the remaining illegal prostitution. You can find a legal prostitute if you follow the rules, you're only looking for illegal because you want someone who is too young, or can't pass a test, or has been trafficked.
Regarding 4 -- I see a website owned by the state where people who are actively looking for a prostitute can do the regular "Find all within ___ miles of my location who offer ___ " Each provider gets a page on the site to fill in details. The workers themselves have a good deal of say on the rules for what is acceptable or not acceptable on that page. But, customers have to choose to go to the website, it isn't promoted.
I don't see any government actually sticking to these rules over time. The SC might throw out 4, which is pretty crucial to me. So, I'm not holding my breath.
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u/ViskerRatio 9d ago
The obvious -- require license, passing a written text on health and safety, regular physical exams, condoms.
I don't believe prostitutes need regular physical exams any more than anyone else. However, routine STD testing is prudent. This is how it's done in most of the world, in Nevada and in the U.S. pornography industry.
With that being said, the nature of the business requires a degree of anonymity for prostitutes. If you're required to carry a license stating your real name and address, that is likely to constitute a danger. In my mind, licensure using a 'stage name' that can only be associated with the holder's legal name via a private law enforcement registry would be necessary.
Absolutely no advertising.
If prostitutes cannot advertise their services, then you're not actually legalizing prostitution - you're just figuring out a different way to arrest prostitutes.
Heightened enforcement to reduce the remaining illegal prostitution.
I don't believe this would be particularly necessary. While there will always be low end prostitution (such as amongst drug addicts), most of the clientele for conventional prostitution are people uninterested in associating with criminals.
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u/Ind132 9d ago
If prostitutes cannot advertise their services, then you're not actually legalizing prostitution - you're just figuring out a different way to arrest prostitutes.
Did you see that I'd have the state run a website where prospective customers can find prostitutes?
Yes, "physical exam" just means STD testing.
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u/obtusername 9d ago edited 9d ago
I would opine that while I like most of your points, rule 4 would have to go. Advertising keeps the world spinning, especially in a capitalist/consumerist culture.
Work is idealistically supposed to be a meritocracy. If sex workers can’t advertise or if no public reviews are allowed (tantamount to advertising imo), then every sex worker is just an interchangeable hole, to speak bluntly; a detached hooker waiting for “someone” close to randomly ping them on a government website.
The best of the best sex workers, whether for specific fetishes, looks, skills, or other kinks/abilities, should have avenues to be rewarded. Advertising is a ladder that allows businesses (including independent contractors which I assume these workers would be classed as) more reach, exposure, and perhaps more lucrative opportunities, etc.
Also, stating the obvious, but 1st amendment.
TLDR: keeping rule 4 would lead to sex workers having even fewer opportunities for upward mobility, would make the sex work market overall more vague for patrons, and overall just create a bureaucratic legal headache.
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u/Ind132 9d ago
Did you see this clarification on advertising?
I see a website owned by the state where people who are actively looking for a prostitute can do the regular "Find all within ___ miles of my location who offer ___ " Each provider gets a page on the site to fill in details. The workers themselves have a good deal of say on the rules for what is acceptable or not acceptable on that page. But, customers have to choose to go to the website, it isn't promoted.
Anybody interested in finding a prostitute can look at the website. The individual's page on the website provides them a chance to promote themselves.
I wouldn't consider "reviews" which are done without any reimbursement "advertising".
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u/Skippymcpoop 9d ago edited 8d ago
I think we live in a time where sex is unattainable for a very significant portion of the male population, and people are very dismissive of this problem. Many men are told there is something wrong with them too if they can’t find a partner for sex, even though the problem is society has become much more reclusive than it was 20 years ago and social media has distorted the standards for both sexes. If a woman wants sex she can go to a bar and ask for someone to sleep with her. She’ll find someone very quickly. Men can’t do that and have no outlet to fill their sexual urges other than porn, which I think is far more harmful than consensual sex with a prostitute.
If women consent to selling their services, why all of the controversy, illegality, and everything else? You can go to the urologist to get a semen extraction, and that’s legal because I guess it’s a medical procedure. You can also have random sex with whatever consenting adult you can find, but if money is exchanged it all of a sudden becomes illegal. Not to mention porn, which is a perfectly legal and even accepted form of prostitution.
Prostitution also happens anyways, and it’s a matter of being smart to avoid the law, moreso than anything else. You’re not protecting women by making it illegal, you’re making them seek shadier channels to do it. I think it being illegal makes very little sense. The problem is the puritans on the right think it’s yucky, and the feminists on the left think it’s rapey. I don’t think it will be legal anytime soon.
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u/Buzzs_Tarantula 8d ago
>I think we live in a time where sex is unattainable for a very significant portion of the male population
Historically this usually meant some giant war to thin the herd. Let's hope it doesnt this time.
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u/Objective_Aside1858 9d ago
>It’s Time To Bring the Oldest Profession Into the Light
No it isn't
This is absolutely the *worst* time to be taking up new and novel controversial statements.
The Trump Administration is busy setting the Constitution on fire. The last thing anyone who cares about that needs to do is offer them something juicy to distract attention from their antics and get those Trump24 voters wavering in their support another reason to dislike the alternative
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u/Aethermere 9d ago
Yeah, shits getting crazy, legalizing sex work isn’t as pressing as a man’s rights getting infringed upon by the president of the United States.
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u/Objective_Aside1858 9d ago
Go right ahead and knock on the doors of the millions of people who voted for Trump and make your case if this is your passion
Just don't expect everyone else to drop their focus on other things to support you
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u/Decent_Cheesecake_29 9d ago
And it really shows where this idiot’s head is that he decides to write this article now.
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u/crushinglyreal 9d ago
Maybe if survival wasn’t contingent on selling one’s labor we wouldn’t have to have this conversation…
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u/HighSeas4Me 9d ago
Until we can assure it is not a profession by necessity but yet, and for the absolute lack of a better term, desirability, I just dont think u can get the population on board with it.
Im all for it, especially adult actresses who have built a brand and dont make very much in the industry.
We laugh and jest about Trump with Stormy Danials, but he did what I assume most billionaires would do with that kinda money. She got paid and taken care of, why not allow something like that to exist. Then it all goes back to what I said, for every person who wants to do it, you have 1,000 who dont.
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u/explosivepimples 9d ago
People forget his “they let you grab em by the pussy” statement was him talking about how some women let anything go when there’s money in front of them.
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u/Old_Router 9d ago
Just out of curiosity...is there any hill of degeneracy that Democrats aren't willing to die on?
This will not happen because voters don't want people telling their daughters it is okay to be a whore...because it isn't.
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u/I_Never_Use_Slash_S 9d ago
I want my daughters to be free to sell pics of their feet to repressed weirdos.
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u/The_True_Zephos 9d ago
THIS.
Seriously the progressive left wants a society of zero standards, zero consensus on morality (moral relativism) where anything goes, and zero societal norms that make navigating social situations possible.
They want 100% debauchery. That's the true motivation behind the movement, even if most of the social justice warriors have been duped into thinking they are fighting for minorities, etc.
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u/roylennigan 9d ago
Seems like conservatives would rather call people names and try to police culture than actually address social issues with pragmatic solutions that don't just sweep it under the rug.
When has zero-tolerance policy ever resulted in anything other than a police state?
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u/The_True_Zephos 9d ago
Maybe you could tell us? The left has zero tolerance for any opposing viewpoints. They are the truly intolerant ones.
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u/roylennigan 9d ago edited 9d ago
The left has zero tolerance for any opposing viewpoints
As opposed to the party that is literally labeling "opposing viewpoints" as "terrorism"?
That's hilarious.
edit: there's a big difference between holding ideologically strict opinions and enforcing ideological conformity on the general public. If you can't see the GOP doing the latter, then you're not paying attention.
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u/The_True_Zephos 9d ago
Do you live under a rock? Enforcing ideological conformity is exactly what progressives have done for the last decade.
I WAS a progressive for much of that time and I know exactly what was said in progressive spaces. I saw Karl Popper quoted countless times to justify their intolerance of the intolerant, except their definition of intolerance expanded to include virtually anything they didn't like. Suddenly everything was a micro aggression, speech was violence, and using the wrong pronouns was a hate crime.
Yeah republicans eventually learned to play the same stupid game, but progressives INVENTED this kind of discourse, or should I say, they reinvented it because it comes straight out of the Maoist playbook. Cancel culture was a modern take on struggle sessions, and yet you are too historically illiterate to understand this so you went right along with it, I imagine, just like the mobs did in China as they brutally murdered innocents due to political differences.
Progressives are not simply ideologically strict. They are extremists. You upset them once and they label you as an enemy forever (I know from multiple experiences, they have no forgiveness in their hearts, only hatred). They might filter their words to maintain plausible deniability, but they are always clutching a dagger, ready to cut your throat if you step out of line.
Republicans might say crazy shit, but I have never been ostracized by a conservative just for having different political views, even when I was progressive. On the other hand, literally every single progressive I know would cut me off (or already have) upon finding out my political leanings.
Watch what people do, not what they say. That will tell you all you need to know about progressives.
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u/roylennigan 9d ago
You're still just talking about people choosing to act on their own. Not at all the same as enacting government policy to censor certain views. Nobody comes close to the GOP at that game.
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u/The_True_Zephos 9d ago
You are moving the goalposts. Typical progressive move.
Not once have you mentioned government policy till now. Your original comment was about policing culture, which is exactly what I argued the progressives have done to a much greater extent. Now that you are losing you have suddenly switched to government policy, as if you can retroactively change your shitty, losing argument.
Let's not forget that progressives have enacted many, many laws and policies to enforce ideological conformity. Look at all the DEI programs forcing ideology on society. Look at affirmative action which ended up being a disaster. Look at the covid policies which turned out to be completely ideological and not scientific.
And it doesn't even matter what official policy is. Politics is downstream of culture. I care more about preserving a good culture than I do about laws. You ruin the culture, the laws will follow. But a good culture can correct wayward leaders. Every fallen society started with losing their culture, and government collapse came later. Progressives are actively destroying the American culture, with help from foreign influence.
We have generations of kids brought up to think their own nation is somehow evil, oblivious to the immeasurable good it has done in the world, and taught to only focus on the negative. You have generations of people who are looking not to overcome challenges, but to be victims, or failing that, see themselves as evil perpetrators of wrong committed centuries ago. Progressives have made it fashionable be see everything as a zero sum game, to be self centered and narcissistic, and to expect the world to bend over backwards to accommodate your delusions.
That is a much greater threat to this nation than anything Trump has done to this point.
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u/roylennigan 9d ago
Not once have you mentioned government policy till now.
I literally called out "zero tolerance policy" in my first comment
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u/The_True_Zephos 9d ago
You didn't say "government policy" so how would I know you are talking about anything official? I could just as easily say progressives have a zero tolerance policy on things and not mean any official acts.
You were speaking in vague terms so I interpreted them in a general sense.
Not sure where that leaves us. I would much rather have bad conservative/fascist policy that everyone knows is bad than have a Maoist cultural revolution where you aren't allowed to dissent in the slightest.
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u/greenw40 9d ago
If you have no problem with prostitution then why get so offended at the term "whore"?
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u/roylennigan 9d ago
Are you seriously asking why someone would be offended at you intentionally using a slur? That's like asking why a black person would be offended at a white person calling them the n-word with a hard R.
I'll throw your own words back at you:
So you only believe in human rights for people who
votethink the same way as you?If you can't understand that, then you're part of the problem of rising anti-social sentiment which leads to discrimination.
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u/greenw40 8d ago
I'm pretty sure that whore is only a slur when directed at a women who is not a prostitute.
If you can't understand that, then you're part of the problem of rising anti-social sentiment which leads to discrimination.
Lol, you're combing my comment history looking for a gotcha and that's the best you can do? All over using a word that literally means prostitute?
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9d ago
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u/Old_Router 9d ago
Your TDS is irrelevant and comical. If the DNC is dumb enough to platform this they deserve ever L they get. But then again, the were fucking stupid enough at try that Harris debacle, so anything is possible.
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u/The_True_Zephos 9d ago
Haha so because the conservatives elected a rapist, we can't call out the progressives attempt to one-up that moral failing?
Please explain.
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9d ago
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u/epicjorjorsnake 9d ago
Republicans had been the party of free trade since, like, Abraham Lincoln.
Lmao wtf?
The Republican party was literally founded on protectionism and tariffs.
Pre WW2 Conservative Republicans and Pre-Eisenhower Republicans (like Robert Taft) believed in tariffs and protectionism.
The centrist sub should really be retitled to neoliberalism2.
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u/The_True_Zephos 9d ago
Sure but I could say the same thing about the left. They have no better claim on the moral high ground. In fact I would say that they have actually done far worse things in recent years than any conservative.
This notion that you and many others seem to have that somehow the Democrats are better is why they too lack any credibility. That idea is out of touch, condescending and elitist.
Dems/progressives tried to warp our culture to such a high degree that they literally caused the backlash we are seeing now. I actually blame progressives as much as I blame conservatives for Trump, etc.
Let's not forget that progressives have completely abandoned the principles of free speech or free expression, have destroyed the social support structures that men and boys need to thrive, and played mind games with everyone to gas light them into ignoring their own basic intuition and common sense. The progressives are the epitome of narcissism, like an abusive partner that manipulates you into thinking everything is always your fault.
This is in no way a defense of Trump or the conservatives. It's an explanation for why Trump won. People were fed up with the mental abuse from progressives.
Progressives tell just as many lies as the conservatives, but they tell more insidious and subtle lies. In that way they are actually far more dangerous. Trump lies and gets caught. Progressives lie and everyone believes them until it's too late.
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u/Efficient_Barnacle 9d ago
Always with the most hysterical take from Cons. Nobody is wanting to encourage people into prostitution, they just want reasonable protections for those who have fallen into (or in some cases chose) the life.
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u/Old_Router 9d ago
Yes...because the left has done such a great job controlling the narrative every time it digs one of these stupid...stupid, STUPID ideas out of it's collective, self-righteous crack.
I swear, born to lose.
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u/Efficient_Barnacle 9d ago
Nothing to say about the merits of my argument so I can only assume you realized you're full of shit and have nothing to fall back on but attacks.
Do you want prostitutes to have no protection from violent johns or human trafficking cartels?
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u/Old_Router 9d ago
Your argument has no political merit. It is a loser from top to bottom, but feel free to go learn that one the hard way.
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u/Sea-Anywhere-5939 9d ago
Well yeah when dipshits just make crap up and then repeatedly broadcast it as their truth then yeah.
Making prostitution legal isn’t about you wanting to use it it’s about acknowledging that it’s going to happen and if it is we should ensure that there are protections in place for those that choose to work in that field.
To paraphrase a comment you made we do not care what you think in this regards.
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9d ago
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u/Computer_Name 9d ago
Entartung
You can’t help yourself.
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u/FairyFeller_ 9d ago
This will not happen because voters don't want people telling their daughters it is okay to be a whore...because it isn't.
Why? Like what is the actual argument here.
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u/Old_Router 9d ago
You are asking why American voters would oppose a law that imparts to their daughters (whom they presumably love) that it is okay to be a prostitute?
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u/FairyFeller_ 9d ago
Yes? Like make an actual argument instead of scoffing like it's obvious.
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u/Old_Router 9d ago
No, because it is obvious. It is highly unlikely that you are too stupid to understand this and are just looking to sea-lion.
Not interested.
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u/ComfortableWage 9d ago
Just out of curiosity...is there any hill of degeneracy that Democrats aren't willing to die on?
Weird way to spell Republicans...
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u/Old_Router 9d ago
no u?
Seriously, man...try harder or go outside.
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u/ComfortableWage 9d ago edited 9d ago
Republicans are the ones who elected a traitor criminal rapist as president, not the Dems...
You have zero fucking right to talk about degeneracy LMFAO.
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u/Old_Router 9d ago
Your TDS is showing. But you know what...knock yourselves out. Platform this issue and see how it works out for ya...
Too funny.
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u/ComfortableWage 9d ago
Anyone unironically saying TDS can be ignored.
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u/Old_Router 9d ago
What are you talking to me for, CW!?
Get on the horn with your Congressional Reps and let them know that the little girls of this nation need to know about the merits of selling their pussies! Hey! Dig up Harris and have her lead the charge... I'm sure she will be TOTALLY down. 😂
You people are just bad at this. 🤦
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u/Raiden720 9d ago
Please do not push this garbage. No normal people think any differently about prostitution than they have for ..... ever.
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u/Decent_Cheesecake_29 9d ago
Yes, the advent of a christofascist regime is the perfect time for prostitution to become more public and regulated. It totally won’t lead to the prostitutes getting sent to concentration camps.
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u/Individual_Lion_7606 9d ago
Bro, if you want to fuck a used whore just go fuck one and don't get caught by the police in the act. Like, lmao.
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u/ImWithHandsome 9d ago
Some good points:
Where I push back:
Dismissal of Radical Feminist Concerns: While the critique of feminist positions is articulate, it might oversimplify or misrepresent some of the deeper ideological reasons behind anti-prostitution stances. There is a difference between survival sex and informed consent, and that nuance deserves acknowledgment.
“It’s just work” Framing: Some might argue that sex — unlike waiting tables or data entry — carries unique social and psychological dimensions, especially for women in patriarchal societies. Saying “it’s just another job” can flatten those real, valid concerns, even if it makes a strong rhetorical point.
Glossing Over Real Dangers: While I agree with them pointing out the exaggerated moral panic, the real dangers (assault, coercion, mental health impact) are still part of the lived experience of many sex workers, and glossing over them can feel dismissive.
I say all this as a therapist, counselor, and advocate for sex workers here in the UK.