I guess spitzer resigns?

[Irvine511]

Originally posted by anitram


So can human beings.

It doesn't mean that we should embrace the idea.

but, to play devil's advocate here ... aren't many of the desperate stories behind a life of prostitution due to the illegality of the thing itself? that if it were illegal, most of the bad behavior surrounding it would disappear? do you think the legal prostitutes in Amsterdam and Germany are all strung-out girls with no education? or do you think they might be more like strippers -- many of whom are going to school, might have a kid, and find this a way to make a quick $500 in an hour over a weekend?

if there's a demand, there's always going to be a supply, and making it legal, regulated, controlled, and taxes will go a long ways towards cleaning it up?

and why is it, necessarily, degrading? isn't that more to do with social attitudes towards sexuality than to do with the actual transaction itself? how is it different, necessarily, from being a masseuse?

i mean these as general questions. yes, i do think that prostitution should be legal, in the way that i think that marijuana should be legal. but that does not mean i advocate the purchase and use of either.

finally, when it comes to male prostitutes, i think you'd find that many don't feel degraded and used at all. of course some do it for money to buy drugs. some do it to pay for school. some do it because they're good looking and good at it, and if someone wants to pay them, why not? are we to assume that there are no women who might have the same attitude that a male prostitute -- straight or gay -- might?

i fully agree that no 8 year old ever thinks, "when i grow up, i want to be a prostitute." and not that this is necessarily a comparison, but i never thought i'd work at The Gap. but i did for a bit. and was able to afford Christmas presents during a particularly lean year, and now i no longer work at The Gap.

all just food for thought.

[anitram]

I don't think we should criminalize prostitution either. But not because I feel that regulating it may improve things. I would not criminalize prostitution for similar reasons why we no longer criminalize suicide - there is something to be said for providing help and real, viable opportunities to those who are inclined to leave the "profession" rather than treating our jails as warehouses.

Do I believe that:

making it legal, regulated, controlled, and taxes will go a long ways towards cleaning it up?

No. Because I could never understand why it is that the legal system has become the vehicle to apparently solve every social ill of man. It is not the appropriate system and has done a lot more damage in many areas than good, unfortunately it has become an accepted view that regulation combined with litigation will somehow magically cure our social ills. It's an overly simplistic view.

[anitram]

.

[MrsSpringsteen]

Originally posted by anitram


So can human beings.

It doesn't mean that we should embrace the idea.

I agree. It's easy to say that virtually anything can be a commodity, but when human beings are involved there are emotional and complex psychological issues involved. I could never agree with objectifying people and sex to such an extent that you can remove any of that from the equation. Maybe some people can compartmentalize to that extent but I would wonder why they are doing that and at what personal cost.

NY Times

March 12, 2008
Op-Ed Contributors
The Myth of the Victimless Crime
By MELISSA FARLEY and VICTOR MALAREK

WHAT do we know about the woman Gov. Eliot Spitzer allegedly hired as a prostitute? She was the one person he ignored in his apology. What is she going through now? Is she in danger from organized crime because of what she knows? Is anyone offering her legal counsel or alternatives to prostitution?

“I’m here for a purpose,” she said in a conversation with her booking agent after meeting with Governor Spitzer, according to the affidavit of the F.B.I agent who investigated the prostitution ring. “I know what my purpose is. I’m not a ... moron, you know what I mean.”

Her purpose, as a man who knew patiently explained, is “renting” out an organ for 10 minutes. Men rent women through the Internet or by cellphone as if they were renting a car. And now, in response to the news about Governor Spitzer, pundits are wading into the age-old debates over whether prostitution is a victimless crime or whether women are badly hurt in prostitution no matter what they’re paid.

Whose theory is it that prostitution is victimless? It’s the men who buy prostitutes who spew the myths that women choose prostitution, that they get rich, that it’s glamorous and that it turns women on.

But most women in prostitution, including those working for escort services, have been sexually abused as children, studies show. Incest sets young women up for prostitution — by letting them know what they’re worth and what’s expected of them. Other forces that channel women into escort prostitution are economic hardship and racism.

The Emperor’s Club presented itself as an elite escort service. But aside from charging more, it worked like any other prostitution business. The pimps took their 50 percent cut. The Emperor’s Club often required that the women provide sex twice an hour. One woman who was wiretapped indicated that she couldn’t handle that pressure. The ring operated throughout the United States and Europe. The transport of women for prostitution was masked by its description as “travel dates.”

Telephone operators at the Emperor’s Club criticized one of the women for cutting sessions with buyers short so that she could pick up her children at school. “As a general rule,” one said, “girls with children tend to have a little more baggage going on.”

Whether the woman is in a hotel room or on a side street in someone’s car, whether she’s trafficked from New York to Washington or from Mexico to Florida or from the city to the suburbs, the experience of being prostituted causes her immense psychological and physical harm. And it all starts with the buyer.

Melissa Farley is the author of “Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections.” Victor Malarek is the author of “The Natashas: Inside the New Global Sex Trade.”

[Irvine511]

Originally posted by anitram

No. Because I could never understand why it is that the legal system has become the vehicle to apparently solve every social ill of man. It is not the appropriate system and has done a lot more damage in many areas than good, unfortunately it has become an accepted view that regulation combined with litigation will somehow magically cure our social ills. It's an overly simplistic view.

i would agree with you in the broad sense, but i'd flip this around here -- it's not the making illegal of something that magically cures our social ills. it's when things are brought out into the open and the black market is removed that many of the negative aspects would greatly reduce.

i'd compare the lives of prostitutes in the US/Canada to those in the Netherlands/Germany. who's got the better deal?

i can also agree, in the broad sense, that reasons why women go into prostitution are often due to greater social ills and we'd do better to work on those than criminalizing prostitution and prosecuting johns.

but there is a reason why this is called the oldest profession.

as for the commodity comment -- human beings give massages, human beings dig ditches, human beings build iPods, human beings write books, human beings are psychotherapists. all are services, in one form or another. sex -- or some form of manually controlled sexual release for a client -- strikes me as not all that different, and it's certainly not appropriate to compare it to human slavery.

i also wonder if it's the structure that's the problem, rather than the profession itself. i went to a part a few years ago in NYC that was held in the sexual gymnasium of a woman who made a living as a B&D dominatrix. she had a website, she had the equipment, and she ran a business out of her apartment. men would pay her to come over and be humiliated, whipped, spanked, whatever. so far as i know, there was no penetration involved (though i'm sure the men were permitted to masturbate themselves). i don't see why this is necessarily a negative thing, or why because this woman has a different take on her on sexuality and how she expresses it then we must automatically assume that she's damaged goods and was probably raped by various uncles as a child growing up.

[diamond]

Originally posted by Irvine511






but there is a reason why this is called the oldest profession.

.

Actually that's an errant cliche.

I say Gardening is the oldest profession and existed before prostitution.



dbs

[Headache in a Suitcase]

either way, ho's came first

[diamond]

hoes.

[Vincent Vega]

Land, labour and money are fictitious commodities (Karl Polanyi).

It's true, the argument of legalisation has become kind of the easy solution some are seeing in it, like in the case prostitution or drugs.

In Germany it helped those women a lot. They are now secured in the social insurance system as they are now contributing, it is now legal for hotels and other establishements to provide condoms (before it was illegal to put condoms into the rooms as it would 'enable prostitution') and the brutal pimps got kicked out of the market.

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Spitzer’s Successor: David Paterson, NY’s First Blind Governor
Posted by Jacob Goldstein

When David Paterson was three months old, he got an ear infection that spread to his optic nerve, leaving him legally blind. Fifty-three years later, Eliot Spitzer’s resignation, effective Monday, will make him the first blind governor of New York.

“People are fond of saying of people with disabilities that they are just like everybody else,” Paterson told the Associated Press in 2002, when he was elected Democratic leader of the state senate. “But that’s just something to say to make them feel better. When you have a disability you are not like everyone else. You are uniquely defined by a lack of vision.”

He can’t see at all out of his left eye, and his vision is 20/400 in his right eye, the Poughkeepsie Journal reports. That means Paterson needs to be within 20 feet to see what a person with normal vision sees from 400 feet away. The threshold for legal blindness in New York is 20/200 in the better eye with the best possible correction.

Paterson can read for brief stretches by holding a paper very close to his face, but the New York Times notes that aides often brief him by leaving him long voicemail messages. He memorizes his speeches. He manages to get around without a guide dog or cane, though he tells the NYT that he’s not above asking for help when he needs it.

“I don’t act the way I did when I was 17, like I can do everything myself, because I realized the minute I do that, no one helps me,” he said. “So I learned to be a little more pragmatic about life.”

Somehow, Paterson has also managed to play basketball from time to time in Albany, the 2002 AP story said, and the former governor Mario Cuomo was among his opponents. “He’s got some kind of sonar for the basket,” Cuomo told the AP.

Paterson Sports Bonus: Like the Health Blog, Paterson is both a big Mets fan and a habitual listener to WFAN, a sports-talk station in New York. Last month, he called in to overnight host Tony Paige, and showed his WFAN chops by invoking the name of Short Al from Brooklyn, a frequent late-night caller. Paige asked how Paterson and Spitzer, another fan, had time to listen sports radio. Paterson replied: “It distracts us from reality of a $4.4 billion budget gap.” You can listen to the conversation, featuring Paterson’s analysis of the Mets’ deal for pitcher Johan Santana, by going to the archive on WFAN’s Web site.

[diamond]

He's a handsome man.

dbs

[U2democrat]

From what I've heard he sounds like a very decent guy and not your typical politician.

[Headache in a Suitcase]

he does seem like a pretty remarkable guy... perhaps spitzer getting his jollies on will work out for the best

[unico]

Originally posted by Headache in a Suitcase
he does seem like a pretty remarkable guy... perhaps spitzer getting his jollies on will work out for the best

agreed. he's much more progressive, which is definitely something to look forward to.

have any charges been filed against spitzer?

[INDY500]

Originally posted by unico

he's much more progressive, which is definitely something to look forward to.

Are you a New York taxpayer?

[unico]

Originally posted by INDY500


Are you a New York taxpayer?

i will be very soon
wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

[A_Wanderer]

Originally posted by diamond


Actually that's an errant cliche.

I say Gardening is the oldest profession and existed before prostitution.



dbs

Sex for benefit would have existed before agriculture.

[Windmilllane]

Kristen is a U2 fan.



http://www.myspace.com/ninavenetta

[Windmilllane]

Could she be an interlander?

[MrPryck2U]

Originally posted by Windmilllane
Kristen is a U2 fan

When is this chick getting arrested for bein' a hooker and stuff?