17 Jul 2014

The REAL War on Women

Shameless Self-Promotion 12 Comments

My latest at LibertyChat. Excerpts:

Last night I attended the Nashville chapter of “Liberty on the Rocks.” The guest speaker was Maggie McNeill, who runs the blog “The Honest Courtesan” which has the subtitle: “Frank commentary from a retired call girl.” I’m sure many readers might read such a description and have a flood of assumptions, but I must report that McNeill was very eloquent in her talk, and made many points quite similar to standard libertarian ones on drug decriminalization.

In conclusion, I would urge readers to consider that government efforts to help young women avoid exploitation in the sex trade may actually be placing them in much greater physical and emotional danger. The last group in the world you want helping desperate women are government officials with guns and cages.

12 Responses to “The REAL War on Women”

  1. Matt M says:

    I’ve heard that feminist lobbies in European countries have gained huge momentum in pushing for changes to the law so that selling sex is perfectly legal, but buying it is strictly punished, and focusing all law enforcement effort on catching “Johns” but leaving the prostitutes alone.

    Obviously that helps the cause of women specifically, but not of freedom generally. So I don’t think your approach here of “legalizing prostitution helps women” is necessarily the best one. Because they already have a solution in mind for that, and it really isn’t any better overall…

    • Samson Corwell says:

      The hell? How does that work?

      • Matt M says:

        Works just like it sounds! Cops concentrate all of their anti-prostitution efforts on setting up stings for Johns. Should they happen to stumble across a prostitute, they leave her alone, because she’s a victim.

        It’s a nice “compromise” between begrudgingly acknowledging economic realities (women turn to prostitution when it’s their best among many bad options) while sticking with the feminist mantra that all women are victims of the patriarchy (she’s being exploited by men who would violate her in exchange for money). It’s tough to sell to people, especially feminists, that rounding up young women and hauling them off to jail over and over again is a good way to protect women from abuse.

        So haul all the men off instead. Obviously this will still depress the market for prostitution and force women into worse options, but they don’t think that far ahead. No PR issues with photos of a bunch of skeezy old Johns in the back of the paddywagon. They probably deserve it.

        • Tel says:

          This would seem to be a test of communication channels between genuine prostitutes (that get paid and don’t sting) and buyers (Johns if you like). That’s a fascinating challenge, if there isn’t an app for that there soon will be.

          Did I mention that there’s some damn good programmers amongst the Ukranians and Romanians? Dunno why that comes to mind right now.

          • Matt M says:

            Tel,

            There already are a number of “systems” in place for that. Apps are harder, at least for the Iphone, because Apple presumably wouldn’t approve such a thing because it fosters illegal activity.

            • Tel says:

              There’s a lot more phones out there than just Apple you know. Anyhow, even Apple have not been able to prevent javascript and HTML5 support (else their phones would be useless).

      • Scott D says:

        Look up “Nordic model of prostitution”. It’s actually not much better than full criminalization except that it leads to less arrests of prostitutes. It still increases risk for the prostitutes.

    • guest says:

      … so that selling sex is perfectly legal, but buying it is strictly punished …

      Wonder when they’ll realize that selling something requires buying something.

      The woman buys money with her sex.

      The “price of money” is talked about a little bit in this video:

      Basic Economics Lesson 4 – Time Preference, Interest Rates, and Production
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2OK5D_3TzM

      • Matt M says:

        Doesn’t really matter though. As I said, it’s all about PR to these people. Photos of women in prison = bad PR. Photos of men in prison = nobody cares.

  2. Major.Freedom says:

    Some police department might demand taking pictures of prostitutes’ private parts, you know, for investigative purposes to protect them from exploitation.

Leave a Reply to Matt M

Cancel Reply