General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I have the right to perform a sexual service in exchange for money. [View all]BainsBane
(53,072 posts)Did you read this? http://www.democraticunderground.com/125548981
We have a first-hand account of an entire populations of underage boys and girls working as prostitutes, no longer alive due to disease, murder suicide, and even serial killers.
We have clear evidence that legalization increases human trafficking: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1986065
You read a thoughtful OP on this subject that explored the various approaches without mocking or discounting the lives of great swaths of the population. http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5362330
You then come in here and decide to mock those concerned with the reality of the sex trade, as opposed to those confident in their neoliberal faith in the imaginary gods of the free market.
This broader discussion on prostitution serves as a case study in demonstrating how capitalist exploitation and rampant inequality prevails. People steadfastly refuse to consider the lives of the poor, of victims of human trafficking, and huge numbers of underage boys and girls whose bodies are sold on a regular basis. None of that is incidental to prostitution. It is endemic. People pretend, against all evidence to the contrary, that waving a magic wand of legality will make that all disappear, when evidence like the paper sited above shows the opposite.
This discussion has taught me why the world is racked by such tremendous inequality. The "corporatists," a popular phrase on DU, are only part of the problem. They have the full complicity of parts of the middle- and upper-middle class who repeat the neoliberal mantra of "choice" as a way to justify the desperation that causes most to enter the sex trade--that is when they aren't forced into it as slaves. That the "choice" so often results in rampant exploitation, abuse, child rape, and death must be ignored. People who dare speak about them must be mocked. They must be discredited in order to banish all awareness of the actual human lives that the privileged find inconvenient.
I don't know what the solution to the problem is, but I know when people mock legitimate concerns about the reality of the human lives caught up in the sex trade, they make it impossible to contribute to a solution that does anything other than further exploitation.