Like I said in the other thread, you're not selling your labor as you do in pretty much any other job.

Here's an op-Ed from someone with direct experience.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/11/11/does-pornogr...

I don't find that article very persuasive in that she's making blanket assertions about large groups of people. Do "we" really consider sex sacred? I don't.

I believe that the article does describe that woman's experience.

I don't believe that article describes the experience of every sex worker.

We should work towards a society where people are able to choose to do work that doesn't impact them negatively.

If we were to make make the creation of porn illegal, we would cause more abuse, exploitation and shaming of porn stars.

for a lack of a better term, women become debased as potential romantic sexual partners. this is cultural and intangible, but isn't associated with most jobs, even if they're very low skill or status.

Women are frequently debased as potential romantic sexual partners. By rape, date rape, child molestation and a thousand other things. Your framing suggests you do not actually care about the quality of life of women. It implies that you think men deserve to have the cleanliness of women preserved.

In my experience as a woman, the cure here is to give women agency over their own sexuality. Decriminalizing prostitution plays well with that idea.

>Your framing suggests you do not actually care about the quality of life of women. It implies that you think men deserve to have the cleanliness of women preserved.

There's no need to play amateur psychologist in policy debates. You can make your argument without attacking someone.

It isn't intended as a personal attack. But I think the distinction matters. If everything is done for the sake of what men want and what women want has zero role in the debate, ultimately, it doesn't really matter what conclusion is drawn. It will still harm women.

I've found it's not effective to reply to perceived ad-hominem by propagating the offense. Your second sentence doesn't need a preamble.

>It implies that you think men deserve to have the cleanliness of women preserved.

"deserve's got nothin' to do with it." it has nothing to do with my personal preference, only cultural attitudes that are easily observed.

You don't think women take that into account before they go into that line of work? I don't see the exploitation - I see someone choosing a line of work with advantages and disadvantages.

I think you're missing the fact that the vast majority of prostitution involves trafficked/exploited people.

As this person's experiences illustrate, it's not about choice: http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2012/02/22/dissent-of-the-day...

Trafficking/exploitation is made worse by criminalization (which increases risks to people trying to escape it), and counteracted it sex work has the same workplace protective as other jobs (and even moreso if -- like many legal jobs with unique workplace problems) it has additional, job-specific workplace protections.

So that does the opposite of justifying prohibition.

legalization exacerbates trafficking: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1986065

That paper has been criticised, e.g. by [1]:

doesn't measure trafficing, it only measures how many incidenses of trafficing are detected by the government. [...] This is important because we'd expect law enforcement detected cases of trafficking to go up under legalization, even if legalization reduced the actual number of trafficking victims. When prostitution is legal, victims of trafficing have less to fear by going to law enforcement (therefore making it more likely they will do so) and law enforcement can concentrate their efforts on prostitution operations that are still trying to avoid law enforcement, thus increasing their efficiency.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalDiscussion/comments/49ivf2...

that type of disadvantage doesn't typically live with you long after you've stopped a profession. I see someone who needs money and may not be able to see the long term implications.

People don't see the long term implications of a lot of things. They don't save for retirement, they eat too much, they drink too much alcohol. Or smoke.

I'm perfectly okay with fathers telling their daughters "This is something you shouldn't do", but once you get the state involved you're limiting the freedom of people who've thought it through and decided to go ahead anyway.

to be honest, I'm in favor of decriminalizing prostitution. the question was what makes it different from other professions, and I offered my view. I do think it's particularly exploitative, but there's no way to draw a hard line for that as you illustrate. I think it's worth weighing that sex trafficking thrives in jurisdictions with legalized sex work, however.

as with most issues, nuance is key