Sex work

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

To look at the arguments of the pro-prostitution liberal left is to enter a strange and frankly kind of gross world in which treating sex as an in principle separate sphere of life from employment--surely a novel and incomprehensible distinction to make!--is just one of 'society's hang-ups', consent to sex and consent to employment should be held to directly equivalent standards, and 'sex-negative' is a non-joke concept. It's amazing. I can't really argue against it, but I don't really feel like I have to because it's the Dr. Pepper of political positions: It just tastes 'off'.

Having said that, of course being a sex worker shouldn't be a crime.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

To look at the arguments of the pro-prostitution liberal left is to enter a strange and frankly kind of gross world in which treating sex as an in principle separate sphere of life from employment--surely a novel and incomprehensible distinction to make!--is just one of 'society's hang-ups', consent to sex and consent to employment should be held to directly equivalent standards, and 'sex-negative' is a non-joke concept.

Reality and rationality may seem strange and gross to those living in a moralistic world of delusion and nonsense, yes.

Again somebody has used 'moralistic' as an insult as if caring about right and wrong when making policy is in some way a bad thing. I think this says more than I could.

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I think that's all you really needed to say.
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If you don't have the attention span to read and comprehend the entire sentence or the intellectual and moral capacity to compass a worldview that isn't based purely on bloodless rationalization and accepts the notion that not everything that matters in life can be presented in a manner that would please a middle-school debate team, then sure, I guess.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The point has already been made, several times by now, that people do, in point of fact, treat sexual labor differently from other forms of labor, and that changing this would involve changing society so much as to obviate whatever conceivable 'need' for prostitution there is in the world.
As has also already been said in this thread, I'd ask the pro-prostitution liberal left here (this doesn't apply to TNF because his argument is based on different premises about the world) if they would consider someone who was unwilling to take a job as a prostitute therefore 'unwilling to work'. If not, why not?

My own position here is motivated not only by my 'sex-negative' (this continues to be a joke concept mainly because 'sex-positive' is a joke concept) feminist values but also by the, yes, possibly somewhat morally conservative desire to see prevailing standards changed only so far as is necessary to create a just society. I don't think this type of moral conservatism and this type of feminism are incompatible, because I think that in some (specific, limited) ways a modified form of prevailing standards would be better for women as a group than a sexual free-for-all. The issue that I take with this type of discussion isn't so much with the idea of decriminalizing or even legalizing prostitution as with the cavalier attitude towards the subjectively almost uniquely seamy nature of the work involved that the people advocating those positions tend to take.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The fundamental issue that I'm seeing here is that the people arguing in favor of legalization in this thread (again, with the exception of TNF, who at the very least is thinking about this issue in a serious and complete way) are essentially ideological Cybermen who have a creepy aversion to allowing that human instinct or intangible values might have any place in this debate. You may make a policy on entirely rationalistic grounds but it's difficult to defend that policy morally or to treat it as unexceptionable without reference to instincts and values. It's not even like anybody (again, other than TNF) is really bothering to argue against the instincts and values in question. They are just not being engaged in any way, and the Corys and WillipsBrightons of this thread and this world tend to get really exercised about the unbridled temerity of the idea that they should be. A whole understanding of this issue, of any issue, requires a harmony of logic and rationality and instincts and values.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

After reading through this thread I don't understand what Crabcake's position is since he just seems to be here to make fun of both sides, and Madeline's position is moralistic pap that even openly admits it can't really argue about the issue from any other position than "I don't like sex being commodified" which, hey, good for you.

Did I ever claim otherwise? I explicitly said that I don't favor keeping prostitution a crime, I just think it's repugnant to act as if it's completely unremarkable, unexceptionable, and morally neutral. That's all I was ever trying to say.

I will however also say for what has to be at least the third time on this forum, possibly the third time in this thread, that I find the sensibility that one's moral viewpoints should have no place in one's attitudes towards policy, such that 'moralistic' can be uncomplicatedly an insult in this context, deeply, deeply disturbing. I don't like sex being commodified, it's important to me that sex not be commodified, and I don't want to live in an environment in which the commodification of sex is commonly accepted. Of course this is going to make me less than thrilled with the idea of legally condoning the commodification of sex, even if I recognize that it's for the best.