When feminists and liberal men disagree

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

Anyone wanting to ban pornography is a fascist who should have no say in a free society.

Your cock is not entitled to cheap thrills, paying people to put up with sexual abuse is not 'speech', and filming paid sex acts for the delectation of third parties is even more objectionable than Prostitution Classic, not less.

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

Anyone wanting to ban pornography is a fascist who should have no say in a free society.

Your cock is not entitled to cheap thrills, paying people to put up with sexual abuse is not 'speech', and filming paid sex acts for the delectation of third parties is even more objectionable than Prostitution Classic, not less.

If all parties are consenting and not coerced, I don't see it as ban worthy.

If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.

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Those are the legitimately stymieing questions, yes.

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

     Honestly, the second and third waves are a lot more similar than people give them credit for. It irks me just a little when people identify as "second wave feminists", to distinguish themselves from the icky "third wave feminists", because it romanticizes an ahistorical version of the second wave that ignores things like political lesbianism and the SCUM Manifesto while playing up modern problems.

The raps on the second and third waves are in many respects quite different. They don't need to be the same for both to have their flaws (for example, reductionist and often quasi-deterministic hyper-politicization of sexual decisions in the case of the second wave, politically-motivated decontextualization and often trivialization of sexual choices for the third). Conversely, one doesn't need to be either exactly like or utterly unlike the other for either or both to have good points (for example, embodied nature of some types of sexist oppression in the case of the second wave, essentially arbitrary nature of other types for the third).

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

While I don't agree with it, there's a strong consequentialist argument to be made for just blanket decriminalizing prostitution (including pimping, buying the services of a prostitute, et cetera) until such time as the economic conditions that lead most of the women involved into it can be addressed. I don't agree with it both because it's consequentialist and because 'such time' could be anywhere from five years from now to never depending on the country and on what counts as addressing the conditions, but I have heard actual ex-prostitutes, who have no love lost for the practice or for the various types of seedy men involved, advocate this.

What I don't like at all is the 'muh legalize, regulate, and tax' model, which both drives prostitutes to turn more tricks than they otherwise would because their income is being taxed and gives the government a perverse incentive to keep prostitution around.

It's also worth recognizing that laws against prostitution aren't really all that traditional in either etiology or intent. They were for the most part enacted after proto-feminist, or very very early first-wave, campaigns in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Which, yes, had a lot to do with common female sexual anxieties, but considering the vectors for how things like STDs are spread I don't think we should write that off as intrinsically unreasonable or compare it to men's anxieties about 'cucking'.

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

Prostitutes are, definitionally, prostitutes either because they need the money or for some other reason. I'm going based on what I've heard from women (and men, but mostly women) who were in the industry because they needed the money. These are the people I believe we should be primarily concerned with helping. If I hadn't heard a constant chorus from these people that 'muh legalize, regulate, and tax' doesn't really solve their problems, my opinion would probably be different.

I recognize that you've very likely heard from people in similar situations that it does help and I respect that. I've also heard of prostitutes and ex-prostitutes arguing for the Nordic model (which is the group I personally tend to agree with most) or even in some cases that full criminalization is somehow helpful (which strikes me as absurd but whatever). The lack of any meaningful consensus on this among the people actually affected should be taken as a sign that all of our own positions have to be contingent and tentative. It's not an easy issue, even for people who agree on first principles more than you and I do. That's why I was using phrases like 'while I don't agree with it, there's a[n]....argument to be made' and 'I don't like'.

I'll admit that the last few sentences of your post make good points but the first, at least when you get outside (relatively) cossetted First-World-problems territory into the parts of the world where most people and thus most prostitutes actually live and work, strikes me as simply ludicrous.

I don't want to have language about this further right now.

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

I'll admit that the last few sentences of your post make good points but the first, at least when you get outside (relatively) cossetted First-World-problems territory into the parts of the world where most people and thus most prostitutes actually live and work, strikes me as simply ludicrous.

I don't want to have language about this further right now.

My job from 2007 to this July, which I suppose I can now talk about, was dealing at a government level with victims of crime including reading full statements, police reports and social service reports from victims of childhood sexual abuse and adult victims of sexual abuse. I have probably looked at a tens of thousands of cases in that time.

Sexual abuse of prostitutes is under reported for two significant reasons, with the prime reason being that fact that it is usually a statutory offence. Secondly, there is a strong link between people who have been victims of abuse prior to or outside of solicited sex, of which 'payment' numbs that particular pain to the point it ceases to 'feel' like abuse. That's what I mean by there not being a distinct set of economic conditions (i.e 'being poor') to prostitution. Furthermore those who solicit, their clients and even wider society and law have created an artificial differentiation between 'low class' prostitution and 'high class' soliciting. From experience, those who suffer abuse within that model (as there is 'choice' and 'self regulation') tend to be more willing to reporting the abuse and having a proper response by the authorities.

Continued criminalisation of prostitution perpetuates this division. Indeed, why would a high class call girl want to be equal in law with decriminalisation in place rather than remain 'classier' with continued criminalisation that is less intrusive for them than those on the street? And that's where, with everything, power and protection is an issue much more than money.

I didn't and still don't really want to continue this conversation but sincerely thank you for offering this information--I didn't know all this and may reconsider some of my views in light of this. (I'd note that I'm certainly not advocating continued criminalization of prostitution the way I understand criminalization, although you and I may be defining it differently.)