That's fucking stupid

Posts Tagged ‘The WI’

Prostitution is likely to be criminalised because there is a victim right? After all, the mandate of the government when criminalising stuff is to halt behaviour that impacts on others in a negative way, right? Some stuff like murder is obvious, the victim is the person who is murdered. Some stuff like drunk driving is a preventative thing because it stops accidents from happening and it stops people from becoming victims. And there are some crimes which exist solely to cut down on self-inflicted injury which cost the tax payer (thanks to the wonders of the NHS) and the state as a whole some serious cash.

In the case of prostitution it’s hard to find the victim though, it’s like a giant game of Where’s Wally, in which Wally fails to make an appearance. Let’s go through the interested parties:

The Tom

The tom is making good money and in most cases chooses to be in the trade. The hours are good and the pay is good too. Working the streets is a lot less pleasant than working in a brothel where you may have a pimp or a madam taking their cut but either way the flexibility of being your own boss has its advantages. There is a cost to social capital if your job is to be a ho’ but that is made up by the good wages.

The Pimp

The pimp certainly isn’t the victim: he’s taking a cut of the action in return for fixing up the tricks. Some pimps offer protection as well, but in general the arrangement is that they fix up the deals which means the toms don’t have to find their own trade.

The Johns

The johns are the nearest thing to a victim; you could almost argue that they are the victim, but then they have a choice in the matter. Either way they want a service and they are prepared to pay for it. At typical European rates, Paul McCartney could have got laid every night of his life for considerably less than it cost to get rid of that batshit insane Mills woman (€1.2m assuming he was up for it 7 days a week for the whole of the usual three score years and ten compared to about €25m which it cost him to marry and then divorce the mad slag with the missing limbs).

Society as a whole

Hmmm. Not sure how they are the victim here. At the moment the toms don’t pay tax; if they did then it would be hard to claim that society would be suffering. There are health implications to prostitution but legalised and licensed prostitution means that health and hygiene rules can be imposed to ensure that everyone goes about their business in a safe way.

I’ve skipped over the one excuse that governments around the world use time and time again: by criminalising prostitution the government is protecting the innocent girls who get forced into a life of prostitution by their exploiting pimps. That’s just bullshit. It’s like saying that all work should be banned because a few employers don’t pay minimum wage. If prostitution were legalised and licensed then there would be a line drawn between those who want to make good money on their backs, and those who are trafficked and working as illegally trafficked immigrants. The government could pay for the regulation because those who want to work in the sex trade would be tax payers and the health concerns could be tackled by introducing health and hygiene rules for licensed hookers.

Combine this with harsher penalties for johns using unlicensed toms and the demand for illegally traded women dries up, thus forcing the traffickers out of business. Of course the government isn’t going to do this because they are obsessed with the idea that all toms are victims of exploitation, after all, who would choose that life?

Quite a few it would seem.