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I think your distinguising between decriminalizing the prostitutes but not the pimps and johns was brilliant! Good work
Being a john is also legal under this plan. There is nothing wrong with people establishing business for sex work.
The abuses take place mainly between sex workers and their pimps, followed by sex workers and johns. Under the current system, it's difficult for sex workers to report either without facing scrutiny. They need support. If we are going to make this a legal, taxable profession, then that means the bosses need to clean up their acts. No more sleaze, abuse, and accepting workers under shady conditions like importing. And when it's a sex worker plus her child, there should be even more legal rights established. Often the sex traffickers bring in women with their children; and yes, there is a child sex industry even in North America that they could be susceptible to.
But none of this gets accounted for because sex workers are doing illegal work, and so it's hard to have their voices heard on these matters.
Centrist77 said:how do you keep prostitution illegal but decriminalize sex workers?
You don't keep the work illegal - you keep the trafficking aspect regulated. A big percentage of the abuses that happen are via the ways that sex workers arrive at and start doing their work. They can be subject to manipulation, entrapment, and even indentured servitude if they are foreign to this country.
Centrist77 said:I understand what you are saying I dont want abusive pimps etc but they would go away with regulation.
They won't go away with regulation. Even if you make the profession legal, it won't be every aspect. There will always be a black market. But you can impact that by empowering the sex workers more. You don't want to legalize abuse, you want to minimize it.
You have to understand, the aspect that matters more here is the social one. The whole reason why the abuses can happen is because it's shaded from society, due to moral reasons. But sex work is always there, and it involves real people. Most other people don't have to be threatened with physical violence when they go to work. The same idea should be applied here.
Centrist77 said:Im just confused on what you are saying?
I'm saying that it's not a black and white situation of make it legal or make it illegal. The different aspects of it should have different degrees of legal entitlement. And on a social level, there needs to be a real desire for integration. Anything that maintains sex workers as "the other" is disempowering their ability to navigate their own market safely.