Legalized Prostitution

Politics Taiwan Politics
1

Prostitution should be legalized

  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

[quote=“britai”]Well, it looks like the tide is turning against the War on Prostitution. Both A-Bian and Mayor Ma tried to do away with it by phasing out the legalized prostitutes and stamping out the illegal form of it. From what I’m reading though, the people of Taiwan feel that it shouldn’t be illegal (though it could be inaccurate–surveys in Taiwan seem to be more of an “art” than a science). And it appears that the government isn’t quite so energized about continuing this “war”.

So how about it? Does anybody here believe that the Taiwanese government should try to stamp out prostitution?

Where I’m from, my government has the same attitude about prostitution: that it’s a crime; the prostitute usually gets sent to jail, but rarely does the “john”; that it’s difficult for them to get help; that they’re controlled by pimps or organized crime; that they face disease and violence.

Does outlawing prostution help? Or should the government of Taiwan make it legal again, where woman can get licensed to provide sex for money?

My Father was a policeman for 30 years. He had a very low opinion of criminals (he hated the way movies/TV seems to romanticize them) and had a very tough attitude on how they should be treated. But I remember when the subject of prostitution came up that he surprised me. I expected the same hardline opinion, but he just paused and said “Prostitutes are the most sad, pathetic people that you will every meet.”

Sound off. Who’s in favor of legalizing prostitution? Who’s against? Please give your reasons.[/quote]

2

I’m against prostitution even though I believe it is possible that there may be women who screen their customers and so reduce the risk of violence and/or disease, and who like the money enough to not care about using their body as a machine. Anyone who thinks that this type of prostitute is most common is living in a dream world. The point I want to make is that the customers who go to prostitutes really don’t care if there is a possibility that the prostitute was forced into it or is doing it to support a drug habit or whatever. These men are scum and they should be put in jail (for a short time) and made to pay a large fine (let the government garnish their wages if they don’t have the cash on hand). All fine monies would go to getting these women other jobs/counselling/drug rehab etc. Taiwan culture will have to change just a little bit for something like this to happen, however. I wonder how they deal with prostitution in Sweden?

3

Let’s consider the situation of Taipei about four years ago.

The city had a small number of legal brothels, where the prostitutes were regularly checked for STDs.

The city also had a huge number of illegal brothels, most of which (being illegal) were probably run by gangsters who probably didn’t bother with niceties like health checks.

And which ones got shut down? The ones regulated by the city, or the ones run by gangsters? The legal ones. What a wonderful present for the gangsters: getting rid of their competition.

Certainly, there was the usual crackdown-of-the-month campaign against the illegal ones. But they most certainly did not disappear.

This approach, first under Chen Shui-bian and then under Ma Ying-jeou, makes no sense to me other than as a cynical political game. Score points with some members of the public by appearing to “do something,” while actually making the situation worse. (But how on earth could Ma have been so politically foolish as to make the absurd statement that he’d eliminate all illegal prostitution within a month?!)

Legalize prostitution to gain more control over it, drive the gangsters from the business, check all prostitutes for STDs, and make use of condoms mandatory in brothels (and educate the prostitutes to ensure they understand why it’s important for them to enforce this). Then – and not before – think about whether legalized prostitution should be ended.

And keep up those campaigns to educate people about the importance of condoms. The very low rate of condom use in Taiwan is a health crisis waiting to happen. Actually, it’s already started.

4

Seems silly to eradicate it. The alternative is Taiwanese males having affairs, getting caught, taking typhoon quantities of shit from their wives, and becoming even more detached.

The prostitute is an invaluable cog in wheel of social stability. Not only do they give the (protected) male organ a relatively benign outlet with minimal repercussions, they also, by comparison, give the rest of us a sense of dignity and pride we don’t normally attain from our peer group. Countless cases of full blown depression and or undue marital strife are averted every year by the serendipitous efforts of the Taiwan prostitute.

5

A person who pays for sex, may be doing it for a number of reasons, maybe he doesn’t get it, maybe he feels his wife doesn’t give it to him often enough, maybe it just wants to etc etc.

I think if somebody wants to pay for it and there is someone willing to do it for a certain fee, then go ahead, the girl makes money and the guy relieves some stress.

Sexual slavery is a different thing altogether and is more rampant when prostition is totally illegal. Why? cause it goes underground, it becomes comtrolled by those guys that run brothels down some back alley, who can easily pay off some cop to just walk past.

These guys exploit girls, cause where are the girls going to go to if they get exploited? Since it is illegal, they have no hope of setting up or getting organized into some support group or union. They are not educated about safe sex and often are beaten and treated badly, cause they can’t go to the cops. They have to live in the shadows and are victims and slaves to the gangsters or pimps.

If you try and make it illegal, you might as well put a paper bag over you head and pretend it is gone away. Making it illegal maybe will apease the groups calling for it to be made illegal, and serve to show Ma Eng Jou as the guy who is trying to clean up Taipei.
But then it will just go to other parts of Taipei, but to many people as long as it is not in my face, it doesn’t exist.
Take the Dutch example, prostitues are safe cause they work in a safe environment, the area is in a zone so it is not in people’s faces, the government can get tax from it, the prostitutes are educatted on safe sex STDs.

Prostition is one of the oldest professions and will always be there, as long as people have sexual urges.
And both the prostitutes and the customers are not scum or evil, they are just doing what they consider business. They don’t kill people, or injury people, or bring society into disrepute. What should be figured out is why such a business is there, why people choose this service and are not just happy with their relationship, or their right hand or their blow up doll or sheep?

6

You must all live in Taipei, prostitution is still legal here in Taichung.

7

To zhukov, if you get it from a prostitute and you aren’t sure if it is a “sexual slavery” situation or not, they you ARE scum, the prostitute is not. The institution of slavery is very old as well; that doesn’t excuse it.

8

Good point, and all the more reason to keep prostitution legal and regulate it in a reasonable manner. You can’t keep men from seeking out prostitutes :unamused: --regulation would at least afford some protection to women. Most men, even scum, would prefer legal prostitutes because of the added safety (less chance of getting an STD or being ripped off).

9

V

Valid point but lets take an example

Prostitute in holland (where it is legal and regulated) and prostitute in Taiwan.

Which one is more lightly to be the Mainland girl that was probabily sold by her family, smuggled into the country, and is now hiding out somewhere working for some unscupulous master.

True in Holland, there probabily are prostitutes brought in from poorer countries, but the police etc have their finger better on the pulse of these things there, cause the hold prostitution game is not some gangster underworld domain

10

And also I would like to know the motivation behind banning it

Is it to project Taipei as a better city?
Is it because lots of wives and girlfriends have complained?

In the newspaper, several reports have been written on the debate, telling of the police using entrapment and illegal methods to bust both the hooker and the client.
This whole debate on prostitution has become headline news in the last while, while for years it was seen as part and parcel of Taiwan. Funny I only see it as a publicity stunt by Ma, as long as they make a couple of busts they are seen as controlling and eliminating the ‘problem’.
Is it not just another ‘window dressing’ clamp down on crime in Taiwan, removing the bad element from Taiwan society?
Well, Taiwan is like this, everybody knows who the gangsters are, if the police and government really wanted to cut out the rotten apples in the barrel, they could, but why would they when a lot of the rotten apples are in the police and government. As long as this is so, there will always be corruption and prostitution, one of the only ways of curbing the profit out of illegal practices is to legalize the illegal practices, make the owners of these brothels pay tax and have them accountable; otherwise make it illegal, meaning it still goes on regardless.

If it is illegal the only difference will be instead of the government getting tax, the payments instead will be made to the local precinct and to the head gangster. The customs officers will still be bribed to allow a couple of Mainland girls to be smuggled in. The Taiwanese guys will still find a prostitute, and the cases of STDs and Aids among the Taiwanese males who frequent these establishments and these totally sex uneducated girls will increase.

You can kill something off as long as the market is there for it.

I would be interested to know in what the Taiwanese teach their kids about sexuality, sex etc . We all see that parts of movies cut out on HBO etc cause it is not acceptable to show the human body on Taiwan TV. Flick up a couple of channels, and you can have hours of fun watching Taiwanese or Japanese girls being humiliated for the pleasure of men. Get on your motorbike, go down the road, and you can see a skimpy clad girl selling betel nut. Go to your KTV, and have the girls sit on your lap and feel them up. Go to Keelung and you pass this red light district where the girls are locked inside these cages. Not the best lookers of course, and having a lot of mileage on the clock
First thoughts when I came to Taiwan and heard and saw this was TAIWANESE are dirty perverts. And when they have views like this on sexuality, sex etc, I have no doubts why the sex industry does so well in Taiwan.
So is banning prostitution not just a way of protecting the innocent young males of Taipei from themselves?

11

Prostituion should be leagl for the following reasons:

-Making it illegal won’t make the problem go away.

-Making prostitution illegal won’t clean up, regulate, or save the women doing it, it will just drive it underground into more dangerous environments both for the women doing it and thier customers.

-If prostitution is kept legal, there is a better chance that the people involved (women in particular) will get the health care and safety that they need.

-If prostituion is kept legal, then illegal sex slaves from China and other areas will be found much easier.

-In short, prohibition in every society, at every level, has never worked. Wake up and smell the coffee. Regulate prostitution, clean it up, and tax it, that’s the only way to solve this problem.

12

The floozy and the drole that goes with her are far more loathsome and disease ridden than the prostitute and the john, yet no one rains legal scorn on the floozy or the drole.

Kinda unfair, but I’m for keeping things just the way they are. If prostitution were legal that would take the mystique and aura away from visiting a dimly lit brothel. No chance of being caught, hardly a thing naughty about it – a relatively unrewarding experience.

13

JoePlaque, why don’t you start a business dealing in child prostitutes? That’s even naughtier. We could all regulate it and teach the children to check for herpes when they brushed their teeth at night. I bet you wouldn’t care if the prostitute was forced to see you.

14

I agree that prostitution should be regulated, legalized, and taxed. Good point. Get these people the health insurance they need because god knows that they could use it.

Is there the general assumption that only women are prostitutes here? I would hope not, it is only the females brought in from Mainland China that make it on the news.

What do people gather about the gay population? Is prostitution not their bag? Doubt it. But this would never be posted on the news. Would it?

15

Dr. He Chunrui says yes. I don’t think she would steer you wrong.
http://sex.ncu.edu.tw/english/relevant/workers.htm

16

Is keeping a mistress that much different to using a prostitute?

Like hiring a car long term or renting one from time to time?

Sure there is a real grotty end of the business - like taking a taxi.

Taxis are regulated - I could agree that that sort of sex business should be regulated.

17

I can’t think of anywhere that has “stamped out” prostitution. But it is possible to regulate it - Amsterdam is the obvious example.

18

Women don’t like prostitution because it threatens their sexual power. They cobble together arguments that prostitution and violence and coercion are inextricably linked but violence and coercion are no more a necessary part of selling sex for money than they are a part of trading sex for security and companionship – otherwise known as marriage.

Sex between consenting adults is a private affair that is no one else’s business. If any sort of sexual relationship between adults primarily exists in a milieu of crime and violence, it’s only because it’s been driven there underground by prudes and sexual inquisitors.

I’m not a proponent of prostitution. I think it coarsens the human spirit. I am a proponent of an adult’s freedom to choose though.

19

Guest, your comment that, “Women don’t like prostitution because it threatens their sexual power” is a gross oversimplification. In fact, often the exact opposite is true.

Many women are strongly opposed to any attempts to restrict prostitution or pornography because those are attempts by men to take away women’s power, to tell them what they can and cannot do. I read a very good book on the subject (whose title I wish I remembered) with essays by a slew of prominent feminists most of whom strongly opposed any laws limiting or restricting women’s right to engage in prostitution or pornography if they so choose. And I must say, I agree with them.

Incidentally, the biggest difference between sex for free and sex for money is that sex for money usually costs a lot less.

20

Maybe it’s just me but this sounds just alittle suspicious. :laughing:

upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=200 … 1124-1932r

bunnyranch.net/

State Dept. delegation toured Nevada brothel

WASHINGTON, May 20 (UPI) – The State Department is taking steps to clean up its international visitors program stung by scandal last week when a delegation of East Asian academics, government officials and non-governmental organization workers made an unscheduled visit to a Carson City, Nev., brothel.

Here’s the catch: the delegation was invited to the United States to study strategies on ending the scourge of sex trafficking.

“The State Department does not condone the visit to the brothel ranch on May 14, 2003, or in fact any meeting that may have taken place between the visitors and representatives of the ranch,” Brooke Summers, a State Department spokeswoman, told United Press International Tuesday.

The Nevada Appeal on May 15 reported that the 10-person delegation from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, [color=red]Taiwan[/color] and Vietnam visited the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, “the place where wet dreams become reality,” according to the ranch’s Web site.

Dennis Hof, owner of the bunny ranch, told UPI Tuesday: “We got a call from somebody that said there was a State Department delegation that would like more information on the bunny ranch and legal prostitution in the Nevada. As we do with the media, we opened the doors to them.”
According to a State Department official, the delegation was told about the ranch in a briefing by Nevada State historian in Reno on the history of legal prostitution in the state. Summers said an “uninvited guest,” who was affiliated with the ranch, offered the delegation a tour.

Hof in an interview was careful to say that to his knowledge none of the members of the 10-person delegation “had sex with any of the bunny ranch girls.” He added, “They were more concerned about trying to deal with prostitution in their own country, and in particular underage prostitution and the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases.”

Nonetheless, the incident has already invoked criticism from anti-sex trafficking activists.

“The president has signed a national security directive making it the policy of the administration to oppose the legalization of prostitution,” Michael Horowitz, a fellow at the Hudson Institute, told UPI in an interview. “The State Department brings a delegation from Asia where the problems are particularly acute to a sex ranch as a means of showcasing how benign brothels and prostitution are.”

In the delegation, the only State Department officials present were translators contracted for the program, but not associated with either the foreign or civil service. Nonetheless, one State Department official said, “We were very pissed. Things are going to take place to ensure this never happens again.” The official said that a series of steps were being discussed to coordinate the closer monitoring of the international visitors program.