A New Hampshire bill to legalize sex work “indoors” was recently killed in committee. It’s not dead yet. The recommendation could get flipped if they have the votes on the House floor (and then pass it), but that seems unlikely. No worries, just look left.
Burlington, Vermont, is considering something similar where the odds of approval are exponentially higher.
Burlington City Council on Monday heard what the public thinks about a charter change proposal to eliminate regulation of prostitution in the city — and many people argued prostitution and the sex trade are inseparable, despite some councilors’ claims to the contrary.
If the council approves of the change, the measure would appear as a charter change proposal for Town Meeting Day voters to decide on March 1.
Burlington is #woke, progressive, pro-crime, and on the slippery slope to levels of incompetence and criminality typically reserved for areas of large urban sprawl dominated by decades of Democrat rule. But legalizing sex work? That will just cement into statute the left’s complete disregard for women.
No matter how libertarian the claim that people should be free to consensually sell themselves (online or in-person), most women in these trades are trafficked and abused against their will. And much like the ridiculous bathroom bills that allow male sex predators to “present as female” to access vulnerable girls and women in once ‘safe spaces,’ legalized sex work will result in more harm than good.
True North Reports includes some testimony from advocates for these women.
“That is particularly active in Burlington and is directly related to the gang activity,” Clark said. “Those who survived the Vermont sex trade experience brutalization from gangs, hospitalizations from broken pelvises, complete jaw replacements, severe beatings, physical humiliation, and access to opiates and fentanyl — along with continued support in abusing these substances.”
She added that former workers and their family members have been targeted by traffickers and gang members, and often have to flee their homes.
“Should this [measure pass] you are guaranteed an increase in violence and an increased in the most marginalized here in Vermont continuing to be exploited and trafficked,” Clark said.
The response from advocates of legalizing sex work is basically, so what (also from TNR).
“This is a great first step in destigmatizing sex work — helping our erotic laborers feel seen and recognized as the valued community members they are,” she said. “If the goal is to destigmatize, then promoting of the stereotype that sex workers are all fems and taking their agency by infantizing them all as helpless victims is not removing a stigma, it’s just changing it.”
You’re not legitimizing sex work you are justifying the objectification and abuse of women for the profit of others, reducing them to a commodity, a piece of meat. Used up and tossed away. Is that a reasonable price so a few single moms can run a lucrative webcam business from their basement?
We get similar arguments concerning drug use. I don’t much care what consenting adults do in their spare time, but that idea does not translate to an impact on but one person. My go-to response in such instances is to quote a great piece of writing by Theodore Dalrymple.
In practice, of course, it is exceedingly difficult to make people take all the consequences of their own actions—as they must, if Mill’s great principle is to serve as a philosophical guide to policy. Addiction to, or regular use of, most currently prohibited drugs cannot affect only the person who takes them—and not his spouse, children, neighbors, or employers. No man, except possibly a hermit, is an island; and so it is virtually impossible for Mill’s principle to apply to any human action whatever, let alone shooting up heroin or smoking crack. Such a principle is virtually useless in determining what should or should not be permitted.
This applies to most if not all human vices, and Dalrymple’s piece should be required reading for advocates of legalizing pathways of human weakness, and that includes – by the way – government. No, we can’t, nor should we try to regulate them all. And yes, alcohol is an example of that sort of problem. And yes, the focus on sex work should be the abuse and trafficking, not just the work, but the same advocates – as in Burlington – embrace reduced policing as well, so I think we all know how that will turn out.
