Having already done most of my schoolboy sniggering in private (although I reserve the right to indulge it again at a later date) I think I can now bring myself to say a few (semi) serious things about this:
Belgian legislators are hoping to bring that to a close with a parliamentary bill that would draw prostitutes into the legal fold and bring the industry under state control, providing sex workers with labour rights and greater health protection.
But for a fee.
The sex workers themselves would be expected to pay up when the tax man calls – boosting state coffers to the tune of an estimated 50 million euros a year.
It represents an attractive option for a country currently struggling to balance its budget deficit – a means of generating money while affording prostitutes better protection.
Not so much legalisation then as part-nationalisation and while it would be nice to imagine that Belgium’s lawmakers have been driven by a genuinely liberal impulse it is more likely that they have been prompted by the desire to get their sticky mitts on all that revenue.
However, I think complaints would be out of order. The trade in (ahem) ‘personal’ services between adults is not a crime and should not be treated as one, so although they may have to hand over a chunk of their earnings to the state at least the prostitutes (and their clients) will have been freed from the constant threat of arrest and prosecution. That is a good thing.
Aside from the fact that we can now justifiably and factually regard them as pimps, the Belgian government would undoubtedly argue that they cannot legitimise the sex industry without subjecting it to the same taxes that every other legitimate industry is forced to stump up. Nor should it be overlooked that gangster protection may prove cheaper than the Belgian state but tax-inspectors generally do not use razors as a means of enforcement.
I sincerely hope that HMG decides to follow the Belgian example on this issue but I don’t expect they will do so anytime soon. Even in this day and age there is still a deeply-ingrained Sabbatarian disapproval of ‘bawdiness’ in this country that manifests itself as a very noisy and effective ‘no’ lobby at the merest mention of relaxing the laws on prostitution. I wish it were not so because even a taxed-and-regulated sex industry would be an improvement on the current arrangements.
But, of course, state control means regular health inspections, licensing, paperwork, a giant sex industry bureaucracy. That fifty million will get whittled down pretty damned quick by the very process of collecting it, and the apparatus of state will be out looking for new revenue sources.
“they have been prompted by the desire to get their sticky mitts on all that revenue.”
With all those prostitutes around, why should their hands be sticky?
“With all those prostitutes around, why should their hands be sticky?”
Good point, sir. I suppose I shouldn’t have put it quite like that but it’s too late now.
Government pimps, y’know, this doesn’t even raise an eyebrow… I suppose that doing one’s bit for queen and country (Belgium still has a queen, don’t they?) takes on a whole new meaning…
Well, at various times in the last two decades, United State Department of Interior operated several brothels seized by IRS for tax deliquence. Of course the brothels’ original owner managed go get the place back via shell corporation during auction (DOI is supposed to disperse of the tax liened property).
I’d like to see it happen here, and watch amazed as the regulatory apparatus of the state is rolled out. Diversity monitoring of clients, then… OFTOSS, even?
In ‘Jeremy Clarkson meets the neighbours’ last year on BBC2, our hero arrived in Amsterdam and visited a brothel to chat with one of its employees about the government rules. There was a bit in the rule book that they had a good laugh over. Something to do with ‘shaving sex’ required fresh blades or something. Jeremy wondered what ‘shaving sex’ was and even the professional didn’t know. But it was there in the book so someone in the Dutch government must have thought about enough to have codified its technique.
Zchose krashee Dutch ja?
Ian, the implications of applying federal law on disabilities and non-discrimination to a brothel are staggering.
Brothels would, of course, be required to hire a proportion of disabled hookers. One especially looks forward to the arguments about what will constitute a “reasonable accomodation” of disability, and what the “essential characteristics of the job” might be in the context of a brothel.
Would a hooker be required to see an equal number of male and female customers? Will they be monitored to assure that they service the proper racial and gender mix?
What would a brothel do if it turned out that most of its customers were male? Sounds like prima facie evidence of sex discrimination to me.
What about the application of “hostile environment” laws banning sexual suggestion in the workplace? I suppose this will lead to a policy of “you can boink our employees all you want, but you can’t look at them funny or talk about it.”
Well, this is why many sex-workers, like dope-dealers, don’t want to be legalised.
“even a taxed-and-regulated sex industry would be an improvement on the current arrangements”
Are you sure about this, David? It seems that the sex industry is largely left alone by the powers that be, to get on with its business in private. Is legal best just because it’s legal?
Alice,
As a matter of principle, the selling of sexual services should not be treated as a crime. The fact that the state does enforce it very efficiently does not alter the principle.
I do not want to see prostitutes treated as criminals and dragged into court (which I assure you does happen in this country). Nor do I think it is fair for their clients to run the risk of a potentially career-ruining criminal conviction just for engaging their services. The fines levied by courts form a tax anyway.
I realise that legalisation means that the state will begin the process of regulating them up the ying-yang but enforcement is going to be difficult, expensive and embarrassing and, besides which, if the state oversteps the mark, they will only succeed in pushing the industry back underground again.
“It seems that the sex industry is largely left alone by the powers that be, to get on with its business in private. Is legal best just because it’s legal?”
In this case, yes. It means that the police can go after Albanian scumbags who bring girls into the country on false pretenses & force them into prostitution. At the moment, you’re right… for the most part the police don’t bother, & then occasionally they swoop, closing down perfectly respectable brothels that were doing no harm as much as they close down seriously dodgy exploitative outfits. As I understand it, Australia (or parts of australia) have licensed brothels, & most seem to agree it’s been an improvement.
Similarly on the drug dealing front; although taxed, the ‘honest’ dealers would no longer fear arrest, whilst people who sold dodgy/contaminated gear could be pursued by the police, who would suddenly find more time on their hands to deal with genuinely nasty people, rather than those who transgress against some leftover Victorian idea of what’s acceptable.
Well, if sex is a commodity, it begs the question: will the tax collectors accept payment in kind in lieu of cash?
And if it is a legal product on the market, how long before the masses of the nanny state start demanding handouts? After all, if we give away free cheese, bread, cereal, housing and whatnot…
And who is going to enforce the standards here? Now that sex is a regulated industry, we need to ensure quality control. Can’t have the consumers getting ripped off by producers of a low quality product, now can we.
Damn!
First paragraph of the above should read:
“The fact that the state does not enforce it very efficiently….”
Surely the state will be more madam than pimp.
Eamon
It makes sense that the state should run brothels.
After all, in Canada they are now officially in the business of selling pot, thanks to a court ruling on medical marijuana.
I’m looking forward to seeing the first affirmative action suit. Surely there is some ethnic group underrepresented in the brothels, perhaps devout Muslims. We will have to implement a government program to ensure the appropriate diversity exists.
Truly, sex is the funniest subject.
We shall now see:
1. Whether “sex workers” are sharp enough with calculators and Excel spreadsheets to work out the discounted marginal value of legality accurately;
2. Whether pimps come to the opposite conclusion;
3. Whether anyone can accurately assess the decay rate at which the value of legality declines. When I say “accurately,” I have in mind an accurate prediction of the time interval between legalization and the swelling of a preponderant mass of “sex workers” agitating to return their occupations to the black market.
Maybe it’s time to start a pool.
Apparently what is currently illegal in belgium is not the selling of sex, but pimping and running brothels, a prostitute can set themselves up as in independent contractor.
What this looks like to me is a move to gain power over the prostitutes by regulating their conduct and changing the law in a way that will make it easier to tax them. Because the state wants to be their pimp.
Money and power is all the state cares about, as usual.
We have a similar situation in New Zealand. Where prostitution has been legalised. I think this is a far cry better than in the past where it has been illegal while the law has turned a sympathetic blind eye on the “massage parlours” and “hair salons” out there.
Something to think about: So if a lesbian woman walks into a brothel and asks for a women, but none of the prostitutes are that way inclined, can they refuse to serve her? That is, are they allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or should they have to take it in their professional stride?
I just thought I would also point out that prostitution is not illegal in Britian, unlike in the so called “Land of the free”. What is illegal here is soliciting, a crime the John commits.
There are also brothels all over the country that are licensed by the local councils, in my town there is even one opposite a large police station. There are are also cannabis cafes here too apparently, one time some researchers did an analysis of the cigarette butts in the main street of my town, and somewhat suprisingly they found a fairly high percentage (over 10%) of them were cannabis cigarettes. The only problem I have ever had with these policies is that doing drugs made one of my neighbors occasionaly stay up talking noisily till late on (my walls are paper thin).
Funny that Omnibus Bill sees the state ending up doling out sex services free at the point of supply.
A lot of archeologists believe, apparently, that this was what used to happen in Sumer, and maybe even in the civilisation of Babylon that replaced it.
So they say, the supreme deity, Inanna, later renamed Ishtar, was a rather serious fertility and war goddess, who nonetheless had temples where going to the prostitutes was – literally – a major way to worship the Goddess.
It might have been a useful safety valve for pacifying young males too.
So the Whore of Babylon mentioned in the Old Testament (echoed in Ian Paisley’s habit of referring to the Whore of Rome) was, according to this theory, not a metaphor but a real person, an important public post akin to Mayor of New York, the most senior or powerful of the Sumerian temple prostitutes. We see all this naughtiness through the disgusted eye-witness accounts of patriarchal Jews kept prisoner at Babylon seven or eight centuries (?) before Christ.
Some of the idea of sex as a form of worship and sacrament allegedly survived into late antiquity or the early middle ages in parts of the Mediterranean world where the increasingly illicit cult of Egyptian supreme goddess Isis lingered on inside the Roman Empire. Late forms of her cult and a number of others counted among the “mystery cults” by ancient writers had an elaborate initiation rite in which the initiate was sworn to secrecy and which was believed to include a sexual communion with a priestess – probably a faint echo of the public sacralisation of sex two thousand years earlier in Mesopotamia.
Worship of Isis was supposedly absorbed into the Catholic cult of Mary (hence dark-skinned “Black Madonnas” scattered around odd parts of Europe, like the one in Poland at an old shrine where the present Pope regularly pays homage). A religious studies teacher once told me that “Virgin Mary” is a translation error, since a similar word meant “virgin” and “temple girl” at different times, and it was very common for the son of a temple prostitute to be accorded healing powers.
After thinking this over I cannot seriously think of any problems it actually solves: Prostitutes that cannot, or are unable to live within the rules imposed by the state will continue to operate exactly in the way they do now. Nor does legalisation tackle the reasons behind those who turn to prostitution as a last resort … in fact it makes matters a thousand times worse for them because once its legalised it makes it more easy to push those poor souls into it.
“Come on luv – you owe us the money- we have a nice little job you can do without even getting out of bed – and what’s more its totally legal!!!”
The baseline with prostitution is that it involves giving your body over to strange people to use and abuse to satisfy their own drives and personal pleasure….whatever way you look at it that is a damned risky thing to do. Which is why it is often those in desperate need and the mentally unstable who end up doing it. Poor students will be a rich source to tap here… then once they’re involved what happens to them???
This is going to force more and more people into the trade who previously wouldn’t have touched it with a barge pole. Once they’re into the trade they are open to the associated problems that go with it including the criminality… which will not go away because the problems that cause it are not addressed in this legislation.
This looks like good legislation on the outside but its bad bad bad legislation when you look at what it will cause. This has not been fully considered – or if it has- then it is being sidelined for purposes of greed and power.
Maybe the plot is more sinister still. Make prostitution not just legal, but sacred again, as in Sumer.
Then single men can worship the state through sex.
Mark I’m all for sex in “summer” 😉
– but worshipping the state? The state of ecstasy~ perhaps !!!
Sure no-one would fall for that …unless they were promised an endless supply of free tottie! …..
….oh…
…. that’s what cloning’s for !!!! 😉
Della writes:
“There are also brothels all over the country that are licensed by the local councils, in my town there is even one opposite a large police station..”
Utter rot. There may very well be a brothel opposite your local police station, but if there is it is illegal. Its operator would be (among other things) ‘keeping a disordely house’.
Similarly, your bizarre suggestion that there are cannabis cafes operating legally in the UK. There are not.
Once again, we are reminded not to believe all the delusional ramblings published on the internet.
I never said it wasn’t illegal in national law, what I said was it was operating and the police and everyone else is very very clear on where the brothels are, and what they are, they have been operating like that since the 19th century I think. Gay brothels have recently opened too.
I never said they were legal, I said they were operating, these are not quite so open as the brothels so far as I know, I’m no expert on that phenomenon.
Oh I bet you know all about delusional rambling.
You claimed that local councils ‘license’ brothels in the UK.
This is completely untrue and you do your argument (such as it is) no favours by trying to dissemble.
Please provvide some proof of your claim or at least have the decency to retract it.
David:
“I do not want to see prostitutes treated as criminals and dragged into court (which I assure you does happen in this country).”
Unfortunately, the people who get dragged into courts and fined are generally the ones on the bottom run of the ladder- soliciting is illegal, and street-walking prostitutes are the most poor and desperate. It is perfectly legal to be an “escort” and charge for your time and entertainment.
“Nor do I think it is fair for their clients to run the risk of a potentially career-ruining criminal conviction just for engaging their services.”
I’m not aware it is illegal to pay for sex. It is illegal to kerb-crawl, but there are plenty of other ways of finding a prostitute. And I certainly don’t think that legalising prostitution is going to make it any more socially acceptable!
You wrote:
“Even in this day and age there is still a deeply-ingrained Sabbatarian disapproval of ‘bawdiness’ in this country that manifests itself as a very noisy and effective ‘no’ lobby at the merest mention of relaxing the laws on prostitution. I wish it were not so because even a taxed-and-regulated sex industry would be an improvement on the current arrangements.”
I think you are conflating legalisation with moral legitimisation. The fact that prostitution should not be illegal does not make it right or good, however.
Women who have sex for a living rather than personal enjoyment, and men who have to pay to get sexual enjoyment will always be frowned upon, because basically those are rather substandard and debasing approaches to human relationships.
Wrong again.
Another source:
Maybe I could go to one of these brothels and try and get a brochure for you, would you believe it then?
Della writes:
“Maybe I could go to one of these brothels and try and get a brochure for you, would you believe it then?”
Please do that very thing – otherwise I maintain you are lying in an attempt to justify your opinion.
Your straw man about the illegality of selling sex aside (note that I never claimed it was illegal) your claim that councils license brothels is still manifest nonsense. To quote your own words:
“This has enabled the state to impose a quasi-official regime of regulation on the sex industry”
I draw your attention to the word ‘quasi’.
Presumably you know what it means? Regardless of the moral rights or wrongs of the situation, it remains a criminal offence to run a brothel in the United Kingdom and all you have succeeded in doing is confirming that point.
But do carry, on, please…
Evidently, in Vegas, everything is legal…
Bizarre Game Targets Women: Hunting for Bambi
Source: KLAS TV
Published: Jul 14, 2003
Author: LuAnne Sorrell
It’s called Hunting for Bambi and it’s happening right here in the Las Vegas
valley. This controversial hunt draws participants from around the world.
Warning: The content and video in this story may be offensive to viewers.
It’s a new form of adult entertainment, and men are paying thousands of dollars
to shoot naked women with paint ball guns. They’re coming to Las Vegas to do
it. This bizarre new sport has captured the attention of people around the
world, but Channel 8 Eyewitness News reporter LuAnne Sorrell is the only person
who has interviewed the game’s founder.
George Evanthes has never been hunting. “Originally I’m from New York. What am
I going to hunt? Squirrels? Someone’s cats? Someone’s dogs? I don’t think so,”
said Evanthes. Now that he’s living in Las Vegas, he’s finally getting his
chance to put on his camouflage, grab a rifle and pull the trigger. But what’s
in his scope may surprise you. He’s not hunting ducks or deer, he’s hunting
naked woman. …
One final problem: In the regulation of sex, which economic school shall we adhere to?
I would prefer something of the Austrian / Adam Smith school – let the market set rates, supply and demand. But the government’s already involved, so that’s out the window.
We could go Keynesian. In that case, the harlots would have to be encouraged to put out when their johns are in a dry spell. In fact, government would have to provide prostitutes for free, in order to stimulate the, um, economy during slow times. Sure, with all this free and easy subsidized sex, we could see a big rise in STD rates, and AIDS rates in the long run. But in the long run, we’re all dead.
We could go supply side / Laffer. During dry spells, the government would ease off on income taxes for prostitutes. This would encourage them to produce more, at lower prices. If done properly, tax revenues would actually increase, due to a massive rise in, um, gross revenues.
Or, in my ideal world, we’d go Marxist. From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. And boy, am I needy lately…
Perhaps brothels are already out of date. Check this Spectator story about sex parties in London. Sounds much more fun.
Oh, now, wait just a cotton-picking minute there, Della. You start off with “There are also brothels all over the country that are licensed by the local councils, in my town there is even one opposite a large police station.”
When called on it, you supply links indicating that Birmingham and Edinburgh license massage parlors and Edinburgh tolerates streetwalking. This hardly supports the impression that councils all over the UK issue whorehouse permits like parking stickers. In fact, A and B are sufficiently far apart that I feel confident calling you a liar.
Why you would want to make Britain sound like a state-sanctioned madcap Fellini sex-romp, I have no idea, but blind-eye-turning is hardly legalization, and certainly happens in “the land of the free” (and many other lands) as well. In fact, there are genuine state-licensed brothels in a few rural counties in the US.
Prostitution is not against any national law in the US. Nevada, for one state, has legalized it, and is now, predictably, contemplating how best to tax the hell out of it. Not sure if any other states have followed suit.
mark;
“A religious studies teacher once told me that “Virgin Mary” is a translation error, since a similar word meant “virgin” and “temple girl” at different times, and it was very common for the son of a temple prostitute to be accorded healing powers.”
I wonder just how he got his job, being a ludicrously ill-informed buffoon.
The doctrine of the virgin birth doesn’t rest on a single word. When the angel told Mary she was pregnant, she said, “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” An angel told Joseph the conception was from God. And so on. You don’t have to actually believe in the virgin birth, but what this “teacher” told you is idiotic. Did he ever even READ the text?
Beside that, there were temple prostitutues hundreds of years before in what is now Iraq, but nowhere near Roman Judea in either place or time. And the idea that first century Jews thought being the son of a temple prostitute was any sort of good thing is too stupid for words.
(There is some debate about the OT prophesy about the virgin birth, but the first century Jews all thought it meant the Messiah would be born of a woman who had never had sex, so this “Virgin Mary” business has nothing to do with it.)
Scott Cattanach;
Can you say “hoax”?
I don’t particularly want to go to a brothel, but I have done the next best thing and photographed the adverts in the phone book:
Page 1
really pretty blurry
The big adverts are Central ladies, Carols Sauna.
There is also in text to small to see Atlantis Ambassidor Sauna, Fingerprints (opposite police station), Finger tips, London street sauna, Mermaids, the new gentle touch, new town sauna, blair street sauna.
Page 2 slightly racier adverts, a bit blurry
Big adverts Blair street sauna, Executive suana, London Street Sauna. Here is a link to the edinburgh city council website showing the council granting an entertainment license to London Street suana (41 london Street), and several others.
Page 3
a bit blurry
Big adverts Scorpio sauna, Newtown sauna.
There is at least one other sauna I know of that is not in the book.
Della: a sauna license is not a brothel license, no matter what the customers really get up to.
We, too, license saunas and massage parlors and escort services and all manner of grungy, deceptive sex-based businesses, some of which sell actual sex. That’s a far cry from “brothels all over the country that are licensed by the local councils.”
S. Weasel,
God you’re stupid, you have clearly not clicked on any of the links, particularly this one. In the links I have provided in various messages in this thread I have linked to research papers that describe the situation in Edinburgh, if you had read them instead of coming to instant judgements based on your own preconcieved notions you would realise I am providing you with an accurate description of the situation.
The ever-charming Della writes:
“God you’re stupid, you have clearly not clicked on any of the links, particularly this one..”
And you are *still* lying while trying to shore-up your original completely specious claim.
The links go to so-called ‘escort services’ which, while they may well hold licenses from local councils who turn a blind eye to what is really going on, do *not* constitute legalised brothels, which is what you originally stated.
Could be, but it doesn’t look like one right now:
(July 16) — Channel 8’s exclusive story about the adult paint ball business, “Hunting for Bambi” has created an uproar across the country. The story about men hunting down women with paint ball guns is now one of the most searched-for-articles on the world wide web. Today it was the topic of discussion on several national news programs. While many people are interested, most are outraged. Others say the whole thing is a hoax, and that the hunt is a publicity stunt. Eyewitness News reporter LuAnne Sorrell, who broke the story, went looking for proof.
I must take exception to the slur on pimps. Distasteful as many personally are, they at least allow their workers to retain a portion of their earnings, they deal with a willing purchaser in a market enviornment, …
Compare and contast with governments. I think you owe an apology to the pimps.
Dearest G,
I never made the claim they were legal, only that they existed, they are were licensed by the local goverment (as a way of controlling the problems surrounding prostitution), and that the police and pretty much everybody else around this area is aware what they are. I did say that prostitution (i.e. selling sex) is not illegal in Britain, something which is in fact true.
I invite you to quote any sentences I actually wrote in previous messages that you see to be in disagreement with the above statements.
Della: I have indeed clicked your links, and they lead to bog-standard saunas and escort services. Some of which are undoubtedly fronts for prostitution, as they are in thousands of similar businesses in the US (and, presumably, elsewhere).
Which leaves me with the classic online dilemma: are you actively dishonest or merely breathtakingly ignorant?
Della writes:
“I never made the claim they were legal, only that they existed, they are were licensed by the local goverment (as a way of controlling the problems surrounding prostitution), and that the police and pretty much everybody else around this area is aware what they are.”
On the contrary – that is precisely what you were trying to claim:
Della (again):
“There are also brothels all over the country that are licensed by the local councils, in my town there is even one opposite a large police station.”
Licensed means legal. They are *not* licensed for the purposes of prostitution but for others, such as ‘escort’ services or as ‘saunas’. For you to pretend otherwise reveals either a complete lack of understanding about the law or a deliberate attempt to mislead non-UK readers.
A public house may be licensed for the sale of alcohol on the premises. If other drugs are sold there too (with or without the tacit knowledge of the licensing authority) that does not mean that the supply of those other substances is either legal or licensed, simply that it is ignored.
It beggars belief that you seem unable to understand this elementary point of law.
Darling G,
Licensed does not mean legal, if I meant that the local goverment had made it legal I would have used exactly those words. When I say they were licensed I mean that they were given official permission to work as brothels by the council, but so as not to offend anyone they must use some other title on the door. The license they get are entertainment liscenses. I am using the terminology that is in common use surrounding this issue here (Scotland), and the law is perhaps different here than in the area you live (probably England).
The reason these “saunas” have entertainment licenses is so they can act as brothels in order to reduce the criminality that often surrounds prostitution. If they were to suddenly decide to give up brotheling and act as saunas they may well lose their license.
Nick wrote: “Something to think about: So if a lesbian woman walks into a brothel and asks for a women, but none of the prostitutes are that way inclined, can they refuse to serve her? That is, are they allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or should they have to take it in their professional stride?”
Am pondering. I doubt any female prostitute who wanted to make money would turn down such a customer, especially since women are, at least statisically, less violent. She’s not looking for a love connection — it’s a job. One does all kinds of things one would is not necessarily inclined to do on a job, like getting coffee or taking orders from people whose intellegence you don’t respect. There are also plenty of cases where you have lesbian prostitues who actually maintain steady (if not, obviously, monogamous) relationships, yet regularly service men.