Um... First, it's not a strawman.  You offered nothing but suffering as a basis of morality.  I pointed out through reductio ad absurdum that this is not sufficient for a system of morality.  I demonstrated that with nothing else to go on, many ridiculous "morals" can be defended.

Here's your quote:

So, what other information did you give us?  You didn't say, "suffering is a basis for morality."  You said, "standards... are based on... creating and avoiding suffering."  That's pretty clear cut.  Either you didn't want to address the much broader implications, or you thought you could slip such a generalization by without criticism.

Anything on this board that is inaccurate is open for refutation.  No one asked you to debate.  If you don't defend your position, I feel relatively certain that you'll be ignored because you haven't presented your position very well at all.  Do what you wish.

We do know that driving a car is immoral?  But... you drive, right?  Every day?  I don't know if you have kids, but will you or do you let them drive?  I'm getting the idea that you're trying to say that morality is a great topic for forums, but it doesn't have any effect on people's actions.  I mean, hell!  If driving is immoral, and prostitution is immoral, and everybody drives, why shouldn't everyone prostitute themselves?

Don't read shit into my posts that isn't there.  If you'd read any of the voluminous work I've done on human sexuality on this very site, you'd know better.  You used the argument and I addressed it.  You didn't mention the men's emotional state, so I didn't address it either.  Unbunch thy panties, please.

[EDIT:  Please read 'voluminous work' as 'studious essays.'  I didn't mean to imply that any findings were my own.  Pardon the error.]

I'm familiar with Helen Fisher.  She seems to have a decent grasp of the science of mating, but she gets a bit lost in what I call the Anthropological Trap, which is the assumption that human nature is somehow different in kind from that of other species.  I would recommend that you read The Red Queen, by Matt Ridley.

I haven't read that particular book.  I'll pick it up.  I'm familiar with the protein/big brain connection.  It seems to be more applicable to the split between erectus and sapien than the development of human culture, but I don't have any issue with attributing that part of human nature to the switch from nuts and berries to meat.

In general, I'm not sure I want to commit to removing protein sharing from the other dynamics of early human mating, such as protection and intraspecies competition.  We also can't forget about jealousy as a primary drive towards mating bonds.  If the male didn't jealously guard his female after copulation, he couldn't be certain of parenthood.  If the female didn't jealously guard the male, she could not be certain of the contribution of his resources to childrearing.

We're still sort of dancing around the morality issue, though.  I'm having some real problems understanding what you think morality is.  You've given me the indication that you believe that anything that's bad for either the individual, or through commission or omission, anyone else sharing a habitat with the individual, is immoral.  With parameters so broad, virtually anything we do could be deemed immoral in some way or another.  For us to have any way of measuring the relative goodness or badness of a particular action, we're going to have to have something a little more concrete.  Is sexual immorality worse than ecological morality?  How could you possibly justify such a statement?  If I spend 70 years in blatant conspicuous consumption and waste, I am contributing directly to great suffering by literally millions of people.  Driving my car when I could walk is the equivalent of giving thousands, or hundreds of thousands of people skin cancer, since I'm destroying the ozone layer when I don't have to.  Yet, if I buy a prostitute, and she suffers some emotional damage, and maybe gives me an STD, both of us are experiencing relatively mild suffering.  Can you give me some indication of how you judge one act of immorality against another?

A bad assumption on your part.

I'm aware of this.  However, I'm also keenly aware that there are confounding variables that haven't been taken into account.  Most prostitutes are either working for a pimp (read: abusive male) or trying to go it alone, in which case, they are going to get the worst of the male customers.  Furthermore, most of them were raised in families that at least exposed them to religious ideas, many of which are highly sex-negative.  Additionally, our culture looks down on prostitutes, so that they feel they cannot participate in regular society because of their work.  I could go on.  The point is, correlation is not causation.  You're assuming way too much about what causes their emotional issues.

Of course.  There are high class escorts who are well educated, very attractive, usually polyglots, who accompany international businessmen during their stay in America.  They work for anywhere from $1000 to $5000 per hour, with 24 hour packages available for anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000.  Of course, they pay commission to their agencies, but they make extremely good money, and work in extremely controlled environments.  I've yet to see any research on their mental trauma.  It seems that they pretty much never seek out psychological help, despite having plenty of money to do so.

I related earlier that there are many women in college who keep "sugar daddies" on the side.  I know at least a half dozen personally, and over the years, I've probably known twenty or thirty.  They take cash, jewelry, cars, apartments... whatever they can get, and they are pretty much available for bootie calls whenever their sugar daddy is in town.  Again, I've never seen any data on these girls, but I know for a fact that they exist.  I cannot imagine that mine is the only college town where this is rampant.

I give you these two examples only to illustrate that you are looking only at the seedy side of prostitution, and are not considering the well-informed decisions of emotionally healthy young women.  There is certainly an argument to be made about future consequences of such actions, for instance, if a future husband found out that his wife had had a sugar daddy in college.  However, are these negative consequences a result of the action itself, or the perception of the reaction by someone else?

I do not dispute any of this.  I think I've explained thoroughly enough my position on the huge number of confounding factors.

If you realize this, and admit openly that you do not have a complete view of prostitution, how can you make such blanket statements about it's overarching morality?  If you would like to say that women who are forced into prostitution, or who do it to fuel drug habits, or who do it because of unresolved self esteem issues or sexual identity issues are acting in a way that's detrimental to themselves and others, I'll agree with you completely.  If you want to say that their actions are immoral, I will partially agree, though I will want to engage you in a discussion of the effects of socioeconomic stratification on the real choices available to the lowest strata before we go tarring them with epithets about their moral choices.

So who's really immoral?  The prostitute who believes she has no other choice, or the politicians who made the laws that forced her into the position?  What about the CEO's who have enough money to collectively fix the social support structure in America?  What about the generals and war hawks who prefer to spend a trillion dollars removing one man from power than funding the entire education system for ten years?  I hesitate to call the prostitutes immoral.

I don't know if you've noticed this or not, and I have no idea whether it's applicable to this case, but have you noticed that people who can't comprehend why sex is immoral usually seem to have really great sex lives?

Thanks.

I'd recommend that you look into it if you have time.  We've come a long way in the past two decades, largely because of the willingness of the sociobiological community and the evolutionary science community to look at us as creatures first, and the perceptions of morality as a biproduct of human nature.  In other words, they admit that what we think of as moral or immoral may not be nearly as based in objective reality as we think.

I'm trying to help you see that you were being absolutist.  You've decided that what you've seen of prostitution is representative of the activity as a whole. 

You're doing it again.  I know a girl personally who took $5000 from a businessman just to go to dinner with him, have drinks, and give him a blowjob.  She's not a prostitute, but she couldn't turn down so much money for something she didn't really mind doing.  She paid off her car with the money, and to my knowledge, hasn't descended into a life of misery and self-loathing.  In fact, she's one of the most well adjusted people I know.  Interestingly, she felt comfortable telling me this story because she knows me well enough to know that I judge everything by its own merits, without blanket morality assignations.

I truly hope you will offer your opinions about your concept of morality.  I'm puzzled as to how you can make such blanket statements, when you obviously are educated enough to know the effects of socioeconomic factors on the options available to low status people, and the effects of education (or lack thereof) on the real ability of people to make healthy decisions about their own life.  Personally, I think it's damn judgmental to tell a prostitute she's immoral and then send her home to her crappy apartment knowing that she can't get any other jobs to pay for it because she is a product of a failed education system.

I hope you realize that if I'm confrontational, it's not because I'm just trying to be right.  It's because your opinion was far less than thorough, and left lots of holes.  RRS is a debate board, and though this is freethinking anonymous, it is not freethinking without objection.

I am interested in your responses.  I wouldn't have taken this much time to respond if I wasn't.

THIS Naropa University?

Programs & Degrees Offered:
M.A. - Contemplative Psychotherapy; Somatic Psychology (with concentrations in Dance/Movement Therapy and Body Psychotherapy); Transpersonal Counseling Psychology (with concentrations in Art Therapy, Counseling Psychology, Music Therapy, and Wilderness Therapy); Transpersonal Psychology (online, low-residency program with a concentration in Ecopsychology)

Accreditation:
NCACS

Admission Requirements:
Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university
Test:  NA
Other:  Interview / Statement of Interest / Experience (see specific programs for additional requirements)

Cost & Program Information:
$550/hour (2003)
Online Degree Program Available:  Yes
On-Campus/External/Distance Leaning:  Campus, Distance Learning
Public/Private:  Private
Year Established:  1975
Number of Faculty: 100 (core and adjunct)
Thesis:  (Contact Institution)
Admission Deadline:  January 15 (Fall & Summer) / October 15 (Spring)

I'm a little put off by the list of degrees available.  Not that I am completely dismissive of any one curriculum, but together, it sure sounds like a bit of a um... how do I put this delicately...

Really, I'm not trying to be a prick.  It just doesn't look like a cutting edge facility.  Wilderness therapy?  Dance therapy?  I recognize that these fields have their uses, but um...   Admission requirements?  A bachelors, and a statement of interest?

Hmm.. Anyway, I'd highly recommend that you check out some of the newer books by scientists on the front lines of sociobiology.

 [EDIT:  Just to deflect a silly argument, I'm not committing an ad hom.  I'm not saying, "You attended a Woo-Woo pseudoscience university, and therefore you are wrong."  I'm saying, "You've demonstrated a poor understanding of social constructs, morality systems, and general philosophy.  Your degree comes from what appears to be a Woo-Woo pseudoscience university.  This backs up my idea that your education is somewhat lacking, and that you are speaking from emotionally appealing, but scientifically and philosophically inaccurate positions.]

Because hookers are much less likely to extend credit as easily as a casino does.

Spitzer's not in trouble because he paid for sex. He's in trouble because A) he's married, and his wife didn't know about it and B) he has a history of actually putting people in jail for breaking the law. Do unto others and all that...

This appears to be a miscommunication. To me, “GIVEN the notion…” roughly translates to “if one assumes that…” One cannot always assume that alleviating suffering is a good standard for morality. It’s a pretty good rule of thumb though, which I was applying in forming my opinion. I have maintained through-out my post that prostitution can serve to alleviate suffering as well, so I am not offering a hard and fast case here, rather I am engaging in moral calculus. I am offering my judgment on the question, I am not trying to define the behavior as immoral, I am judging it as immoral. This is why it is one man’s opinion, and not a hard fact.

I’m not a philosopher, I’m just an asshole with an opinion. That said, I think that the reason we drive is because in the short run it helps us, and the cost is paid by future generations, I think that we don’t all prostitute ourselves because if we did it would glut the economy, and there would be no money in it. I never said that human beings are moral creatures. I frankly don’t think we are. I think we are just the latest ecological disaster that has hit the planet, and that it will all work itself out in the long run. But that was not the question that I answered, I answered “do I think prostitution is immoral?” My answer is “yes I do, because my observation is that it causes more harm than good.”

Cool, I’ll check that out, thanks.

Frankly that’s something that I am working on myself. I know it has something to do with suffering, but it’s never a simple thing. I can see why fundies like the whole “tell me what to do God!” thing. It’s such a simple, lazy solution. Yep, that’s me: An asshole with an opinion.

That said, I think you are trying to get me to make a rational argument for my version of morality. I’m not gonna. The reason for this is that my concept of morality is that it is an irrational human perception. What do I mean by that? Well, I am one of the majority of people in the world who would have NO TROUBLE throwing a switch to allow a train to kill one person to save 5, but I would NEVER CONSIDER the option of pushing a fat man off a bridge to stop the train from hitting those same 5-men. You keep trying to get me to defend my opinion as if morality were a rational thing. I don't think it is. I think prostitution is immoral because I have an emotional, visceral response to the suffering I have seen in the prostitutes I have worked with. It‘s not a rational response. I’m not sure that you can nail down morality to any kind of hard and fast reasoning. I have some of Steven Pinker’s writings on my read list, precisely because he points out that people seem to have an instinct for morality, and that that instinct gets expressed in a culturally embedded way. The last time I checked instincts are not particularly rational processes for guiding our behavior. If that were true, I would be very rationally fucking my girlfriend right now instead of writing this stupid post. I’ll let you know more about that when I get to those readings.

I try to operate on moral principals rather than rules. These are “rules of thumb” I try to live by. Alleviating suffering is one of those principals. It’s not hard and fast, and you have to use your best judgment about how and when to apply it. This is how I apply it in this case. If you want to criticize my application of this principal, knock yourself out. Clearly you are operating on a different data set than I am.

A lot of your criticism seems to boil down to the idea that I am being absolutist and generalizing my experience to all people in all situations. I don’t think that I am. I have qualified my answers and offered exceptions to my position. I have stated repeatedly that it is an opinion, and that I base my opinion on general principals of morality, not on absolute rules. I don’t even know why you are trying to debate me. I sort of get the impression that debate is what you do, and I happen to disagree with you so you are jumping all over my responses and picking them apart. Knock yourself out. There are lots of people on these boards who have offered more outrageous statements than I have made, and who have given less reasoning to support them, and you seem to ignore them. I assume that this is because they don’t disagree with your position, because it’s SURE not because of the value of their arguments.

The principals of morality I try to live by are:

1) Be honest with yourself even when it hurts.  ESPECIALLY when it hurts.

2) Try to act in a way that creates the least suffering in the situation as a whole.

3) Do unto others as you would have others do unto you, and do not do unto others as you would not have others do unto you.

4) Use your power and authority to the benefit of those who you have power and authority over.

These are not hard and fast, or even particularly well thought out. Furthermore I am well aware that I have blind spots and am sometimes emotionally reactive and that I am not always good at following these principals.  However, I find that if I act accordingly I tend to sleep pretty well at night.

Is a prostitute immoral? Well, sometimes yes, sometimes no. Same thing for a politician, same thing for a business leader, and for a counselor and for a guy who runs an atheist website. We all have opportunities to violate our personal principals and values in our lives, and we all take these opportunities sometimes. This is a different issue than “is prostitution immoral?” Prostitution is an institution and a behavior, not a person. I have expressed my opinion on an institution and behavior, not on a person. I have met immoral people, some of them were prostitutes, some of them were not.  All of them were sociopaths and antisocial personalities.

Controlling sexual conduct is a cultural universal, and for two very good reasons:

1)  Sex can kill you

2)  Sex makes babies

The cultural mores around this situation have been expressed through religion (with all it's superstitious mumbo-jumbo), but the dillema remains the same.  The reason we have these cultural norms is because they protect people from the consequences of hedonistic behaviour.  Granted many of them are outdated or just plain deranged, but they did come into being for a reason.

Religions probably developed sex-negative attitudes precisely to cope with the dangers of sex.  Keep in mind that something like 20% of all pregnancies resulted in the death of the mother or the baby because of our huge heads, until modern medicine came along.  This would have put real fear into the hearts of superstitious people around the world.

Philosophy is a great way of passing a summer's evening, and it is a pretty good way of guiding the formation of laws and policies, however, most of us do not act on the basis of our philosophy.  Most of us act and then use philosophy to justify and rationalize our behaviour.  In the real world, your prostitute college student friends are not powerless.  They are women with choices who are chosing to use sex to get their needs met, but they have other options.  Most, if not all of them will hide their behavior from most people (perhapse they tell you about it because they sense that you will not think less of them).  Purhapse they hide their behavior not because others think less of them but because they think less of THEMSELVES.  I don't know, but I'll bet that not ONE of them will say to their grand kids "you know, I used to have this great sugar daddy when I was your age..."

There is a reason for this.  We keep these secrets to protect ourselves and our children, and other people we love from the truth about who we are and what we have done.  This simple fact is the reason I have a job.  However you may denegrate or question my education, and my lack of philosophical credentials, the fact remains that we keep our secrets because we are ashamed, and we act as we do because we have needs and desires that we often dare not admit to ourselves.  Trying to divorce prostitution from the culture it is imbedded in is oxymoronic:  Prostitution is a cultural act by it's very nature.

Sex is the most basic and intimate form of communication that we have.  How we do it, and who we do it with informs our whole sense of who we are and what place we have in society.  As I have said, I'm not a philosopher, and I may be wrong here, but if that is not an issue of personal morality, what is?  What's more, all the social institutions that grew up around prostitution (pimps, getting the worst of male customers, drug addiction etc.) are pitfalls indemic to the industry.  The exploitation of women through prostitution is universal, even in places where it is legal.

Money (or any resource) is power.  Prostitution is using sex to get power, and using power to get sex.  That's not the kind of relationship I would want to have for myself or for anyone I love.   Once you start using power to get sex, it is an easy step to start using power to get control over the sexual resource.  Many human beings are nasty creatures, the fact that the sexual resource is a person will not stop them.  This is what pimps do, this is what abusers do.  Prostitution leads to power-imbalanced relationships by it's nature.  I am not talking abstract truth here, I'm talking about the real world. 

My observation is that human beings feel ashamed when they lose power in their relationships.  Using sex to get money is a part of a process of losing power.  In an ideal world, it may not be, but in the real world, that's how it works.  That is why people feel ashamed when they do it.  Again, if this doesn't qualify for morality, what does?

Ask your prostitute friends if they have any good, loving supportive relationships with the men in their lives.  Ask them if they tell the people who love them about what they are doing, and ask them if their boyfiends are ok with thier choice of profession (their boyfriends, not their pimps).  The damage to relationships, and to the CAPACITY to have relationships is a very real form of pain.  Sex is part of who you ARE, you can't escape it and make it a seperate part of your life.  It simply doesn't work that way.

1) Driving can kill you.

2) Condoms/abortions/pills negate the baby effect.

Controlling sexual conduct is a cultural universal, but does that make it right?  Social stratification is culturally universal.  Does that make it right?   Cheating on spouses is a cultural universal, but does that make it right?  In short, you have just reiterated your point without explaining it.  Why is cultural control of sex automatically right?

http://www.rationalresponders.com/on_myth_sexuality_and_culture

Well, since a philosophy is necessary to form a morality, you're essentially saying (again) that morality doesn't impact our lives in any meaningful way.  Clearly, this is not so, for some immoral acts (brutally killing your neighbor, for instance) are universally despised, while others, (such as sex before marriage) are reflective of more flexible cultural norms.

So you agree with me.  Prostitution does not cause powerlessness.  Prostitution combined with powerlessness is clearly a negative situation, but since you've admitted that one does not cause the other, we can examine them separately now, right?

Yeah, I know, most prostitution correlates with powerlessness in America, right?  Is that because of the prostitution or the laws against it?  Or maybe the cultural attitudes toward it?  Again, until you justify the cultural attitude with something more than, "It's immoral because it's about sex," we're going to be at an impasse.  I think you ought to give philosophy a little more thought before you dismiss it.  You could clearly use something a little more concrete to judge your own attitudes.

This would be a good study, wouldn't it?  But, how would you eliminate the variables of religion and cultural standards?  In other words, how can we study whether or not a woman with no religious or cultural 'contamination' would naturally feel shame from selling herself?  Do you see how deep the problem runs? 

Then again, have you noticed that two women in this very thread have admitted publicly that they wish they had known earlier in life that they could use their sexuality for profit?  Anonymity seems to change people's willingness to admit things, doesn't it?

I didn't suggest trying to divorce the two.  I suggested that the assumption that culture is right and prostitution is wrong is not automatically true.  We must justify this assertion, and so far, you haven't.

That sounds nice in brochures, but what does it mean?  While it is physically the most intimate act that we have, is it really the most basic form of communication?  From a hundred yards, a human can easily tell what kind of mood another person is in, just from facial expressions.  We don't get to screw until we get well past recognizing mood.  There's judging receptivity, approaching, seducing, propositioning, etc... All of these things have to happen before we get to have sex.

Furthermore, what does sex communicate?  In some cases, as you've admitted yourself, it communicates "I am horny, and you're hot."  In others, it communicates deep emotional intimacy.  What justification are you using for one message being better than the other?  Because one is more common, or more socially accepted?

Let's go back to driving.  I walk to work every day.  I have a 2000 model car with less than 70,000 miles on it.  That's less than 10,000 a year.  Probably 50,000 of that is travel, when walking was not an option.  Anytime I get the chance, I try to tell people that walking is much better than driving.  It's better for their health and better for the environment.  It's also better for their emotional health.  Yet, my message is the minority.  Everything in our culture tells us that we should buy a new car every three years, and that despite oil dependency and pollution, we should get the SUV... because we deserve it.

I'm right, and culture is wrong, yet my message is in the vast minority.  So, what if culture is wrong about sex?  Culture has often been wrong about very big things.  Slavery, for instance, was pretty much universally accepted until a couple of centuries ago.  Are you going to suggest that there's no way that culture is wrong about sex, too?

On the other hand, am I really right about cars?  After all, everything that humans have done is a product of evolution, which is completely natural.  If we destroy ourselves, other life forms will survive.  Death is a natural part of life, and who am I to say that one kind of suffering is worse than another.  People should be able to drive whatever they damn well please.

You see how this works?  In order for you to say that something is good or bad, there must be another phrase in the sentence.  This is good or bad with regard to this particular goal, which is justified because of X,Y, and Z.

You're just automatically assuming that human nature and culture are philosophically correct, despite the fact that history has proven this assumption dreadfully wrong many times in the past.

Not three paragraphs ago, you said it was an issue of public morality.  Which is it?

Correlation is not causation.  What effect did the illegality of prostitution have on the formation of the pimp industry, or the nonregulation of customers?  We have not yet justified the cultural stigma against prostitution.

Coincidentally, the exploitation of women in the workplace is also universal.  Correlation is not causation.

Good for you.  So, what you believe goes for everybody?  (And you say you're not being absolutist!  Ha!)

Do you believe in capitalism?  If you don't, then we have a whole different conversation that needs to take place.  If you understand that even in the most communist culture, there is some form of capital, and humans exploit it, then perhaps you can understand that money is but one form of capital, sex is another, and resources and time are another.  Until you make a reasonable justification for why sex is not allowed to be traded, you haven't a leg to stand on.

While you're making that justification, please consider what sociobiology says about mating 'contracts.'  A marriage is an exchange of resources, including sex.  While you're at it, consider what you've hopefully read in the essay that I linked you to.  Marriage (the government institution, not the pair bonding) was not promoted as something to make couples' lives better.  Though humans mate essentially monogamously, we are not truly monogamous in the sociobiological sense.  Humans have always had wives and lovers.  If you're going to elevate the culture over human nature, you must justify it.  Likewise if you plan to elevate nature over culture.  You've done neither.

Always, or only in the circumstances when the prostitute was powerless to begin with?  What about the girls with sugar daddies?

That's what I'm asking you.  You're the one who's admitted that you don't know what you think of morality.  Work this out yourself.  I'm really trying to help, but I'm not going to preach the answers at you.  First, I don't hold to an absolutist position.  I think it's perfectly plausible that your moral priorities will turn out to be justifiably different than mine.  If I just tell you what I think qualifies as morality, and you believe me, have you really worked anything out, or are you just following someone else -- again -- like you do with sexual morality?

As for shame, you should know that shame does not always correlate to wrongdoing.  Many children feel ashamed for masturbating, even though every scientific study shows that it's damn healthy, both emotionally and physically (barring contrary conditioning.)  I suggest that you need to look deeper.  Shame is not an automatic justification.

I don't personally know any of the high class ones I mentioned well enough to ask, though I have met them, and can say with certainty that they are what they say.  (No, I'm not rich enough to know with that much certainty.)  As I've already said, I happily concede that powerless prostitutes seldom have healthy relationships with males.  I've already mentioned how disturbing it is that we blame the prostitutes for this, when there are so many confounding variables that could account for their sex-negative and low self esteem issues.

As for the girls with sugar daddies, I have only known one long enough to get any post-college information.  She's happily married, with two kids.  That's as much as I know.

In any event, I would certainly not want to build a case for or against something so diverse as sex-for-money with only a limited set of anecdotal stories.  You're the one trying to do that.  I'm trying to show you that you've skipped over a LOT of important questions.

Again, you are speaking for your powerless prostitutes, and you are not taking into account the existence of women with power who decide to sell themselves, yet retain power.  You are leaving out the question of whether the social stigma is justified.  With slavery, women's rights, and later, desegregation, admitting an involvement with any of these movements could have caused great harm to a relationship.  Does social stigma mean something is absolutely wrong?

Just because sex is a part of who we are (evolutionarily speaking, it's the primary reason we are who we are, culturally!), that does not mean we can't sell it.  You have only demonstrated the negative consequences in instances where there were already problems.  (Consider also the question, does alcoholism cause personal problems, or do the personal problems drive people to alcoholism?)

1) Neither culture, religion, nature, nor emotion (guilt, shame, etc.) are necessarily objective measures of the morality of a given action.

2) To be valid, any moral judgment must be related to an effect.  (We act this way because it causes, or avoids, X,Y,Z consequences.)

3) Prostitution, and more specifically, the trading of sex for resources separate from a monogamous marriage, occurs in many ways, some but not all of which are correlated with emotional dysfunction.

4) Prostitution is often correlated with emotional dysfunction and societal stigma, but due to confounding variables, causation cannot be established.

5) Similar emotional dysfunction is correlated with other activities (abusive marriages, childhood trauma, religious indoctrination).

6) Prostitution is strongly correlated with the pre-existence of emotional dysfunction, as well as social disadvantage.

7) Since no causation has been established, only correlation, we must examine the confounding variables before we can declare prostitution to be the cause of X,Y,Z consequences.

Since forms of prostitution occur among emotionally healthy women, with no apparent signs of significant negative consequences, we have supporting evidence for the idea that prostitution, in and of itself, is not necessarily negative, but rather, dependent on other variables.

Without detailing the entire social argument, (I assume you're familiar with it) I am suggesting that great harm has been done in the name of helping people when we have assumed a thing to be normal or abnormal, or morally good or bad.  Just look at the harm done by Freud because he propagated an unfalsifiable system of sexual normality.  Think of all the women who underwent shock treatment in the 50s because they were 'sexually dysfunctional.'  (That meant, of course, that they wouldn't put out because they were bitter about being forced into a domestic role they didn't want with men who treated them as domestic servants.)  How long have gays been socially stigmatized because we assumed that homosexuality was abnormal.  (Of course, modern science has proven the opposite.)

Prostitution, in and of itself, is too diverse, and the lines too blurry (Is it prostitution when a fifty year old rich man marries a twenty five year old model?) to lay a blanket of immorality over it.

I don't suggest that we should encourage pimping and street walking.  I think I've been clear enough.  That kind of activity is part of a larger social structure that is dangerous and emotionally damaging.  What I do suggest is that the practice of using sex as capital is, in itself, neither good nor bad, but rather entirely dependent on context.  I further suggest that our social attitudes are overly dichotomous, and perpetuate double standards that have no basis in causal contexts.

Yes. I completely concur, about 300%.

The more special someones, the better.

Ok, so what you are saying is that the boundaries of prostitution are so blurry, that we can't even reasonably talk about it.  I agree.

In a nutshell, here is my position:

1)  The boundaries of prostitution as a cultural construct are extremely blurry.

2)  Morality is not a rational consturct.  It is an instinctual emotional response system that human beings evolved to get along with other human beings.

3)  It has been my observation that prostitution causes suffering through the fact that as a social institution it is often the venue for exploitation.  It also causes suffering through the fact that human beings are jelous and territorial about sex, and as a result, selling sex is a practice that interferes with the healthy development of intimate relationships.

4)  The practice of prostitution is antithetical to the healt of the practitioners and the creation of relationships that have a high value in my personal value system.

On the basis of all of that, in my opinion, prostitution is immoral.

What defines it as immoral?  I don't know.  Smarter people than me or you have worked on a definition of morality for all of human civilizaiton, and there is still no consensus about what defines morality.  All I know is that immorality is like pornography.  I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.

I understand that this is inconsistant with your philosophical approach to morality.  I freely concede that you are probably smarter and better educated than I am.   I still think you are wrong.  I have no rational reason for saying this.  I don't need one.  As I have said, I don't think morality is a rational process.  I think that what your intelligence and education allow you to do is rationaize your postition extremely well, but your position is still wrong.  I look around me at the way I see relationships working, and every pattern-seeking process that I have confirms the correctness of my position. 

Could it be placebo effect?  Yep.

But that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

I would just like to say, that for a guy who only has a "woo-woo" education, I'm feeling like I'm doing a pretty good job of holding my own!

Why is it that people come up with a value system, like prostitution is immoral. That is fine. But then you must force your values on others with violent threats(via the police). Doesn't this make you a violent person. To threaten people that in no way are harming you? Why must you impose your values on others?

OK, that is a value system of yours. But, how can you impose your values on others by threatening them with fines and jail? You can't force your morality on others.

Prostitution is called the oldest profession for a reason. Making it illegal has not caused it to go away. It has caused it to go underground. So you have "marriages" that are really just sex for money deals.

Oh to be so young and so naive

actually, i was alluding to... other... things... which i may or may not have experience in...

but you do bring up a valid point! and from where i stand, its all too true...

*i have often wondered why arranged marriages are not considered prostitution... granted, long-term prostitution*

A red harring assumes that I am here to debate.  I'm not.  I have been saying all along that I'm offering an opinion and my reasons for that opinion.  The last time I checked, everyone is allowed to have an opinion, right?

Apparently not.  Apparently, you are only allowed to have an opinion if you agree with the consensus around here.  I guess I'm just not that big a fan of circle-jerking.

I have allowed myself to get sucked into a debate because I thought it would be entertaining.  I am coming to regret this decision, in part because my starting point is not debatable.  People keep missing my point, and I really think it is because you are working on different assumptions than I am.

I think that you are assuming that the truth of morality can be reached through reason.  I don't think it can.  Or at least I don't think anyone has succeded in this effort so far.  I beleive that morality is an emotional response system that operates on an irrational level and that is none-the-less informed by reason.  I have reported, REPORTED, what is going on in my own irrational emotional response system and the information that I am using to inform that system.  I have subsequently been attacked for doing this.

My report of my personal opinon has simply been declared INVALID because it violates the cultural mores layed down by hamby.  Apparently one is not allowed to go against the consensus on an opionon thread if one is not prepared to turn it into a debate thread.  Don't worry,  I won't offer my opinion again.

There are polite and rude ways of disagreeing.  Asking what my education is, and then characterizing it as "woo-woo" is an attack.  Demanding that I defend my personal experience is an attack.  Paternalistically telling me that you are trying to help me and then going on to further discount my personal experience is an attack.  As I have said, a very unpleasant debating partner. 

I think that part of this conflict has ocured because of a miscommunication that stems from hamby's assumptions about what we are even talking about.  Hamby continues to insist that this is a debate, therfore he is adopting and adverserial position.  I am getting frustrated because I continue to assert that I am not trying to debate, I am trying to discuss.  Apparently this is not allowed here.  This discovery fills me with regret, not the least because it prevents the formation of common ground in my relationship with hamby.  He is obviously a very smart guy, but his communication style is a bit, hmm, shall we say, unilateral.  I believe that he is too busy attacking my "arguements" to even get down to what I am even talking about.  Hence the conflicted communication.

I hope that after reading the article in the link he will understand where I am comming from.  Did you ever see one of those drawings where you look at it and you see that it's one thing, and then all of a sudden you realize it's actually something else entirely, and what changed about it was your own preconceptions?  Did you ever notice how it suddenly snaps into focus in a new and supprising way?That's what I'm hoping for here.

No, I would actually agree with this position.  What I am hearing Hamby say is that for some reason I'm required to prove the subjective experience of my process of moralizing.  What I believe he is doing is simply ignoring my assertion that morality (or I should beter say moralizing) is an emotional and psychological process that founded on our biology, and informed by subjective perceptions, culturural influences etc.  In offering my opinion, I am not trying to assert an objective "truth"  I am simply reporting my experience and explaining how it has lead me, personally to the conclusion that prostitution is immoral.

What hamby wants to do (I think) is get to some sort of objective reality.  That's fine, and more power to him, but I frankly don't see what that has to do with my subjective experience, or how it entitles him to demand that I provide proof of my subjective experience.  Because I view morality as an irrational instincual process, I believe that the application of reason to the problem of the morality of prositution, per se is probably not going to bear fruit.

A far more productive line of questioning is:  What are the psychological mechanisms that underly our moral instincts, and how are they expressed in the cultural phenomena of prostitution (however you want to define it).  This is the subject of at least one graduate thesis, and it's frankly not something that I'm interested in persuing.

My complaint is simply that upon offering my personal opinion on the matter and the admittedly limited and subjective experiences that I have had that have gone into my personal judgment in the matter, Hamby demanded that I establish proof supporting my judgment.  I don't think the process works that way, and I found his attacks both rude and off the mark.  I have taken a couple of 100 level philosophy classes in college, as well as professional ethics classes, and I have observed 2 things:

1)  It's much easier to tear down an argument than it is to build one up

2)  Philosophers tend to think that over-thinking things is a virtue.

Given #1, I can't help but notice that Hamby hasn't offered any real standard for morality either.  He seems to assume that the burden of proof is on me, and that the notion that prostitution is harmfull is a more extraordinary claim than is the notion that it is not.  That's nice, good for him, I was just offering my 2 cents, there is no need to get all up in my grill about it.

Given #2, I DON'T think that over-thinking things is a virtue (which is not to say that I don't think that thinking things through is not a virtue), and that's why I decided not to become a philosopher.  I suppose that exposes me for a simpleton in Hamby's world, but that's ok, I don't need the validation.

In the mean time, I still hold that prostitution is imoral as an institution and a behaviour.  I cannot define morality (I'm pretty sure that no one has found a consensus definition for morality, so I'm comfortable with this), and I cannot define prostitution (although I could form an operational definition for a study I suppose, but again, I'm not a reasearch scientist).  I'm simply offering my opinion and for some reason Hamby feels complelled to argue me out of it.

Why is that do you suppose?

In any event, you said that "The method of disagreement being "rude" or "polite" is subjective."  I guess I would counter with an axiom of psychology and communication theory:

The meaning of a communication is the change in the receiver of that communication.

The change in me is that I have felt insulted, discounted and put off.  I have felt the need to defend myself, primarily because Hamby keeps demanding proof supporting my subjective experience.  Sorry, can't help you there ham, that's why it's called a moral INTUITION.

Does that answer your question?

All that said, I would like to cop to my part in the miscommunication on this thread.  Up until recently, I have been sayng that I "think prostitution is immoral."  To describe what I'm doing, a more accurate way of putting this would be to say that I am  moralizing prostitution.  That is, I am actively engaged in the process of making moral judgements, about how prostitution fits against my personal values and moral senses.  My origional post is meant to describe this process, not as a logical proof of the imorality of prostitution. 

Well if everyone was one, there would be no stigma associated with being one. These terms are applied to the low price version of prostitution by the high price prostitutes.

These are the highest priced prostitutes: virginal christian women that won't put out unless the man totally submits to them, their religion and they get promised heaven instead of hell. The Christian god is a pimp. The god/pimp tells women what men she can be with, forces her to stay with men that abuse her(by prohibiting divorce). Since god/pimp doesn't exist, the church and pastors act on his behalf.

The stigma of whore and john is like the stigma of Wal-Mart. The high class stores don't want a low cost provider coming in and undercutting them. The truth is, the world has room for both. Things work better if you allow competition between high class and low class.

I take it you've never been married. Pretty much gotta go along with whatever the wife wants to get good sex on a regular basis. That's why American husbands are so PWed, they don't have other options like prostitution available for sex. That's also why married church ladies will fight like hell to keep it illegal, they don't want the competition. They want to keep their monopoly going.

It's only associated with organized crime and other crimes because it's illegal. Same thing happened with liquor. During prohibition, the liquor industry was associated with all kinds of criminal enterprises. Legalizing alcohol caused this association to go away. It should be zoned just like any other industry.

Asking me about my education (much less criticizing my education), is also extremely bad debate ettiquete.  The reason for this is simple.  There is no way to broach the subject in a debate without making an ad-homynim attack.

'Nuf said.

Oh please, this is fucking bullshit.  I hate this argument.  Yes, as a general rule women don't have as much of a sex drive as men do but I know many committed women who look forward to sex with their partners as I do men.  Just because you can't get your rocks off the very moment you want isn't the woman's fault. 

Perhaps the wife is too tired to have sex because she has to follow her sloppy ass husband around and take care of him and keep up with the kids, or the house or whatever it is that needs taking care of.

Or maybe she's just tired of the same old boring humping.

I love how some men blame the women for their infidelity. 

People will get tired of the government's attitude toward prostitution. It will be legal in about 30 years give or take.

Yep, yep.  I can't stand it when people take a fact about human sexuality and make it into a black and white, right and wrong, moral and immoral issue.  Women tend to want less sex than men.  This is fact.  (Yes, I've been married, thanks.)   If you're married and want more sex, you can:

1) Demand it or force it from your wife, making her want it even less.  You get your rocks off, and she will probably divorce you in a few years because she hates you.  Then you can get another wife and do the same thing over again.

2) Just deal with it and accept that you won't get it every time you want (of course, you can be bitter about it, which will make your wife want it less, or you can be ok with it, which might work to your advantage by taking pressure off)

3) Cheat.  You get more sex, but you risk the marriage

4) Open marriage.  It works for some, but rarely.  Big risk to the marriage.

5) Divorce your wife and find another woman so you get the honeymoon phase again.  Probably not going to score big points with the wife, but it might be better than making her life miserable if it's that big a deal.  At some point, you're going to have to stick with one because you're getting old.

Any one of these options is likely to get you more sex, and some will work better than others.  Most people's intuitive moral sense is centering on option number two.  It's the one least likely to hurt other people excessively, after all.  Of course, I left out a big option, and I did it on purpose.  More on that later.

As I've mentioned before (maybe not in this thread... I can't remember at this point), the social sciences have been held back for most of their history because they have started with assumptions.  Freud is the easiest example because so much bad science stemmed from his unfalsifiable models of the human psyche.  Having problems at work?  It's because you want to fuck your mother.  You don't think you want to fuck your mother?  You've repressed it.  Think you haven't repressed it?  Of course you have!  I'm a doctor!

In this discussion, we have the same thing.  Susac started with the conclusion that prostitution is immoral.  I challenged on the grounds that the philosophical foundations for that judgment are suspect, so he admitted he didn't have a rational reason for it and went to "sex makes babies."  (I recognize that I'm probably getting this out of order.  It doesn't matter.)  I countered with the obvious answer that babies no longer have to be involved.  Next, we went to emotional harm.  I made a clear argument that prostitutes usually come into prostitution with already existing emotional problems.  I countered with examples of prostitution that don't seem to have those correlations.  When he retreated to just his experience with prostitutes, I clearly showed that the definition of prostitution is too broad for that.  At each step of the way, he's changing his tactic, trying to find one where the blanket of immorality will fit... because the prejudged conclusion is that prostitution is immoral.  Never mind that neither prostitution or immoral is defined clearly.  It's immoral.

Here's another hypothetical situation:

There's a woman who is raising a child on her own.  She doesn't have any time for dating, and there are no good prospects on the horizon anyway.  Money's really tight.  In fact, she doesn't know if she's going to be able to pay her bills this month.  She can't borrow from friends or family, because they don't have it.

Options:

1) Get a second mortgage, even though she can't afford to pay her first one.  Someone will set the interest rate high enough to give her the loan.

2) Sell her grandmom's wedding ring, even though it's a family heirloom.  That's fine for this month, but what about next month?

3) Get another job, even though she has two already.  Of course, who's going to babysit?  Babysitters cost more than $6.50/hour, which is all she can get in a part time third job.

None of these options are good, but if you handed this to a hundred people and asked them to pick, they'd probably grudgingly pick one of them, even though none of them are particularly good.  If  you asked them for other suggestions, they'd probably come up with a couple, but let's face it.  This is kind of a dead end situation, and it's one a lot of people face.

What nobody would suggest is that the woman offer her services to a sugar daddy for an occasional booty call.  That's a bad option because prostitution is immoral.

But is it really in this instance?  The question is open in my mind.  If she loses her house, both she and her child suffer.  How emotionally satisfying is her life right now?  Do you think she's experiencing daily joy and happiness?  Is having non-marital sex for money really going to cause her permanent emotional harm, or is it actually the knowledge that she's doing something that most everybody would look down on?  If she were to go on a date with a rich man, have a great time, go back to his place and have a great one night stand, would she feel awful?  What if, the next day, he called her and said he wanted to help her, and gave her a check for a thousand dollars?  What if, instead of that, he'd left a thousand dollars on the nightstand afterwards?  (Yeah... I saw that Sex in the City episode.)

The point is, the same act of sex changes based on the perception of context.  We all know this, I assume.  The question is, if this hypothetical woman didn't experience the socialization that teaches us that selling sex is always wrong, would that change her perception of taking a sugar daddy?

If a woman goes to her psychologist to talk about being in the situation I've described, and mentions the possibility of taking a sugar daddy to help with the bills, should the psychologist say, "No.  You shouldn't do that because it's immoral," or should he ask her how she feels about it and discuss her perceptions of sex, her sexual history, and try to evaluate whether or not it's a potential solution?  Frankly, in this society, I don't think many (if any) psychologists would recommend taking a sugar daddy, and I don't think that they should.  Our society does make a villain out of any woman who sells herself.  If that information got out, it would be horrible for the woman.  With things as they are, she should probably not do it.

What if, on the other hand, we studied this without the foregone conclusion?  Is selling yourself always emotionally damaging, in and of itself, or is the damage linked more to society's perception?  How widespread is the practice of taking a sugar daddy?  Are there currently or historically societies that did not condemn all prostitution?  What forms were accepted?  Has it ever been prestigious in any context?  Has it ever elevated the status of women who practiced it?  If we find examples of such things, how does our society compare to them?

These are all great questions that demand answers, but in good science, we get the answers first, and then make conclusions.  It's damn difficult to study human sexuality as it is because we're often terrified of the objective answers we might find.  Just ask any married couple, first together, and then separately with complete anonymity how they feel about having one sex partner for life.  Humans lie to themselves about their own sexuality, at least partly because they feel the cognitive dissonance between their own desires and what society says their desires should be.

Coming in with the blanket of immorality on top of ANY human sexual behavior is contrary to the interest of good science.

Oh... the best answer in the case of the married man wanting more sex is that he take up the habit of doing nice, genuinely helpful things for his wife to make her life easier, and then spend some time seducing her with his dick still in his pants.  Most of the women reading this probably already knew that, but it's amazing how often humans will think inside the box they are given, isn't it?  When there's no reason to put a box around something, why do it?  If someone just asked the open ended question, "What should this guy do to get laid by his wife more," with no preconceptions of the best answer, there's a good chance of getting a great answer (and I'm sure there are some I haven't thought of!)  If you box in only a few potential answers, it's much less likely that things will work out.

Is prostitution always immoral?  I don't know for certain.  I don't see enough evidence to say that it is, and I see evidence to the contrary.  Since I understand the burden of proof, I'm going to assume it's not always immoral until someone can prove that it is.

I have to agree with the Gospel of the FSM on the fact that sexual activity/partnerships are almost completely decided by the women - this is a discriminatory practice which needs to be outlawed by congress.

If you wanted freedom then you shouldn't have gotten married.  I agree with sexual frustration can lead to a breakdown in families but my point is that it is not just the men that are sexually frustrated.

No, I'm not blaming men.  If there is a problem in a relationship it is the problem for BOTH parties involved. 

Personally, I would never date a man just because I think he can somehow take care of me.   I can take care of myself just fine.  I don't buy into the whole soul mate thing and most of the women I know don't either. 

Relationships are give and take.  If some guy is fully supporting his wife and he's not getting anything out of the deal than it's not a relationship.

She could dump her husband.  Or she could cheat on him.  Women cheat too.  I was just trying to make the point that you can't blame everything on the woman which is what you were doing. 

Again, if a man wants to have multiple partners than he shouldn't have married just one.  He should have been honest to his partner(s).  Polyamory seems to work for some people.  It's the idea that when you marry someone you're only going to be with them.  Seeking extramarital affairs without the knowledge or consent of the partner is a betrayel. 

How did you come up with the idea that I wish that men be a certain way?  I'm fully aware of the needs of my partner.  We talk about it.  It's called communication.  Nor do I think that monogamy is natural for either sexes.  You are putting words in my mouth and what you're suggesting I said isn't what I said at all.

I'm completely aware of reality.  The reason I am not married is because I don't find marriage necessary to maintain a healthy loving relationship.  We share our lives together in a way that works for both of us and yes, it can be extremely difficult at times.  But as long as we are both satisfied physically and emotionally than there isn't a problem.

You're blaming women for all the relationship woes and I think that's bullshit.  It takes two people to make or break a relationship.  You seem to be intent on placing all the responsiblity for the health of the relationship on the woman and that's not how it works.

Hamby this wasn't directed at your so I'm afraid I'm a tad confused.  I don't think the issue is black and white at all.  I took issue with the fact that EXC appeared to blaming women solely for any breakdown in a relationship. 

As I said earlier, I know women that are in committed relationships that desire sexual intmacy just as much as the men.  While I understand that, as a general rule, women don't desire sex as much as men there are exceptions to the rule.  I don't see how I painted this issue as black and white.