The Case For Legalized Prostitution

The Case For Legalized Prostitution
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
- Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)


What we consider a sin forms from our morality. Religion has, for many centuries, dictated morality. Religion tells us that prostitution is wrong and we made laws to support the claim.
Prostitution fundamentally is sex (coitus) between two consenting adults. Sex is the means by which each of us reading this came into existence. True, the rules differ in some societies that demand marriage or other relationships for sex and procreation, but sex between two consenting adults is still the foundation.
In the situation of prostitution, money or some other form of compensation is exchanged. That makes it illegal. Why is it illegal? Because prostitution is immoral. Why is prostitution immoral? Because...well...everyone says it's immoral. And why is that?
That last question brings us to a murky part of our past that most of us in the modern world would rather not think about. But you and I must because that's why you are reading, so stay with me.
In prehistoric times, our ancestors lived in families that were part of groups known as bands. These bands might have been from 15 to 30 people. Some bands might have been nothing more than large families, in many cases with the most fit males fathering children with as many females as could produce children.
Sometimes bands grouped together to form alliances known as tribes. By themselves, band life was rough, subsistent, based on hunting and gathering. Bands carved their own territories for hunting and gathering, but sometimes boundaries were crossed as food was scarce. Stealing food from another band's territory brought risks. Sometimes a band would overcome that risk by attacking the band that occupied an adjacent territory, killing the adult males, taking the females into their own band and assimilating them into the new and larger band. We must assume that the males of the victorious band did not ask permission to impregnate the captured females. That would be typical of our species and its cousin species.
For obvious reasons, a band wanted to expand as quickly as it could so that it could defend itself from attack or attack other bands as this became necessary. The morality of which males had sex with which females is unknown to us, but we may be certain that it varied from one band to another.
When bands formed into tribes, codes of behaviour were necessary. One important one was that a woman must not have sex with a man who was not part of her own tribe. That would maintain tribal integrity. Genetic diversity resulted from males and females breeding with members of other bands within the same tribe. If a woman got pregnant by a man from another tribe, that would mean the woman would produce a child who would be the product of an enemy tribe. She and the child might have been killed.
If a man conceived a child with a woman from another tribe, this might be frowned upon, but not punished. After all, the child (if it was allowed to live) might enhance the numbers of the father's tribe, not the mother's tribe. Ownership of women and children rested with males in the case of most tribes. That is, if the father could steal the child back after birth. But the woman's tribe (if it didn't kill the child) might want to adopt the child, raise it and enhance its own population, which might work against the welfare of the father's tribe.
In matters of tribal population numbers, size mattered. So developed the rule against a man having sex with a non-approved woman. That rule has remained with us to the present day, though its form has changed.
Prostitution, illegal in most countries (but not all), exists because of unfulfilled human needs. Often the woman needs money and the men need a way to satisfy their hormone-driven compulsion for gratification with a member of the opposite sex (let's stay with the male-female pairing for this discussion). "The oldest profession" has existed as long as our species has been around. Because of unfulfilled human needs our societies have refused to address.
Instead they pass laws which have always been flouted and ignored and always will. The needs of nature almost always take precedence over the laws of a culture or society in matters of behaviour, but not in matters of law or morality.
Illegal sex (prostitution) opens a large opportunity for organized crime participation. Organized crime gangs exist to fulfill human needs that societies would like to pretend do not exist. Of course they don't pay taxes. They take risks, but the benefits are tax-free. We law abiding citizens foot the bill for taxes, including for police, courts, legal staff and jail administrators so prostitutes may be "brought to justice." Judging by history, members of organized crime gangs risk more from fellow gang members, from other gangs and from poor nutrition habits than from prosecution under the law.
Prostitutes risk beatings, disease, drug use to get them past the worst parts of their job and time in jail. Because the law does not recognize their job as real, nor does it happily defend prostitutes against the dangers they face. In name the law offers protection to everyone, in practice not so much to prostitutes. The law also does not collect taxes from prostitutes, pimps and organized crime gangs.
Here we, as societies, face situations where human needs for sex with willing partners are ignored, we pretend they don't exist (even though we know they do) and our cost for health care is much greater than it should be because some people we would rather pretend don't exist require more health care than most of us do.
A couple of years ago a study in the USA (respondents were assurred anonymity) showed that 85 percent of married men had sex outside of their marriage at some point. With women, the number was 65 percent. Marriage failure sits around 54 percent. One of the most common causes for failure of marriages is that one partner had an affair outside of the marriage. Those affairs almost inevitably involve sex, the fulfillment of a need for sexual gratification the one partner could not get from the other.
Moreover, humans are not monogamous, as religions (the descendants of tribal morality administrators) would have us believe. Rare indeed is a bisexual species that remains strictly monogamous after pairing (science has trouble identifying a handful). We are naturally programmed to spread our genes as widely as possible. That means males and females together, as often as possible. As our species has males always ready and females fertile and able to reproduce many more times each year than most mammalian species, sex and the desire for it are part of who we are. Hormones rule, no matter what our religions and our laws say.
But sex must not, by law in most societies, be with another consenting adult if money is involved. Let's remember that our species has existed for about 150,000 years, while money or its equivalent has been around for only a few thousand years.
Something is wrong and few countries are doing anything about it. Because of religious dogma, we stick with tribal morality so old that it predates history. But without justifiable rationale in modern society, except that "everybody says so."
Let's remember where we see tribal morality in action today. In Afghanistan, where the Pashtuns (many of whom are Taliban) have been at war among themselves for over 3300 years, since four of the ancient Twelve Tribes of Israel left the Holy Land when they broke up and took up residence in a mountainous land no other tribes wanted. Similar tribal customs are practised in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan, where people associate more with their tribe than they do with the nation where they were born.
We can see tribes in action in many parts of Africa, especially where there is violence. Libya is essentially a war between tribes. Same in the Congo (DRC), Nigeria and most of the Arab states experiencing disruption at this time. What is now known as the genocide of Rwanda was a war between the Hutu and the Tutsi tribes. Tribal law is harsh, protectionist and its punishments severe. Some of our modern laws in "free" democratic countries are legacies of tribal laws.
Which brings us back to severe punishments for two people engaged in consenting sex where money is exchanged. I do not claim to be an expert, but I have studied the subject enough to know that some men visit prostitutes because they want more sex than they are having with their wives and they want to save their marriage, not destroy it, by visiting a prostitute (in private). Male prostitutes with female clients exist in every major city, but with lower numbers.
We are, in fact, paying more in taxes and our governments are effectively supporting organized crime activity by not setting up prostitution under controlled legal environments. Note that I have said nothing about girls who run away from home and turn to prostitution as the only way they can find to support themselves, or about the sex slave trade that exists because it can easily be hidden, or about single mothers who support their children by prostitution because they can't make ends meet otherwise. Or about mass murderers of prostitutes who manage to kill dozens of them before they are caught. These problems wouldn't have a place to be if prostitution were legalized and controlled by supervised government facilities.
Prostitution exists as a social problem because we persist in supporting ancient tribal rules instead of making our societies into ones that can function safely and more inexpensively in the 21st century. We no longer live in tribes. Our laws and our moralities have not caught up.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to prepare their children for their whole life ahead, not just with what they will learn in school.
Learn more at http://billallin.com When all the criticism of prostitution is distilled down to its core, the result comes out as "prostitution is a sin because it has always been considered a sin." A tautology, "proved" by constant repetition but no evidence.

Why So Many Women Get It So Wrong

For a woman, finding the right man to love her the way she wants to be loved, to be a good father to the children they create together and to provide a healthy, vibrant, creative and enjoyable family environment that will last a lifetime is almost impossible.

Why? While there are many reasons, a few stand out.

Most commonly, a woman goes looking for the wrong guy. Back in prehistoric days, a woman wanted a strong man, the best warrior in the tribe, someone who could provide for and defend her family. If he was good looking, even better. If he fertilized other women, so be it, so long as he looked after the best interests of her family.

That attitude persists today, even though almost everything else in life has changed. Women still want the handsomest, strongest, sexiest guy with demonstrated ability at leadership as he gathers other guys to follow his lead. Anyone who doubts this should check out how girls in the latter years of grade school and in high school tart themselves up for the guys. They may want to be treated as sweet and innocent, but they look and act like hookers because they know what guys like to look at.

No question, guys like to look at attractive women. If they could, they would take every one of them to bed. But they wouldn't necessarily want to spend their lives with them.

If I guy can score with a girl who looks and acts like a hooker, but not have to pay fees, he considers himself a winner. And so would his buddies. But guys don't want to marry hookers, because...they have proven that they have too many other sexual interests. Girls who look like hookers and put out sexual vibes like hookers may get the attention of guys, but those guys don't want to marry them.

The same applies to the captain of the football or basketball team, or any other jock who looks good stripped to...well, stripped. While most girls are attracted to these guys, many have none of the other qualities a woman should be looking for. That "get the best possible male to mate with" attitude persists even though we no longer live in tribes.

The best warrior in the tribe in prehistoric days seldom lived past age 24, almost never past age 30. Since the tribe did much of the teaching of children anyway, getting the best set of genes seemed wise. The warrior would always be busy with matters other than those relating to the family, and women knew that. Today, the same guy would be a terrible person to depend on for personal and family values.

Today, most men live past 30. It's the next 50 or 60 years after that the women who marry them can't stand.

Very few of the skills a young man learns in high school apply to the fulfillment of responsibilities of a family man. We don't teach the skills that families need, that women should be looking for. So young women continue to want the best looking guy they can get. And when they marry and he fails to satisfy the needs of her or their children, they can't figure out why.

The most popular girls and guys in high school get so used to constant attention from members of the opposite sex that they continue to want that attention into college, into their work lives later and into their time as parents. They don't need commitment, they need attention. Girls should want a life partner who gives attention, not one who seeks it from them.

Girls naturally favour men with confidence. Whether in men or women, confidence is the most important characteristic of beautiful people. An average looking person with lots of confidence and a big smile can be a sex symbol. Just look at the stars of movies, only they have the addition of makeup to make them look even more perfect. Brad Pitt may be great for the imagination, but few women could tolerate spending a life with that kind of man.

As great as confidence is--I firmly believe it is critically important to a person's well-being--it does absolutely nothing to make a man a better husband, lover, father, provider or planner. Confidence is but one characteristic of a person. That characteristic can be taught and learned. Most people who have confidence learned it by themselves, though it can be learned by taking classes of various kinds.

Those who don't have confidence in themselves and their abilities and strengths should take a class to learn how to show confidence, to feel confident.

Men need more skills than confidence, good looks and rippling muscles to be good husbands, fathers and long term friends. For a woman to depend on the looks of a man as the main feature she loves and wants would be the same as a man loving a woman because she has breast implants, a tummy tuck, butt rounding, a nose job, reconfigured ears and a hair transplant. Every study ever done shows that most men don't want those features in a wife and mother. A majority of men want "natural" women, no matter if they have body features that are not perfect.

Women shouldn't depend on good looks and popularity as characteristics that will make a man a good husband and father. In fact, nothing about the appearance of a man, good or not so good, can be held as predictors of what he will be like as a husband, lover, father, provider, friend or sleepmate.

Advice to women: When looking for a mate, search for one who has the characteristics you want in a man for what you want to do with him in the years to come. If one you like doesn't have those characteristics, make sure he is the kind of man who will gladly learn what he needs to know. If he won't, look elsewhere, quickly.

Advice to men who have read this far: The same applies to you when looking for a lifemate. Paris Hilton or Salma Hayak or someone with the name of Diaz or Cruz may be great to ogle, but they won't necessarily have the characteristics you want at home. And they will always want the attention they get now from other men.

It's not just a matter of caveat emptor. It's a matter of looking for what you really want rather than wanting someone who looks good but has nothing else to offer that you will find valuable in the years to come.

Think ahead. Unfortunately, most people don't get better with age. If you want a partner that will, look for that characteristic before you settle.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who know how to cope with the needs of their lives instead of depending on television and movies to tell them.
Learn more at http://billallin.com