Euro Legalization

[sasquatch 7413]

The article runs about six pages so I'm just going to share the link. Thoughts, CERBies?

 

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/human-trafficking-persists-despite-legality-of-prostitution-in-germany-a-902533.html

[PhantomKnight 7914]

I find it horrible the way these poor girls are treated.

 

I myself have visited some of these "Cherry Bars" or so they are called in Germany (Back when I was much younger) and this article is spot on.

 

There are women offering full service for 40 euros MSOG and pretty much everything else included just to compete with the other girls. Crowded houses where it's practically disgusting to walk through.

Horrible situation for a lot of really nice girls.

[CristyCurves 169032]

Another reason I work hard to support animal rights and not human. Why humans do what they do to one another I'll never know, but this is outright cruelty! Shame on anyone who contributes!

[PhantomKnight 7914]

I think one of the biggest things is that hobbyists in places like Germany aren't very aware of the things happening behind the scenes like this.

 

Myself when I was a hobbyist in Germany at the ripe age of 18ish had no clue many of these things were like this until I had visited much later on. That's when I personally began to understand what was going on.

 

Many young soldiers stationed in the town I was in had no clue things were run like this. Especially since the town we were in was a very proper clean "safe" place for all. Or so the unknowing eye could see. Such a shame for these poor girls.

 

You're right humans really do treat each other in despicable ways. It's

Disgusting to see.

[Phaedrus 209521]

Well, the main thrust of the article seems to be that people continue to be exploited despite the legalization of prostitution in Germany.

 

I don't think this is entirely surprising; you can see exactly the same in other legal industries where a lot of immigrants end up (e.g. construction and agriculture). Even legal immigrants can be very dependent on the people who brought them in due to language and cultural barriers; it's worse, obviously, for those who aren't in the host country legitimately.But you don't see article written about the construction and agriculture industries, because they're just not going to get the same reader interest as one focused on prostitution will.

 

This is a problem with cheap and immobile labour, not with prostitution per se. It has more to do with the proximity of a wealthy economy (Germany) and poorer ones (Romania, Hungary) with relatively easy transport links and immigration procedures between them. That's always going to lead to potentially exploitative employment.

 

Although the article spends a great deal of time bewailing the fate of young ladies in Germany, and the fact that there seems to be little political will to change the law again, it really makes no serious effort to examine or propose alternatives. Sweden and Holland get a brief mention. New Zealand isn't mentioned at all. Decriminalization (rather than legalization) isn't considered in the slightest. Neither are conditions in jurisdictions in which either prostitution or activities relating to it are illegal. All we get is some vague idea of a Utopia in which prostitution is illegal, and all the girls magically vanish.

 

I can't shake the feeling that what the authors really want is for prostitution to become illegal again, and then the next article can just say, "Well, it sucks, but what they're doing is illegal so it's their own fault and we don't need to care." That might assuage their middle-class guilt, but it won't help anybody.

[canuckhooker 19203]

It is distressing to read this article. I lived in Germany during the cold war, and before the fall of the wall. In those days, women from Eastern Europe could not be brought in to the west. Prostitution was quite legal, but for the most part was what we would hope it would be. Women who made the decision to be sex-workers on their own, not coerced, not forced, not trafficked. They were women who worked in their own country and had decent lives.

 

I see the fall of the "Iron Curtain" to be a major positive event in recent history. However, it is not 100% positive as it allowed the rise of human trafficking and other forms of exploitation of the impoverished people of the former Warsaw Pact countries. It almost makes me sad that I was a NATO soldier in the Cold War.