I read a hilarious interview with her after the fact, going on and on about how awful it was.

I'd love to hear from our resident libertarians as to whether this should have been prohibited or not.

If this is any indication, it seems that in prostitution, the highest prices are commanded when you are unskilled in the arts and totally unenthusiastic about the job itself.

link David.

Run "rosie reid horrible" through Google.

Economic historians have noted that a virgin has had pretty much the same value across cultures -- 2 good horses.

Harry:

Two good horses have historically had a pretty good value.
They're transportation, tractors, and, if mares, provide food and little horses to grow one's wealth.

Peter B:

Of course this should have been permitted.
Given that she was a lesbian, there's even less of a moral angle than usual, since she already objectifies men.
Further, the money went to a good cause, this woman's education, rather than to drugs or a pimp.

Would it have been better for her to slave away at some factory job to earn the money, instead of taking advantage of her God-given physical talents ?

And, if so, why is it OK for atheletes to use their bodies to make money ?
(Assuming that you don't take the logical position that both prostitutes AND atheletes should be barred from taking money for their services).

Raoul:

Yeah, it's good PR to market one's self as a lesbian, even if one can't make the "virgin" part fly.

Michael:

"And, if so, why is it OK for atheletes to use their bodies to make money ?"

Now it is my turn to suggest you are having fun with hyperbole. You are a real romantic, aren't you.

Peter:

It is a question worth asking. Why is it that women are allowed to use their bodies for entertainment, except when they aren't?

Which leads to the second question: Does criminalization make it better, or worse?

Jeff:

Oh boy, first dildoes and now internet prostitution, both fought for to the strains of The Battle Hymn of the Republic by guys who can't distinguish sport and dancing from commercial sex.

Jeff, I simply don't believe you believe the sex industry is a benign force and there is no serious downside here, or that it is all analagous to drinking and car racing. If you do, I assume you would see no difference between your teenage daughter going go-carting and to an orgy. But, why, why, why are you so determined to fight for the right to copulate at will? What vision of a better society is guiding you?

Five years ago, a woman was arrested for going topless up here. It became a cause celebre and progressives from coast to coast yelled discrimination. The womyn marched and even held a huge rally on Parliament Hill that culminated in an "unveiling". Boy, did they ever learn a lot about men that day.

Anyway, case goes to court...Charter of Rights...equality...discrimination...blah, blah and you know the result. Going topless is now a fundamental right of all Canadian women that no legislature can touch.

A case of Molson's to anyone of you who who can find a topless woman up here. You would have more luck in Alabama. No one is or was the slightest bit interested and public nudity is no more acceptable socially now than before. But boy, was the fight ever important while it lasted.

What kind of crazy people get their ideological knickers in a knot about freedoms they themselves neither want nor respect in others nor want their children to exercise? People going insane, if you ask me. You are quick to deny any personal involvment or interest
in any of the sex industry and evince no particular respect for it or those who patronize it, but you want it to flourish openly and believe your society in oppressed if it doesn't.

What is driving you and, again, what vision of a better future society makes it all worth upsetting and opposing so many millions of people who know very well why they are opposed? Is your notion of personal freedom so abstract that you don't care at all how people use it or what happens as a result or do you, like Harry, just think the more sex the better?

Peter:

No, I don't think the more sex, the better. I can distinguish sport from sex, but wonder why it is society criminalizes one done for money, but not the other.

Put differently, there are costs to criminalizing anything. In most cases, the costs are far less than the unbridled activity would be.

But are the costs to society of criminalizing prostitution more, or less than, the costs of legalizing and regulating it?

Okay, I bite. What is the serious downside to the sex industry? I am perfectly willing to grant that there may well be a serious downside for the participants (just like in auto racing, by the way--ask Dale Earnhardt's family, or Alex Zanardi, or--well, you get my point), but why is that anyone else's decision to make?

My vision of society is one where people keep their noses out of others' business.

Peter

That strikes me as an odd way of arguing.

Do you start with your picture of what you want society to look like, and decide individual liberties accordingly?

Or do you start with the principle of individual liberty and work from there?

We're westerners. What has a 'vision of a better society' got to do with it?

The debate is not about Jeff's vision of the future, but about where and why you can and can't curtail freedoms.

(Amusing point about the 'right to be topless' though...reminds me of the People's Front of Judea, and Stan's 'right to have babies'...)

Brit/Jeff:

"Or do you start with the principle of individual liberty and work from there?"

Sure, no problem with that. But on this subject you guys are starting, finishing and talking about nothing else in between. If you do not see that people live together in communities, that community cohesion and mutual support is a good thing and that sexual codes and customs underly much of our interpersonal relationships with everyone from lovers to strangers and make close relationships possible, then I'm out of ammunition. We're talking about freeedom for human beings, not rationally programmed robots, but if you insist on denying human nature, then I have my answer.

Tell me, what possible objection could either of you have to enshrining a legal right to parade nude in the streets?

Jeff, as to the downside of the sex trade, I could go on and on, starting with the debasing and exploitation of women, but let's focus. I know of more than one case where a modern seemingly happy marriage absolutely shattered when the wife discovered the husband's internet porn habit. They simply could not contain their visceral revulsion and sense of vicarious betrayal. Brit, if you read the Spectator, you may recall a whole issue on this subject written by very modern, liberal, professional women about three years ago--same story.

What would you tell these women? That they are irrational tradition-bound harpies trying to deny basic liberties?

You're putting arguments into my mouth. My point was that you have to justify any limits you place on human freedom.

For what it's worth I'm agnostic on these points but tend to the view that prohibition generally worsens things, and that what a chap gets up to in the privacy of his own shed is his business...

Peter:

Regarding the manifest downsides of industrial sex: I wouldn't deny any of them. But that isn't my call to make--it is the participants. However, it regarding exploitation, it seems just as likely women are exploiting men as the other way around. No chance of that ending any time soon.

I'm also not talking about absolute freedom; rather, I'm trying to raise the question Brit did: does prohibition result in a worse outcome than legalization and regulation. (After all, the counterpart of people keeping their noses out of others' business, is others' keeping their business out of people's noses.)

I don't want to think of what my wife should do if I picked up an internet porn habit. But the best place to settle that issue is within the relationship, not with some dictate handed down by the nanny state.

Among other things, I don't want to see people developing the habit of negotiating with the government about what they can see, or read, in the privacy of their own homes.

Why isn't it your call to make? (By which, of course, I mean the call of the majority, expressed through our duly established political institutions.)

Put the shoe on the other foot: why should it be your call to make? Why should majoritarian rule get anything like a nod when it comes to private conduct?

Those aren't easy questions to answer, but plunking down on the side of the majority to dictate to everyone sounds like a pretty good description of nanny-statism to me.

If it is indefensible when the left does it, why is it OK for the right?

Jeff:

Because the conduct complained of is far from private. You can make it appear so by deconstructing and focussing on guys quietly enjoying a little porn alone in their rooms or Robert's lonely librarian, but the sex industry writ large and the promotion of an "anything goes, it is all about choice." ethos is glaringly public in many, many ways.

Peter:

That is as may be--although I contend that those issues are amenable to the same sorts of regulation that, in general, keep landfills from being constructed next to grade schools.

You still haven't addressed the core issue: do the costs of prohibition outweigh the benefits?

Jeff:

That is a very fair question that can't be answered in a theoretical or across-the-board way. But you seem to be jumping back and forth between that kind of pragmatic concern and issues of first principle. If your main concern is cost and the practicalities of law enforcement, why would you be digressing into fundamental freedoms and denying the right of the majority to decide through the democratic process?

Peter:

I deny that the majority has any vote at all in my personal decisions. I don't ask the majority what I should read, or watch.

I believe in freedom. In this case, other than the kind of zoning laws society imposes upon all sorts of activities, I don't think society has any business imposing its will upon what adults willingly choose to do with their bodies. If prostitution is in fact a vice, it will be self punishing.

You seem to believe that whatever the majority wants, the majority gets, just as long as it gets it through the democratic process.

The government that governs best, governs least.

Jef

"You seem to believe that whatever the majority wants,the majority gets, just as long as it gets it through the democratic process."

Yup. Scandalous, eh?

Jeff:

And despite the fact that millions of your co-citizens find the very public sex trade deeply offensive and threatening to their children/marriages etc., you don't care because your private right to porn, prostitution and sex aids trumps?

Peter

So have you never heard of John Stuart Mill and the expression "the tyranny of the majority".

Democracy is not about enforcing the whims of popular opinion.

Democracy is about providing minorities with protection and individuals with a voice.

Brit:

And the degree to which minorities are protected from the public whims of the moment through bills of rights, parliamentary procedure, checks and balances, etc. is determined by the majority and exists at its sufferance, unless you want government by aristocrats or lawyers. At some point, majority oppression can justify rebellion morally, of course. But "Aux Barricades" for stag movies and dildoes?

Peter

You might be right about the 'harmfulness' of porn etc. I'm ambivalent on the matter.

I'm personally repulsed by the kinds of practices regularly advertised by spammers in my hotmail account. And I'm sure I wouldn't personally like the peddlers of such porn. Nor many of its consumers.

But then, I don't personally like cigarette smoke either. But I wouldn't prevent people from enjoying a ciggie in their back garden.

The key point is that you shouldn't base your argument for banning something on the claim that the majority of people think it's unpalatable.

If that was the case, I'd never have got to read 'Ulysses'...or eat Marmite on my toast :)

Brit:

I tasted Marmite for the first time a year ago. One of life's special experiences!

Peter:

Why should the majority get a vote in my personal decisions?

The majority doesn't get a vote if I decide to head off to a night club in hopes of a one-night stand. Why should it get a vote if the woman receives some money as part of the deal?

If 51% of Americans decided blacks would be driven into the sea, would that make it right?

Jeff;

Because the public know very well from millenia of experience that affairs-of-the-moment and prostitution are two very different things and that one is genuinely private (sort of--you had better hope) while the other is not. Geez, Jeff, go talk to your local cops about the reality of prostitution and then come back and tell me it is all about individual freedom and choice.

Your question about blacks is ridiculous.

Peter:

I have no illusions about the reality of prostitution. However, a great deal about the reality of prostitution is a result of its prohibition.

The women who engage in it are doing so because it is the best alternative on offer. For whatever reason, apparently some women would rather engage in commercial sex than, say, flip burgers. Absent a thorough going bout of statism, I don't see how to change that.

Given that remorseless fact, we can make it either better, or worse, for prostitutes. Near as I can tell, prohibition makes it worse.

My question about blacks is not ridiculous. You asserted that anything the majority decided upon was OK. At one time, Jim Crow laws were perfectly OK by the majority. Did that make them right?

Jeff:

Yes, it is ridiculous. We are not sitting here before a blank canvas designing a utopian society from scratch. There is a long history of pain, tears and experience that brought us where we are. In the memory of those who came before me, I am quite happy and proud to state my belief that racial and religious discrimination by the majority is beyond the moral pale and may justify revolt. Do you feel the same about your right to frequent hookers?

Peter:

My right to frequent hookers isn't what we are talking about.

Rather, it is whether people should be free to make their own decisions regarding their own lives.

Also, it is about whether prohibiting prostitution is worse than allowing it.

Never mind the misogynistic way the prohibition is enforced.