Everyone who works for a living sells themselves, becoming a commodity in the labor market.
My being a software engineer doesn't increase my chances of getting raped and infected with chlamydia by at least a factor of 10. Nobody is trying to kidnap me to ship to India to be sold to the highest bidder that'll put me to work in a software development firm for no pay where I'm liable to be a victim of the manager's rage as he strangles me at least half to death in a fit.
In no way is prostitution equal to the work of non-prostitutes. Not even in societies where prostitution was or is condoned, has that ever been thought. Rome didn't have "blacksmith farms" where they grabbed orphans off the street and raised them with the expectation of becoming blacksmiths-- but they had that for prostitutes.
Interesting as a group of data points, but not definitive or convincing in any sense.
And a mostly source-less HRC article along with an article that talks about something ultimately different, is supposed to be
more convincing and definitive? More than it being demonstrated that sex trafficking INCREASED in places with proper legalization and regulation? More than actual prostitutes talking about how they don't like their job and how endangered it makes them feel-- whether legal or illegal? More than the reality that prostitutes are mostly raped by definition?
This is putting aside anything else I've linked to that provides any picture at all of the practical situation.
It's a question of quality more than quantity.
You hardly have a
number of examples of relevance-- never mind
quality.
Don't let it be lost on you that it was because of
me that we started talking about actually-tried real-world applications of legal and regulated prostitution-- prior to that, you weren't writing any less abstractly than the HRC article you recently linked to, and following that, you insisted that legal and regulated prostitution just hasn't been done well enough.
How is your argument
not "it'd work out well enough if we did it in a way that worked out well enough"? Because they're already regulating, they're already licensing, they're already monitoring, and everything still sucks-- all you
could have to say is "they have to do it better".
The legalization of prostitution coupled with the closely-monitored licensing of individual citizen prostitutes and the careful, sensible regulation of the resulting legal industry (which I'm calling "LLR" for the sake of convenience) is primarily intended to protect and aid the prostitutes who choose to operate legally -- and to help mitigate some of the social harms caused by illegal prostitution.
And it
largely fails, because the legal prostitution industry is nonetheless partly supplied by sex trafficking and heavily intersects with
organized crime, linking it with illegal prostitution.
It's not just that it hardly accomplishes
anything you said it would because of what it actually is (and what it therefore demands of the government in order to manage in any way)--
it cannot.
There's so much debate about the "Swedish model"
HRC said that too, without ever actually exemplifying that debate.
But in my view it doesn't do anywhere near enough to aid prostitutes and normalize sex work.
If you have any concrete conception of prostitution at all, you'll realize this is a pipe dream.
you're free to your opinion but you do realize that not viewing prostitutes as second class citizens--
"Not viewing prostitutes as second class citizens" isn't what he pointed out. What he pointed out were three points of defense for the prostitution industry that the narrative explicitly and/or implicitly makes.
The chapter in fact argues that prostitutes are equally people. It also argues that their work is as valid, valuable, and respectable as work where you
aren't treated as a breathing sex toy by people who ultimately objectify you.
