There continues to be a debate (particularly among libertarians) over the basis for criminalizing prostitution when engaged by consenting adults. The French National Assembly however has reached a curious resolution in dropping any penalties for selling sex while making it a crime to pay for sex. Paying for sex services now carries a fine of 1,500 euros ($1,700). Repeat offenders could be fined up to 3,750 euros ($4,260). In addition to the fines, johns will have to take a course on the plight of sex workers.
Prostitutes themselves will no longer be fined or jailed for public soliciting. Even more striking is the fact that foreign sex workers actively trying to get out of prostitution can receive a six-month residential permit and state funding to prevent prostitution.
Four other European countries — Sweden, Norway, Iceland and the UK — criminalize the purchasing of sex.
This law was lobbied by law enforcement and the judicial system, a revenue-generating ploy designed to exploit men who will be all too eager to pay hefty penalties in exchange for deferred prosecutions. The police will now hire the prostitutes as decoys, virtually guaranting that every solicitation translates into a hefty fine. You can’t get blood out of a prostitute but you can out of a man.
I find it extremely odd that no one here sees this for what it really is, discrimination against men. When men had the reins, they protected women. Give women the reins, and they turn on men.
There’s a reason why men have/had been the dominant sex. They share their bounty, they protect women and children, and they fight to their death to protect the tribe.
When the enemy comes, the women in charge will present their rumps, accelerating the demise of their own men.
Parlez vous hubba hubba?
ALL criminal laws enure to the benefit of specific special interest groups: cops, lawyers, judges, bail bond companies, the penal industrial complex etc.
The Dutch know that making prostitution illegal makes it go underground hence out of the mandatory health control.
Truly, what’s being discussed is women of ill-refute.
On edit: Meant to say: “COYOTE HOWLS”.
Plato was right. Nothing new here.
Almost 40 years ago at the Texas Bar Convention, a group rented a space in the lobby – off the main area where the White Shoe cigar smokers were gathered in a cloud of stale cigar smoke and self congratulatory lies, a group from San Francisco offered pamphlets and tee shirts (for a small fee) touting their organization.
The tee shirts touted their name: “COYOTE YELLS”. Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics. on the back of their tee shirts was written: “The Trick Is Not Getting Caught”. These folks were members of a union for prostitutes.
We routinely see enhanced fines and punishments for various parties to crimes. In the US, one charged with possession of a small amount of pot, for example, is treated in a radically different manner as compared to the way in which the system deals with an individual charged with the sale or distribution of the same amount of contraband. The former is routinely perceived as a misdemeanor, while the latter, as a felony. With drugs, the seller or distributor is targeted for enhanced fines and punishments. In France, it’s just a twist on the same idea, where the buyer, the john, as opposed to the seller or distributor, the prostitute, is marked for more severe treatment. Perhaps the French view the buyer, the john, as the one creating the demand for prostitution, just as many in the US perceive the seller or distributor of drugs as the one guilty of causing others to fall prey to various illegal substances. Not so shocking. We have the concept of disparate treatment with regard to crimes imbedded within our own legal system. The French are hardly the first.
From a pragmatic libertarian viewpoint, people are a special case. People, or parts of people should not be sold (or rented, in this case)
In countries where prostitution is legal, couldn’t you argue that the rape of a prostitute was merely ‘theft of service’?
We clear thinking libertarians know that prostitution should be legal.
What’s good for the rooster should be good for the hen!
A lot of men “pay” for sex in one fashion or another. What is marriage?
If it makes you feel better the prostitutes’ union is against this ‘bad law (their term).’ France has had some odd laws lately.
They teach G Man Technology at the University of Wisconsin. A “G Man” knows how to tingle the G Spot. You ladies out there know what I am talking about? A good G Man can get paid by females who want the real deal.
What is a “John”?
As more muslims keep moving in, France gets more like Saudi Arabia or Libya. If you want to see Paris get a movie of it. Skip the Riviera and go to the Florida Keys. Do not fly on Air France.
If you live in France and want to pork and need to pay for it then go to Amsterdam. A few EUs go a long way.
On a very base level…a question.
Both parties use part(s) of their bodies through touch. One pays for physical contact as one provides.
A “legitimate” massage or a very intimate interaction?
What’s the difference?? It’s in the “parts”. So folks can pay to watch others who are paid for doing even more than most of the “workers”.
Now about all the permanently injured ankles, feet of very young girls competing on the “beam”. I for one cannot watch when that competition is on the TV. I just remember all the girls in an orthopedic ward during gymnastic season. The only place with more nerves than the feet is the facial nasal triangle.
Yet, the girls can’t make a dime…they are, after all, amatures?? And we have a national industry profiting off the dreams, including the shattered ones. BTW there’s a reason the uneven parallel bars no longer permit the girls pelvic move. Notice that guys don’t have inherently dangerous gymnastic apparatus?
Yes concentrate on sex traffic and other coercive brutal activities involving youth. We made a big mistake in declaring 18 yr olds adults, especially given what we now know about the adolescent mind.
Leave truly consenting adults alone….like we do adult performers, or the Tinder and other consenting adult “traffic” apps.