Fall of the Brothel Industry

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/10/the-decline-of-the-american-brothel/411682/?single_page=true

by jimsojim • 11 years ago

33 52 11 years ago

a3voices• 11 years ago

But what about the rise of Backpage prostitution?

chaostheory4• 11 years ago

Well there's the question of how much of it is being provided by sex slaves. Still, prostitution is not as wide spread as it was in the US before the 1960's.

barkingcat• 11 years ago

The was a Conservative attack ad in the recent Canadian election that says in Chinese that the Liberals will make brothels open in Canadian neighborhoods.

Obviously this was a really stupid move. Good thing the Conservatives lost.

Steko• 11 years ago

http://bc.ctvnews.ca/mobile/fact-or-fear-conservative-attack...

logicchains3• 11 years ago

I find this ironic, as I've lived in a few cities in mainland China and it was almost impossible to walk more than a couple blocks without seeing a "massage parlour" or the like. In spite of it being nominally illegal there, China seems a lot more tolerant of prostitution than the average US/Canadian city, so I don't imagine an ad like this would have much effect.

beachstartup• 11 years ago

this is not ironic at all.

do you know why people immigrate from places like china to places like canada? maybe the fact that there's a brothel every 2 blocks in china has something to do with it.

smegel• 11 years ago

I don't get it. Were the Chinese worried about the competition?

ZoeZoeBee4• 11 years ago

It's time we legalize prostitution to bring it out of the shadow's. Its naive to pretend it does not exist, the illegality of it only hurts those who engage in it for a living whether they are doing so willingly or not. Keeping it illegal on moral high grounds leads to unintended consequences like sex trafficking and criminal charges the effects which last a lifetime.

Path2Freedom is trying to raise money for a $20 million dollar 100 acre refuge/community for victims of sex trafficking

http://www.path2freedom.org/

gilgoomesh• 11 years ago

Brothels are legal where I live (Australia). It's always a bit strange to see U.S. TV shows where prostitution is a crime.

That said, just because legal brothels exist, doesn't mean illegal prostitution stops. Pay attention to the news for a few years and you'll still periodically hear about arrests for illegal types of prostitution (sex slavery, underage prostitution, etc).

derefr2• 11 years ago

True, but in places (like Australia, or Amsterdam) where you go all the way and unionize prostitution, it's much, much easier to catch the illegal types: you just raid anything that looks like an unregistered/unlicensed prostitution operation.

The main problem with catching sex trafficking and other sexual exploitaton, usually, is that there's so much "grey market" prostitution that isn't really hurting anybody, that law-enforcement tends to just ignore the whole mass as something they don't have the resources to confront or enough information to prioritize. Creating a whitelist and getting all the voluntary sex workers on it gives you a manageably-smaller set of non-whitelisted cases to investigate.

riffraff5• 11 years ago

To be fair, there are victims of sex trafficking even where prostitution is legal.

ZoeZoeBee4• 11 years ago

Of course, and to be fair its much easier for those victims to go to authorities to get help if they're not afraid of getting in trouble for doing something illegal.

Also to be fair there is less demand for trafficked victims, if others can choose to do so "freely" or in this case with charge....

chaostheory4• 11 years ago

The internet is not the main culprit for the decline of both the brothel and prostitution; it's only helping to accelerate it. The main reason is probably due to the Sexual Revolution, as well as the lowered importance of marriage in modern society. It's no longer taboo to engage in sex outside of marriage and divorce is commonplace and no longer a scandal.

riffraff5• 11 years ago

freakonomics has a chapter about this and it agrees with what you say, with somewhat convincing evidence.

In addition to what you mention, things that you could only find at a brothel (oral & anal sex, or less usual things) are also not taboo anymore.

wavefunction• 11 years ago

Pretty sure you could find oral and anal sex throughout human history with non-prostitute intimate partners, just maybe not all of them or at least varying rates depending on the era.

Some women and men love these sexual acts so it seems like they would pursue them even in the past. Maybe people are more open to admitting that they engage in these activities than those folks in the past, as well.

derefr2• 11 years ago

Is there a decline in prostitution generally? When I add up everybody on Craigslist's "Therapeutic Services" board, plus the listings on Backpage, plus the people registered on "Sugar Baby" forums, plus the classical newspaper listings, it seems like prostitution has increased.

Terribledactyl• 11 years ago

total prostitution advertising is probably not (entirely) related to total prostitution occurrence. Ease, volume, and affordability of advertisement services have probably gone up with technical advances, word of mouth, etc etc.

chaostheory4• 11 years ago

There is both a decline in prostitution as well as a huge decline in prostitute salaries. At the turn of the 19th - 20th century, prostitutes who weren't madams were making the equivalent of about $400,000 - 500,000.

zamalek• 11 years ago

The internet is not the main culprit for the decline of both the brothel and prostitution; it's only helping to accelerate it.

VR is going to be how that happens. I tried out VR pornography and there is very little a strip club offers over it: food, company and drinks. It's what made me realize what the true potential of the platform is.

It would be possible to implement a brothel with VR and teledildonics which, while not 100% real, would neatly skirt all the issues with real brothels: the law, pregnancies, customers who fall in love, the STDs and the moral leap required to walk into one. I'd do it myself if I hadn't figured out something far simpler to get off the ground.

zzalpha2• 11 years ago

It's no longer taboo to engage in sex outside of marriage

I don't know what planet you live on, but I'm fairly sure, side from open marriages where the couple mutually agrees to this, sex outside marriage isn't so much taboo as explicitly ruled out by definition.

And while divorce may not be a "scandal" per se, its certainly not considered desireable.

In short, you seem to have a bizarre view of marriage in the modern world.

lexcorvus2• 11 years ago

sex outside marriage isn't so much taboo as explicitly ruled out by definition

You're using different definitions. By "sex outside of marriage," the previous commenter means "two unmarried people having sex," i.e., what's sometimes called "premarital sex." This indeed is no longer taboo in much, probably most, of the West.

bblough• 11 years ago

It sounds like you're taking "sex outside marriage" to mean "sex with outside partners, while married."

I think the intended meaning here is "sex without being married" (or at least that's how I interpret it).

gfody• 11 years ago

Las Vegas, the Times Square of America

isn't Times Square the Times Square of America?

mbrameld• 11 years ago

Times Square is the Times Square of NYC. One small part of a larger whole with lots of flashing lights.

douche• 11 years ago

Times Square used to be a lot racier place before the Disney Store moved in...

jensen123• 11 years ago

I find it strange that prostitution is illegal in much of the world. Many people basically seem to be like this: if they don't like something, then they want to ban it. They don't seem to think much further than that. Alcohol prohibition is probably the best example of what happens when you ban something: it doesn't go away, but you get lots of crime etc.

A_COMPUTER2• 11 years ago

People noticed that crime happened around certain types of establishments.

escherize• 11 years ago

Like bar fights?

sobkas• 11 years ago

And then ignored what they noticed and implemented their prejudices/aversion/"moral values" as laws.

sneak• 11 years ago

"I don't understand why prostitution is illegal. Selling is legal. Fucking is legal. Why isn't selling fucking legal?" —George Carlin

philh2• 11 years ago

The same argument applies to selling organs. I bite that bullet, but I somehow feel like most people reciting that quote do not.

bostik2• 11 years ago

I think that has always been the case, but I've noticed a particularly disturbing trend recently.

"Hate speech" used to signify things that incited people to take up physical violence and/or other abusive behaviour against groups or individuals. Over the past 4-5 years the term has been subjected to devaluation, as people with an agenda or axe to grind invoke hate speech as a cure-all antidote against all "things I do not approve of".

But as I noted above, there is nothing new about the phenomenon. During the cold war, it was the red scare. Someone came up with things you didn't like and you could invoke pandering to communism. Since the naughties, it has been terrorism. A literal cash cow of funding, it was (and in a way still is) used to oppress anything you want - just label the activity as some kind of terrorism and shut up most opposition. Now, it's hate speech.

There is a clear trend towards more abstract labels.

The real problem with all of this is that the term loses its meaning. When anything can be labeled hate speech, the real rhetoric of hatred gets lost in all the noise.

I don't want to hijack the thread, so back to prostitution. A historian could probably tell me how things were before the Victorian times, but as mentioned downthread by chaostheory, opposition to prostitution was likely neutered by the sexual revolution. Working and discreet contraception made it possible to enjoy sex fully, without suffering from the adverse effects. (Pregnancy, unplanned parenthood, and the eventual financial repercussions.) All of a sudden a casual attitude towards sex was no longer a damaging trait.

As it has become more accepted to have sex where one wants, the stigma of using prostitution probably is also being diluted. After all, this is the age of service economy and there is nothing wrong with paying professionals for their services.

So I think we're pretty close to the general acceptance that it just might be okay to pay a professional for sex too.

rdtsc• 11 years ago

find it strange that prostitution is illegal in much of the world.

Not very strange at all. It is viewed by many as sexual immorality. The rest of the world is not Western Europe and they are not HN. Religion and traditional morality whether we like it or not is plays an important part.

Note, it doesn't play a direct part the way we might think. People probably would visit brothels there just as often if not more often than someone in liberal Wester Europe. What is important is the _appearance_ of morality.

Religion and beliefs like that are tied to cultural identity as well. For that to survive, it is very important that most believe that others believe in it. They personally might be sneaking it at night to a brothel, but as long as "other" people believe in doing the right thing -- then the norm will persist. It is never allowed to publically proclaim and create laws that might say "now Quran or the Bible doesn't apply anymore and brothels are ok to be opened legally".

lexcorvus2• 11 years ago

It has one star on Yelp.

At the time of writing, there are only two reviews total, one of them obviously post-Odom.

just 12 of the state’s 16 counties

Just? 12/16 = 75%. That's not "just."

Who is editing this stuff?

stickfigure• 11 years ago

Why isn't this the top rated post? No matter what you think of the subject matter, the newspeak is running bold and thick in this piece. It's like the dihydrogen monoxide scare without the irony.

Fall of the Brothel Industry

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