Germany forcing women into prostitution

[SDW2001]

From Drudge:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/01/30/wgerm30.xml


Women are losing their unemployment benefits if they do not take job in the legal sex industry in Germany. What are your thoughts?

I think, clearly, there must be an exception to that kind of work being considered viable employment.

[Anders]

No. A woman has been threatened to lose her unemployment benefits.

Besides that major point I agree and is the issue still needed to be resolved here as well if we are to legalize prostitution 100%. Here its the same, as the rule of thump you have to take the job offered if you are on unemployment benefits.

[FormerLurker]

rule of thump Given the topic at hand, Anders, that is quite a funny typo!

[Aquatic]

America is one of the only countries where prostitution is illegal. What are people's positions on this? I think it should be legalized and regulated. After all, it is in Nevada, why not the rest of the country. It would be much safer for everyone involved.

[tonton]

Originally posted by Aquatic
America is one of the only countries where prostitution is illegal... {snip}... After all, it is in Nevada...

So it's not illegal in America.

If you want to legalize it in California or New York or Utah, you need to do it at the state level.

[Gon]

Interesting case.

I think brothels and prostitution should be totally legal. (Apparently they are in Germany.)
I think the people should have the option to decline a job that's offered to them, according to their personal opinion of the job. (They can. They only lose a government handout.)
I think people should be able to negotiate the terms of their own job security so that they will be able to decline a certain type of job, and still collect money to tide them over till they find an acceptable job. The answer is privatized job security. If government wants to pay a part of it, okay, but it should be ultimately up to you what kind of deal you make.

[SDW2001]

Originally posted by Anders
No. A woman has been threatened to lose her unemployment benefits.

Besides that major point I agree and is the issue still needed to be resolved here as well if we are to legalize prostitution 100%. Here its the same, as the rule of thump you have to take the job offered if you are on unemployment benefits.

Obviously you have missed the point. The conditions are there for it to happen. But instead of joining an honest discussion, you choose to play semantics.

The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars. As a result, job centres must treat employers looking for a prostitute in the same way as those looking for a dental nurse.


When the waitress looked into suing the job centre, she found out that it had not broken the law. Job centres that refuse to penalise people who turn down a job by cutting their benefits face legal action from the potential employer.


"There is now nothing in the law to stop women from being sent into the sex industry," said Merchthild Garweg, a lawyer from Hamburg who specialises in such cases. "The new regulations say that working in the sex industry is not immoral any more, and so jobs cannot be turned down without a risk to benefits."

[BRussell]

Originally posted by SDW2001
[BThe government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars. [/B] Given some of the bars I've been to, I can't really say I see the distinction either. :D

At first, this just seemed ridiculous, but thinking about it a little more, it's hard to say. I think this is really the logical consequence of making prostitution legal. Lots of jobs are really crummy. If prostitution is legal, it's not an immoral job any more, it's just another degrading crummy job. Like working at Walmart. Which jobs should be legal but still "refuse-able." Should waitressing at a dive - surely a crummy, degrading job if ever there was one - also be refuse-able? What about cleaning toilets?

[e1618978]

So it sounds like legalising prostitution in a country means that you are also removing all welfare and unemployment benefits for your whole society (because I assume that there are always jobs available as prostitutes for both men and women).

It is these kind of tricky situations that turn the tax code and social laws of every country into a big complicated pile of poo.

[SDW2001]

Originally posted by BRussell
Given some of the bars I've been to, I can't really say I see the distinction either. :D

At first, this just seemed ridiculous, but thinking about it a little more, it's hard to say. I think this is really the logical consequence of making prostitution legal. Lots of jobs are really crummy. If prostitution is legal, it's not an immoral job any more, it's just another degrading crummy job. Like working at Walmart. Which jobs should be legal but still "refuse-able." Should waitressing at a dive - surely a crummy, degrading job if ever there was one - also be refuse-able? What about cleaning toilets?

Well, this is where things like um, common sense and reason come in. I think you have to distinguish sex from other professions because of its inherently intimate nature. It's not the same as getting talked down to and making nothing at Wal-Mart, or even cleaning shit up for a living. It's saying to women "Either you take this job letting a guy ram himself inside you, or you lose your benefits".

I don't think most reasonable people think that's acceptable. In fact, I would also think feminist groups would be going totally ballistic right about now. They certainly should be.

[Gon]

Originally posted by e1618978
So it sounds like legalising prostitution in a country means that you are also removing all welfare and unemployment benefits for your whole society (because I assume that there are always jobs available as prostitutes for both men and women).

It is these kind of tricky situations that turn the tax code and social laws of every country into a big complicated pile of poo. It happens precisely because the lawmakers are trying to make "social law". Whatever absurdity ensues is because they tried to make the choices instead of letting people decide for themselves. If the gov't chooses to force everybody to be in an unemployment program, they could allocate a certain amount of funds for it, and the person in question would get to decide for himself which insurance company he wants to get that money and handle his eventual unemployment situation. There would be competition among the companies, and one way to compete would be to offer that some classes of work, ie. prostitute, are excluded. Another company could offer the most time to look for the best possible job, before you have to accept what they find you. Yet another company could just offer you a big lump sum of money. Of course these are just generalizations; in practice they would quickly gravitate towards whatever people actually want.

[midwinter]

For what it's worth:

A Vienna Daily on this isue (http://derstandard.at/?url=/?id=1937702)

And a comment on the story from one of my oldest and bestest friends, who happens to be an expat living in Germany:

whatcha got on your hands is a non story, made up in part by europhobes at the telegraph, i'll bet. the link i just gave is to the main vienna daily (austrian, obviously) and it was the only hit for the attorney's name (which was mispelled in the indep article). what the Standard article says is that that lawyer was arguing that it COULD happen, although the government says it couldn't (and from what i know of germany, it couldn't, and from what i know of the reform just passed, it can't happen period, regardless of what the job is. it only applies to long term).

Anyway.

[AsLan^]

I had the opportunity to visit one of the red light districts in Nurenburg, Germany. Seemed okay to me and I personally approve of legalized prostitution.

But I did have the strangest encounter... one of my female friends was curious about what this red light district looked like. She had never had the opportunity to see anything like it, so me and my buddies escorted her there. The prostitutes were furious ! Two of them actually came down from the windows and we had a little standoff, they basically told us to get the hell out of there if we were going to bring HER with us. It seemed like the working girls felt ashamed of their jobs when viewed by a fellow female. Strange right. These prostitues were very seriously upset and I have no doubt that had we not left immediatley it would have gotten ugly.

Just an interesting experience I had once.

[Gon]

Originally posted by AsLan^
But I did have the strangest encounter... one of my female friends was curious about what this red light district looked like. She had never had the opportunity to see anything like it, so me and my buddies escorted her there. The prostitutes were furious ! Two of them actually came down from the windows and we had a little standoff, they basically told us to get the hell out of there if we were going to bring HER with us. It seemed like the working girls felt ashamed of their jobs when viewed by a fellow female.I think there would be other, more probable explanations. Most likely you were bad for their business. I would expect some of their customers are ashamed of females seeing them buying sex, or otherwise won't get in the mood to buy if there are a lot of other people present. So you could have cost them real money by hanging around in there. And some of who appear "window shoppers" at first sight could be, you know, nutcases, religious fanatics, a danger to you or actively looking to drive the customers away.

[midwinter]

When I was last in Germany in 2001, there was a brothel across the street from a restaurant where we were eating. My buddy explained that the prostitution trade was pretty heavily bound up in organized crime, and so there was no certainty about which brothels were "safe."

[Placebo]

Originally posted by midwinter
For what it's worth:

A Vienna Daily on this isue (http://derstandard.at/?url=/?id=1937702)

And a comment on the story from one of my oldest and bestest friends, who happens to be an expat living in Germany:



Anyway.
Why doesn't that website publish its news in English? I can't read it. I mean, everybody should speak English, it's the language of the world.

[Anders]

Originally posted by SDW2001
Obviously you have missed the point. The conditions are there for it to happen. But instead of joining an honest discussion, you choose to play semantics.

So how many women have lost their benefits because they turned down going into prostitution?

Its not semantics. As you can read out of my post I agree that its a huge problem that the letter of the law can be interpreted in a way that forces women into certain choices. But I have worked professional with the culture of the social systems in northern europe, including Germany, and know what processes that are at work. And the above scenario is in praksis very VERY unlikely. Actually very impossible.

So the only thing I missed was your wish to frame the discussion in a certain way that works in you favor and I actually joined the discussion with an honest wish to give it a dimension, the practical, that shows the world has more shades than black and white. And in non-binary worlds can black actually be a very light shade of grey

[Anders]

Oh yeah. And what midwinter said.

[pierr_alex]

The situation if France is as follow :

Prostitution is (still) allowed, and it's even recognised by the administration: Women or men doing sex business with their bodies have to pay taxes.

- But street prostitution has been banned since a year and a half (we too have a right wing gov. As a side note: One of the prime minister's communication adviser has been catched by the police with one of the last remaining young Romanian girl in Paris's streets a few months ago : big scandal ;-)
- There are no brothels. Forbidden since a long time.
- Now women communicate mainly on the Internet. (but there are few nice looking native French girls)
- The place to be: Arrange a meeting with an Eastern Europe "Agency", regularly sending young gorgeous women on tours in Paris and Western Europe. A few examples : La Creme (http://www.la-creme.com) , Heaven Taste (http://www.heaventaste.com) , Olga's Angels (http://www.olgasangels.net) , Olivia's (http://www.olivia.ro) . There are many other ;-)
- The situation is, as far as I know much better in London, where there is a large choice of women, and where it seems that the Taboo has fallen for a while. Which I think should happen everywhere ;-)

[midwinter]

Originally posted by pierr_alex
But street prostitution has been banned since a year and a half (we too have a right wing gov. As a side note: One of the prime minister's communication adviser has been catched by the police with one of the last remaining young Romanian girl in Paris's streets a few months ago : big scandal ;-)

You think that's bad, a few years ago the American President got a blowjob and they tried to remove him from office for it.

The situation is, as far as I know much better in London, where there is a large choice of women, and where it seems that the Taboo has fallen for a while. Which I think should happen everywhere ;-) [/B]

My understanding is that prostitution is not and has never been illegal in England.

[e1618978]

Originally posted by midwinter
You think that's bad, a few years ago the American President got a blowjob and they tried to remove him from office for it.
My understanding is that prostitution is not and has never been illegal in England.

On the discovery channel a few months back, I learned that Victorian England had 1 prostitute for every 12 men. Thats a lot of prostitutes.

[midwinter]

Originally posted by e1618978
On the discovery channel a few months back, I learned that Victorian England had 1 prostitute for every 12 men. Thats a lot of prostitutes.

That's probably about right. The 1851 census of England, Scotland and Wales revealed a demographic imbalance of 4% in favor of women. That is, there were 4% more women than men. The result of this was around 750,000 women who were incapable of being married simply because there weren't enough men.

As the factory jobs for working-class women disappeared, and as middle-class women found themselves increasingly unable to find work as governesses, many (especially the working class folks) took to the streets.

Some estimates where that, in England alone, there were 80,000 prostitutes. Whether or not that's an accurate number (it's probably an exaggeration, but not by a a tremendous amount...London has around 6 million people at this point), suffice it to say that in some parts of town you couldn't throw a stick without hitting a hooker.

Whew. Care to guess what I wrote my dissertation about? ;)

[shetline]

Care to guess what I wrote my dissertation about? ;)
The history of the development of specially-bred seed crops in the lands which are now modern-day Iraq?

(Sorry... wrong thread! ;) )

[pierr_alex]

Originally posted by midwinter
You think that's bad, a few years ago the American President got a blowjob and they tried to remove him from office for it.How did they (http://www.drudgereport.com/) come to know that...?
Bitch !
;-)

[crazychester]

That thing inside the bony cranium at the end of your neck, it's called a brain. Use it. A lot of effort's gone into its R&D. Pity to waste it.
20 August 2004 (http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1302610,00.html)
Under the new law, long-term unemployed who refuse jobs can have their welfare benefits reduced. If a person is under 25 years of age, the government can cut all support except the monthly housing reimbursement and non-cash benefits. A person is required to take any legal job. A special morality clause, however, ensures that unemployed will not be forced into prostitution -- which is legal and regulated in Germany.
Interesting that it doesn't seem to have occurred to anybody that forcing someone to work in a brothel or lose unemployment benefits might raise issues under assault and sexual assault laws (and very possibly other areas of the criminal code).

[madmax559]

Originally posted by Aquatic
America is one of the only countries where prostitution is illegal. What are people's positions on this?

missionary

[groverat]

SDW2001
But instead of joining an honest discussion, you choose to play semantics.

I read this, then the title of the thread, then irony filled my lungs and I died.

[SDW2001]

Originally posted by Anders
So how many women have lost their benefits because they turned down going into prostitution?

Its not semantics. As you can read out of my post I agree that its a huge problem that the letter of the law can be interpreted in a way that forces women into certain choices. But I have worked professional with the culture of the social systems in northern europe, including Germany, and know what processes that are at work. And the above scenario is in praksis very VERY unlikely. Actually very impossible.

So the only thing I missed was your wish to frame the discussion in a certain way that works in you favor and I actually joined the discussion with an honest wish to give it a dimension, the practical, that shows the world has more shades than black and white. And in non-binary worlds can black actually be a very light shade of grey

Hysterical. Absolutely hysterical.

German, by way of its labor and prostitution laws, has set up the conditions to force women into taking a job as prostitutes. That's the bottom line, and that my friend IS black and white.

As for "how I framed the discussion", what is the point of arguing that? So what? I don't think my title is inaccurate. Sure, it's interpretive, but again..so what? It's actually incredibly ironic, because while you pontificate on "shades of grey" and apparently appreciate nuance greatly, you youself are taking issue with a "characterized" thread title. Certainly, a reasonable person COULD see the events of Germany in the way I characterized them, don't you agree? Isn't that in itself a shade of grey?

[giant]

Originally posted by SDW2001
German, by way of its labor and prostitution laws, has set up the conditions to force women into taking a job as prostitutes. That's the bottom line, and that my friend IS black and white.
read the rest of the thread. you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. again.

[midwinter]

Originally posted by SDW2001
Hysterical. Absolutely hysterical.

German, by way of its labor and prostitution laws, has set up the conditions to force women into taking a job as prostitutes.

No, it hasn't.

A special morality clause, however, ensures that unemployed will not be forced into prostitution -- which is legal and regulated in Germany.

[giant]

also

A spokesman for the Federal Labor Office said that if job seekers said they were prepared to work as, for example, dancers in strip bars, advisers could put them in touch with any suitable employers, but vacancies would not be displayed in job centers.

He also stressed job centers would not look for prostitutes on behalf of brothels, nor offer sex industry jobs to people who hadn't specifically mentioned it as an area of interest.

Speculation has grown over recent weeks that Germany's new welfare reforms, obliging the long-term unemployed to take any available job or risk losing their benefits, could lead to women being offered jobs in the sex industry
reuters story (http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=7499994)

[midwinter]

And just for a little perspective, my understanding is that Germany's dole system is completely out of control. Like people have no real compelling reason to go off of it (national health care + a decent income on the dole = no motivation), and so this is an attempt to fix the problem.

I still don't understand what the problem [edit: Drudge's, the lawyer's, SDW's] with this policy is.

[BRussell]

Originally posted by midwinter
Whew. Care to guess what I wrote my dissertation about? ;) You did your dissertation on prostitution in 19th c. London? How did that relate to your degree?

[edit] And did you, um, collect any "data?"

[pfflam]

Originally posted by Gon
It happens precisely because the lawmakers are trying to make "social law". Whatever absurdity ensues is because they tried to make the choices instead of letting people decide for themselves. If the gov't chooses to force everybody to be in an unemployment program, they could allocate a certain amount of funds for it, and the person in question would get to decide for himself which insurance company he wants to get that money and handle his eventual unemployment situation. There would be competition among the companies, and one way to compete would be to offer that some classes of work, ie. prostitute, are excluded. Another company could offer the most time to look for the best possible job, before you have to accept what they find you. Yet another company could just offer you a big lump sum of money. Of course these are just generalizations; in practice they would quickly gravitate towards whatever people actually want. Talk about nightmare!!!

And yes, even if legal Sex should be recognized as an entirely different class of activity than, say, working at Wallmart . . . :no:

I think there should be a far wider range of jobs that are considered innapropriate . . . a Physicist shouldn't be forced to take a burger-flipping position etc . . .
The onus should be with the seeker, and some measure of privatization might be good . . . allthough introducing the "bottom Line" into this sort of thing, is just asking for immense abuse and graft. . . .

[Gon]

Originally posted by pfflam
I think there should be a far wider range of jobs that are considered innapropriate . . . a Physicist shouldn't be forced to take a burger-flipping position etc . . .
The onus should be with the seeker, and some measure of privatization might be good . . . allthough introducing the "bottom Line" into this sort of thing, is just asking for immense abuse and graft. . . . I think skilled workers are the absolute last people to worry about so I wonder why you would bother to mention them. The insurance companies will compete for them since they 1) are usually well off, so they might buy additional unemployment insurance on top of the gov't guaranteed one, 2) there definitely is money to be made connecting skilled people with employers, and 3) since they have some marketable skill they are in any case going to be easier to find a job for than the average unemployed.

[e1618978]

Originally posted by Gon
I think skilled workers are the absolute last people to worry about so I wonder why you would bother to mention them. The insurance companies will compete for them since they 1) are usually well off, so they might buy additional unemployment insurance on top of the gov't guaranteed one, 2) there definitely is money to be made connecting skilled people with employers, and 3) since they have some marketable skill they are in any case going to be easier to find a job for than the average unemployed.

A couple of years ago I could have pointed you to slews of unemployed telecom programmers (50,000 in my town alone, at one point) - I think that they count as skilled workers, and some of them were not able to find jobs for 2-3 years.

[Powerdoc]

Well it's seems that Crazychester killed this thread. Women canno't be forced to enter in prostitution, that's it's all, and frankly I could not imagine the contrary.

Is there anything more to discuss here ?

[crazychester]

Originally posted by Powerdoc
Well it's seems that Crazychester killed this thread. Women canno't be forced to enter in prostitution, that's it's all, and frankly I could not imagine the contrary.

Is there anything more to discuss here ?
No please lock it before I do something I regret. Counting to 10 isn't helping at all.

[e1618978]

Women canno't be forced to enter in prostitution[/B]

Women are forced to prostitute themselves every day,
millions of women around the world.

More accurate: "First world governments can't force women into prositiution"

[pfflam]

Originally posted by Gon
I think skilled workers are the absolute last people to worry about so I wonder why you would bother to mention them. The insurance companies will compete for them since they 1) are usually well off, so they might buy additional unemployment insurance on top of the gov't guaranteed one, 2) there definitely is money to be made connecting skilled people with employers, and 3) since they have some marketable skill they are in any case going to be easier to find a job for than the average unemployed. I mention them because, until recently, I was a skilled unemployed person . . . as a professor teaching art production and theory/history, when you are out of a job you have to wait to hit the diamond on the head and/or your location has to have a lot of adjuncting in the region or you simply are not going to get work in you 'skill' . . . also, the hiring cycle is annual, so if you blow an interview (by, let's say, getting into a disagreement with your interviewer on the nature of Digital Art) and don't get the dream job, then you have to wait till the cycle comes around and start over . . . but in the meantime . . . you need bucks . . .

[Gon]

Originally posted by pfflam
I mention them because, until recently, I was a skilled unemployed person . . . as a professor teaching art production and theory/history, when you are out of a job you have to wait to hit the diamond on the head and/or your location has to have a lot of adjuncting in the region or you simply are not going to get work in you 'skill' . . . also, the hiring cycle is annual, so if you blow an interview (by, let's say, getting into a disagreement with your interviewer on the nature of Digital Art) and don't get the dream job, then you have to wait till the cycle comes around and start over . . . but in the meantime . . . you need bucks . . . Well, if there is no work then there is no work... it can't be invented out of nowhere, and then you should either do work that isn't quite on your level (till better jobs come up) or you should have prepared with additional unemployment insurance. But I think if there is a good job opening, you have the best chance of finding out about it when the people handling your case have an intelligently crafted profit motive.

[Powerdoc]

Originally posted by e1618978
Women are forced to prostitute themselves every day,
millions of women around the world.

More accurate: "First world governments can't force women into prositiution"
Thanks for the nitpicking ... :p

Now if people are interested in the discussion about the new unemployement's laws in germany, they should start a new thread. Because this one is closed.