This isn't really necessary...

If you would just google it real quick, you would find unanimous support among researchers for the idea that previous abuse is very common among prostitutes, and that goes equally for childhood sexual abuse.

Here is one article which indicates 60% of the study population were sexually abused as a child: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0145213481900508

Here is another that gives the number as 57% for child sexual abuse: http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/Farley%26Barkan%201998.pdf

It is less easy to find results that include all sexual abuse (but I'm sure you could do it if you tried) and not just childhood sexual abuse, but it isn't hard to see how such numbers would be realistic...

Lets keep thing civil, now.

Your view of prostitution and legalization are somewhat archaic. The legalization of something doesn't really make it more common, it just makes it so we can control the quality of life for the women. I totally understand where you're coming from when you say it's similar to rape, especially now in America because there's little effective legislation for it. Ultimately though it's not rape, one's a consensual transaction and the other is a non-consenual violent attack. The ways we can improve the industry to transform it into something that is not so similar to rape is through legalization and legislation. It'll help the women to feel empowered to go to the police when something is wrong instead of hiding due to fear of repercussions.

I like your plan on the exit support from the industry, we really need robust exit support services now tbh.

Yeah, if you're looking for "authentic" sexual pleasure, you wouldn't do anal if you're male or female, you'd just do plain vanilla sex. Anal is just another way to experience an orgasm for both sexes and both sexes will experience pain if not done properly and sometimes even when it is done properly. I'm not about shaming someone who enjoys vanilla sex, if that's what you want and like you do you boo but there are other ways to have an orgasm and sometimes, depending on the person, it can be even more intense.

My view is that in a perfect world we wouldn't have prostitution and all these problems we've been talking about but the sad truth of the matter is that prostitution is here and no matter how hard we try, it won't go away because humans will find a way to do anything, legal or illegal. So the best course of action is to control the quality of life through legislation and help curb the issues these women face and have a higher level of accountability in these industries to uphold a good, healthy standard for these individuals.

My problem with the first link is that it gives nothing on where and how the data was gathered.  The second link is only for one city.  You do know the profession is world wide not just one city.  I would like to see something more comprehensive.  Either way, I can say I was wrong but it would be best to let the person I responded to do his own research ;)

@Jaicee

I've read what you wrote and your provided sources but it still leaves me a bit perplexed. When I'm reading these numbers and you drawing conclusions based on them the thing that always pops into my mind is "correlation does not imply causation". It does look grim, but specifically in the cases of prostitution and porn I would like to draw a parallel to the internet and general globalization.

A lot of things got worse thanks to the internet and the ease of moving goods, people and information across the world. It makes certain crimes easier and the enforcement of law a lot harder. Yet it's a very important thing and something that is literally impossible to roll back. Crimes in porn and prostitution increased but so did overall consumption. Without having numbers to back it up something tells me that crimes related to those fields have not linearly increased with the exponential increase of consumption. Which would mean a numerical increase but a proportional decrease and overall improvement of the environment and all people involved with it.

Of course it does not excuse the higher numbers, but what would you do about it? What's the end goal here? Clearly it cannot be a complete ban on prostitution and porn. Porn is a very special case for me because the vast majority of it is made by willing performers and and even an even bigger part does not involve the actual participation of females or humans at all, i.e. art. Sex is literally too big to control because it's a big part of the lives of the majority of the world's population. The only thing I can see is a further push for policies and the spreading of awareness, which is exactly the thing that countries who did legalize prostitution are trying to do.

Your view on "what sex is supposed to be like" is not the be-all, end-all that everyone else should be bound by. Sex can mean many different things to many different people, it's in reality not some Hollywood-ized romanticized version either. I've read many articles where they say it's just not that big of a deal and they like the life style it affords them and it's easier than working a regular 9-to-5 job. 

Most people are miserable at their jobs. You think the person who works as a janitor likes cleaning toilets or the maid likes cleaning puke off bed sheets at a hotel? Even people working office jobs that are driving them to exhaustion.

No they don't. They do it for pay, and I imagine they'd rather be thinking about something else than cleaning a toilet, but it isn't slavery to pay someone to do that. 

If it's legal it's something that's much easier to give the worker's rights. They get mandatory regular check ins from police and health professionals to make sure there is no coercion going on and that there's always access to a safety net when ever they want it. 

They can choose to work with only a select few clients they are comfortable with as well much more easily in a legal setting. It's one of those things where making it illegal makes sexual puritans feel better about themselves, but it actually doesn't really help any of the people who choose to work in that profession. Making it illegal forces them to have to take greater risks to procure clients, work with people they may otherwise not choose to, have to go to locations they are not comfortable with which they wouldn't have to in a legal setting, and takes away law enforcement/health resources that are easily available in a regulated, legal environment. 

Your points made earlier in the thread about Amsterdam are also disingenuous, many workers there do favor a proposal to ban "tours" but those are like ridiculous tour groups/family groups/groups of seniors that want to walk around for morbid curiosity. The overwhelming majority of the workers are against banning the RLD entirely and are protesting the mayor's overall plans and have been quite vocal on that, but conveniently of course the actual opinions/voices of the people working don't get paid any heed when it doesn't fit a certain narrative. 

Alright people, I've reached the conclusion that there is no point in my continuing this conversation because everyone is dug in on their positions and will not change their minds no matter what. Plus it's me against the world here and that's gotten pretty exhausting. I'm tired of writing each of you individualized essays that you're just going to dismiss as though I said nothing anyway. Everyone is ganging up on me in a way that's coming to feel self-reinforcing.

There is no point in continuing since the entire male population selflessly agrees that the sex industry is awesome and epically beneficial to women and that anyone who disagrees is a simple-minded prude.

⚠️ WARNED: Flaming  (generalization) ~ CGI

Maybe it feels that way because maybe *GASP* you're wrong in your conclusion??? No one that I saw dismissed you as though you said nothing. What I saw is that you came in with a radical idea and people were trying to figure out where you were coming from and were debating your conclusion you set forward because most here feel legalization and legislation is the way to deal with these issues. 

That last paragraph was really sexist and incredibly ignorant of what was said by many of the people here. It's like you choose to not see what is being said and instead carry on with your conclusion.

I could always be wrong I guess, but I remain decidedly unconvinced, much as you remain convinced in your correctness.

Questions like prostitution are largely gendered issues. Does one really not expect me to reach any gendered conclusions or have any gendered observations here?

As I have already pointed out, believing that prostitution is bad for women is NOT a "radical idea", it's the view of most of the world's population most likely. I've provided some survey data to indicate that.

You can have a gendered observation but it crosses a line when you make a sexist generalization.

Sis. No one argued the bolded. It is bad. We were arguing your proposed solutions to the issues. Currently it's really bad but what will make it worse is to criminalize it and make it illegal. To address the issues faced by the women involved, legalization and legislation is a completely valid way of mitigating the problem. That's what was being debated. Literally no one that I saw was saying prostitution is good for women and that the sex industry is amazing, what they said was quite the opposite.

Okay, one final aside on this topic of the sex industry. We've talked mostly about the consequences of the sex trade (prostitution, pornography, etc.) for heterosexual women, but not so much for lesbians. There was a story I was just now reading that I'd like to highlight: Google tweaks algorithm to show less porn when searching for 'lesbian' content.

The campaigners for this cause observed that "in their research, they found that only the word 'lesbian' was linked to pornographic sites, whereas searching for 'gay' or 'trans' linked to informative pages including Wikipedia, top news articles, and specialized blogs".

This is a real issue. Because lesbians are an all-female group by definition, we are sexualized way more than anyone else. The top search term on both Pornhub and YouPorn is, in fact, 'lesbian'. To judge by the leading search results one encounters (a large percentage of which seem to involve things like penetration with penile-shaped objects), one seriously doubts that it's mainly lesbians who are doing these searches. Even gay men sometimes participate in the sexual objectification of lesbians (example).

The consequences of people viewing lesbians more as entertainment than as people can get very real. To highlight a high-profile example of what I mean that made global headlines earlier this year, there was group of male teenagers who approached a lesbian couple on a bus in London and, on learning of their sexual orientation, demanded that they kiss for the group. When the couple refused, they were beaten and had to be hospitalized. Likewise, just the other weekend, a lesbian couple was physically attacked at Amsterdam Pride after refusing the advances of two men. In these sorts of ways, we can see how pornography fosters a dangerous culture of male entitlement to women, and not just the straight or even bi ones. So yeah, I'm very glad that Google has recently tweaked their algorithm for the term 'lesbian' to produce informative results comparable to what appears when one searches for 'gay' or 'trans'.

Just wanted to posit that as a final thought.