No, well.... from a moral perspective that looks on prostitution as a moral ill, I don't suppose they would. That that moral perspective is wrong is your subjective opinion.Steersman wrote: ↑It's a common phrase - some lawyers even claim to be engaged in one of them. Partly why I put it in quotes. And partly because most people don't think prostitution qualifies.fafnir wrote: ↑Explain what you mean by "honourable" if you think it is wrong to say that being a prostitute is less than honourable?Steersman wrote: ↑But rather sad that sexworkers get a far worse press than they really deserve, that theirs is seen as a less than "honourable profession":
A feeling of having done a good deed for your fellow man? Meeting a religious obligation?Steersman wrote: ↑Rather doubt begging provides much in the way of a tangible quid pro quo, in notable contradiction to prostitution.fafnir wrote: ↑ <snip>
Perhaps she was born to "walk in pride", but then she decided to become a prostitute. Lots of antisocial behaviours result in society looking on the people who do them with scorn. Near me we have gangs of professional begging pretend cripples. Is that too an honourable profession?
I don't ground morality in reason. Also, from what I have read of Feser, I agree with much of his critique of Dawkins and co, but I can't get on board with his Aquinas stuff. Maybe I just haven't stufied enough Aristottle, but I'm not interested enough to do it.
You are the one whose morality is based on intuited principles.
Only in the social justice sense of anything having a disparate impact being racist or sexist. My argument doesn't make any claims about whether prostitutes are good and noble individuals, or not. It's your argument that depends on their moral worth. You can't just do a search and replace on your argument and attribute it's inverse to me because we disagree.
I did. People disagreeing with you doesn't make them ignorant. The fact that the article asserts there was some connection between him killing 48 prostitutes and societies negative perception of prostitutes is just an assertion. Let's grant it though for the sake of argument.Steersman wrote: ↑Not at all. But you might actually try reading that article and reflecting on it, in particular:fafnir wrote: ↑You think the Green River killer murdered 48 people because society told him it was ok? #TeachMenNotToRape. I don't think society says it's OK to murder people. Is your argument that society shouldn't view any groups negatively lest psychos take that as an instruction to go to work? Or, are you on a Gladstone like mission and this protection should only apply to prostitutes?
Attitudes toward prostitutes -- their very dehumanization -- underlies the Green River Killer case, and yet prostitutes are the aspect of this story that has been least discussed.
Yes, absolutely. This is from the same set of ideas that is currently informing gender politics on college campuses and comes out of the marxist perspectives that got into sociology and feminism. If you buy into the cultural marxism analysis of society, I'm sure it makes sense to want to normalise prostitution and similar anti-social behaviours.
In attempting to normalise it as some attainable goal, you have to buy in the idea that there is nothing about prostitutes and prostitution that tends to make people dislike prostitutes and prostitution. I don't think it is possible to normalise prostitution in the way that you want without some radical change like altering all sexual interactions so that they operate in the same way as encounters with prostitutes.
If prostitutes are at no more risk of being murdered, why are you using the example of them being murdered as a reason to normalise them? If they are murdered more often, what is the relevance that occasionally celerbrities are murdered as well? Why would I be calling for Hollywood to be closed because of the murder of celebrities when I wasn't arguing the the murder of prostitutes meant that prostitution should be banned.Steersman wrote: ↑What a ridiculous argument; you're grabbing at straws. Some fans kill various celebrities, and some patients of doctors and psychologists and therapists do likewise. You seriously think that we should close Hollywood - even if that might be a good idea for other reasons - and criminalize psychological therapy because some patients go off the rails?fafnir wrote: ↑ The other thought I have is, does anyone actually have the power to normalise prostitution in a way where isolated men with mental problems, or poor impulse control who pay women for sex knowing they wouldn't have sex with them out of choice are not going to feel belittled or degraded and come to hate them. I can see you normalising it so that there are more prostitutes. I'm struggling to imagine how you are going to change the world so that a small proportion of the clients of prostitutes don't end up with some very mixed up and potentially violent feelings about them. Is the aim of this actually to cut down on prostitute murders? It feels to me like those anti-rape activists who fight against efforts to advise women on safety and instead organise slutwalks.
What I was saying was that I very much doubt that it is possible to normalise prostitutes in a way that the kind of person who chokes 48 prostitutes to death isn't going to murder prostitutes. I also doubt that preventing prostitute murder is actually your motivation here since, as we've covered before, you aren't really interested in outcomes but rather principles.
Sure, but for the hundreds time you are looking at it from a "that's so unfair on the individual" frame. I'm looking at what things have previously led to the collapse of a society. There are quite a lot of examples of the normalising of prostitution as a society collapses, not so much brutal execution.
I know this. He changed his mind when he found it worked disastrously in practice. Look in my words you quoted. I said his idea didn't survive a day of testing, that paraphrases what he said in the quote you are using to refute me. The point is that progressive liberal ideas lead to people supporting ridiculous things like disbanding the police.
I never claimed that he did. What I claimed was that he abandoned it because it failed so embarrassingly, not because progressive liberal principles were any kind of a guide to what was a good idea and what was an idea that was so stupid that any society that committed itself to making it work would collapse. Imagine if it was just as dumb an idea but it took longer to refute itself, you might find it impossible to undo.
No. I'm not. You only think that because you are utterly incapable of imagining the world from any perspective other than your own and analyse problems in the same way that led Pinker to think disbanding the police was a good idea. Disbanding the police wasn't wrong because it was fair or unfair to individual police. It was a dumb idea because of the impact on the community of doing it. The issue with normalising prostitutes isn't to do with the fairness or unfairness to individual prostitutes. The issue is what the impact of doing it would be on the community.Steersman wrote: ↑What horse crap. You're still using some "character flaws" of one or several members of a particular group to condemn them all.fafnir wrote: ↑The claim isn't and hasn't been, as I have told you repeatedly that every prostitute is a bad person unworthy of compassion, or indeed that any are. Are you capable of understanding an argument that doesn't limit the scope of consideration to one individual and what they deserve? You seem to view all ethical questions in this way. As Clint Eastwood says, "deserve's got nothing to do with it".
To the same extent as your view that it would be better if prostitution was a normal and unremarkable thing that nobody would mind their son or daughter practicing. Normalising transgenderism seems to be going well, so no reason not to add prostitution to the mix. Only a monster like JK Rowling wouldn't want them to be accepted in whatever way they want.