this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
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Donald Trump has not been accused of paying for sex, but several supporters protesting outside of his trial on Monday wanted to make it clear that they have. It seems the crowds that come out to protest the persecution of the former president are getting smaller, and weirder

Today, however, the crowd had thinned to a handful of true believers and true characters – those who don’t leave their house without a giant flag, a bullhorn, and an offensive T-shirt they made themselves.

It’s not only that the crowds are getting smaller, it’s that they are getting significantly weirder.

Of the people willing to step up to a microphone outside the courthouse and defend Mr Trump for allegedly paying off a porn star to hide his alleged affair from prospective voters, two offered something of a wild defence: that they opposed the charges because they too had paid for sex on more than one occasion, and assumed most men had done the same

It didn’t matter to them that Mr Trump is not being accused of paying for sex, but rather accused of having embarked on several extra-marital affairs and falsifying business records over payments made to hide those affairs from the voting public in 2016.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 children)

Well, let’s legalize prostitution. Regulate it, tax it, legitimize it.

Conservatives: hell no, we can’t have that depravity and vice. We need to punish women for sex outside of marriage. Oh, yeah…and no abortions for them either. (Unless it’s my daughter or mistress)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Also conservatives: Yeah, we still pay for sex. Rules only apply to other people.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

They legitimately believe it should be fine to pay for sex, but should be illegal to be paid for sex.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Most sex workers are women, so it tracks

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

If we are going to make it illegal, we really need to flip the laws and make it illegal to hire one. This would give those in the business a legal way of asking for help.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Not sure what you mean. Soliciting a prostitute is already illegal in most states.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Well in Sweden it's legal to sell but illegal to buy

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (3 children)

It makes my head hurt how ridiculous conservatives are and how they spin things. They’re only making their lives harder. Imagine the amount of tax revenue that could be collected from legalizing prostitution.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

It's not a homogenous group. You've absolutely got libertarians on one end, wanting to dissolve the state and legalize a market for children as sexual commodities on one end. And then you've got the Holy Rollers on the order end, who think coffee and cigarettes need to be next on the chopping block.

They formed an alliance of convenience to crush the labor movement. But now they are very awkward bedfellows.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Their only consistency is inconsistency.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Let's say it together: they don't actually care about fiscal responsibility.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

It's obvious that they don't because they only ever work one variable (spending) of the fucking equation:

spending - income = deficit

Even if you stop all of your spending entirely, you'll remain in debt forever if you never have any income, so it's a losing way to fix the problem, but that won't stop them or their idiot voters from insisting upon it.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I see this sentiment a lot from the uneducated crowd, but unfortunately human trafficking seems to increase whenever sex work is legalized so I cannot condone it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Human trafficking is there, anyway. The victims tend to be afraid, because they're forced to do otherwise illegal things, and therefore don't want to come forward. So what often happens under legalization is that a whole bunch of victims suddenly come out, which is now recorded as an increase in human trafficking.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

So you're saying it's okay to torture and rape even more women and children because there were already women and children being raped and tortured anyways? I'm not seeing the logic, mate.

Studies show increases in the country where humans are sourced from, not explainable by "victims suddenly coming out".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

No, try to read more carefully.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

No, you try to read more carefully.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] -2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

As if 20 down arrows would change how I feel about human trafficking.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It might have encouraged you to notice that they are saying that the increase you are talking about is likely a statistical anomaly caused by the depressive effect sex work being illegal has on victims coming forward.

Put simply, sex work being illegal is beneficial to human traffickers because it keeps victims from seeking help. If you are a victim of a crime you're more likely to come forward when you are not likely to get charged yourself for the trouble of being trafficked.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I've already explained that the victims coming forward does not account for the increase in human trafficking from countries where they're being sourced from. Plus, it's not just a 5% uptick, in many cases the number is several times or magnitudes higher than before legalization of prostitution.

What is happening is demand is being created far faster than domestic supply.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Seems to be working well in the Netherlands, mate.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Not according to the Netherlands, mate.

https://www.nationaalrapporteur.nl/publicaties/rapporten/2021/01/21/dadermonitor-mensenhandel-2015-2019

According to them, Human Trafficking more than doubled over the observed period. They also saw despite the higher number of victims the number of suspects decreased.

Also a 2022 report in English shows the trend continued strong: https://www.dutchrapporteur.nl/latest/news/2023/10/18/annual-figures-human-trafficking-2022

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

~~“Uneducated”~~

~~I think you need to do some reading, friend. Human trafficking is already a big problem. Legitimizing sex work and regulating it removes t some of the incentives to operate behind the scenes, just like legalizing pot, and frankly you get rid of the whole under-age thing because no government entity is going to allow that.~~

S/he's right.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I wish it were true, but it's really not. Human trafficking increases in both countries that legalize sex work and also countries where the humans are trafficked from. Tons of studies over many decades illustrate the cold hard truth.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Well, damn...you're right. TIL.

https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-prostitution-increase-human-trafficking/

The study’s findings include:

Countries with legalized prostitution are associated with higher human trafficking inflows than countries where prostitution is prohibited. The scale effect of legalizing prostitution, i.e. expansion of the market, outweighs the substitution effect, where legal sex workers are favored over illegal workers. On average, countries with legalized prostitution report a greater incidence of human trafficking inflows.

The effect of legal prostitution on human trafficking inflows is stronger in high-income countries than middle-income countries. Because trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation requires that clients in a potential destination country have sufficient purchasing power, domestic supply acts as a constraint.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

The problem with these case studies are that they are small. If you don't know what's what and your pimp tells you it's illegal and you can't go to the police, you might believe them. If it's widely and commonly known that it's legal and that the police will actually help you, then that will change the results. That and if you throw the weight and resources of, oh let's say, DEA marijuana enforcement against human trafficking, that will also change the results.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago

Your theory is not supported by data. Massive amounts of data collected over decades.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Ah yes - the party of the Christian church isn’t it? 😂

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago

Nonsense. In Christ's church you don't pay for sex. You just molest an alter boy, as God intended.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Sex work is work. And if it's work, there are customers.

There's probably a long list of reasons to criticize these Trump supporters, including not understanding what this case in particular is about, but being customers of sex work ain't it.

Demonizing customers of sex work maintains the taboo and hurts the movement to legitimize, legalize, regulate, and provide normal employment benefits to sex work.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Conservatives love to hate on sex workers, particularly when they are migrants or POC or (God help us all) LGBT.

Demonizing customers of sex work maintains the taboo and hurts the movemen

The prevailing view of Republicans in this moment is that Stormy Daniels is trying to extort Trump for more money and using the NY Southern District as leverage.

Far from demonizing customers, this view holds the client up as a victim and the sex worker as some kind of intrusive parasite who has failed to know her place.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Totally agree with you. But this:

this view holds the client up as a victim and the sex worker as some kind of intrusive parasite who has failed to know her place.

Is because their golden god can do no wrong. That every law he broke was somehow not his fault, and clearly the fault of the accuser or corrupt prosecutors. They will shift the focus away from an argument they can't win, campaign funds being used for non-campaign purposes, to anything they can get the base whipped up about.

But my complaint isn't even about that. My problem is that this article demonizes these Trump supporters for one wrong reason. That characterizing customers of sex work as weirdos for admitting it, regardless of their presidential candidate of choice, hurts the effort to legitimize sex work. There's a lot of fish in the barrel of criticism for this group, no need for the author and OP to support a conservative anti-sex work narrative at the same time.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago

Is because their golden god can do no wrong.

I think its a more broad understanding of sex workers as disposable playthings.

My problem is that this article demonizes these Trump supporters for one wrong reason. That characterizing customers of sex work as weirdos for admitting it, regardless of their presidential candidate of choice, hurts the effort to legitimize sex work.

There's a general generic insult in modern media that boils down to "you're fat and ugly and nobody wants to fuck you". And the anti-Trumpers latch on to people visiting sex workers as an opportunity to hurl out this age-old insult. If this was an article about a movie star or popular musician admitting to patroning sex workers, I doubt the criticisms would match.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

To be fair, even if you're not going for a prostitute, men are still paying for sex in the end.

Buying dinner, gifts, paying for events, etc. All of that is what makes men more attractive in the eyes of females.

South Park did a good episode on it.

Edit: Seems like a lot of people have a problem with hard truths here, and that's understandable.

But really, no need for the personal insults.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago

To be more fair, it's irrelevant to the case that he paid for sex.