"Toni Van Pelt, leader of the women’s rights organization, claimed the bill would make Washington a “prime international sex tourism destination” and pose an “extreme threat to women and girls.” Sex work, she said, was “the most extreme version of the violent oppression of women.”

Asked whether the local NOW chapter supported her position, Van Pelt replied firmly: “I am representing all the chapters in the National Organization for Women.”

Monica Weeks, the president of the local NOW chapter, was shocked. Her chapter had never declared opposition to the bill—in fact, they were working on testimony in support of it.

The episode illustrated a growing divide within the feminist movement on whether the sale and purchase of consensual adult sex should be decriminalized."

Feminists have a heavy representation of socialist attitudes that come before gender interests.  In other words, socialists want control of everything, including your sex life.  Now they are kind of in a corner about private sex, since they put the stake in the ground on privacy as the basis of abortion.  But they don't consider for money activities to have any privacy protection, so they feel free to control/prohibit that sort of activity.

So ladies, if you want to give sex away for free, you won't get any pushback from the socialist feminists (well that's not entirely true, but it is a lot more muted.)  But if you charge a few bucks for it, they'll come down on you like a ton of bricks.
Then they control your pussy.  

Isn't that what they are doing. I see "money for my time only, any activities are coincidental".

But yeah, the puritan attitude of saving someone from them self has always requires an authoritarian mindset.

I urge all providers and patrons to support the libertarian party.

Socialists, IF they wanted it to be legal at all, theyd support legalization over decrim (a simple google search will show the difference and why decrim is safer for all).

Socialists want heavy regulation and control over everythint, why people think SW would be the exception is beyond me.

Is that the Libertarian Party has about a snowball's chance in hell of coming into power at a national level, at least for the foreseeable future. IMHO, the best shot this country has of allowing (legalizing or decriminalizing) consensual adult SW is to have some state make the first move and let that experiment prove itself and grow from there.

Why try to make everything fit into a political cubby hole like that? Why not just imagine there are a lot of women with knee-jerk attitudes on hooking who think every girl is trafficked, exploited and miserable. It doesn't cut on easy political lines. In fact, I think most of the women who support sex workers' rights and decriminalization are also liberal. They have just evolved beyond the Andrea Dworkin/All sex work is degrading over-simplicity.

The problem with the actual Libertarian Party is that they are like a cult where you have to swallow ALL of their rhetoric or get kicked off the island, not to mention their penchant for nominating complete fucking fruitcakes to run for office.

 
I would LOVE to be a proud member of the Libertarian Party, they more closely align with my beliefs than either of the two major parties, but they just can't seem to shake that nutjob factor that permeates the party and until they figure out a way to become more mainstream and inclusive I have to pass on them on each and every election.

 
Now I have another question for you "Daphne", I know hookers change their names all the time, but just how did you manage to reinvent yourself while removing virtually all traces of your previous identity? I of course am mainly talking about all of your old reviews being toast.

The Libertarian Party doesn't have to win any races to be effective.  Consider the Socialist Party.  For decades they didn't win any high profile races.  Yet by and by the Democrat party adopted all their platforms.  Now all the major democrat presidential candidates are either admitted socialists or agree in principle.   Meanwhile the actual Socialist Party is still a tiny minority party.  

The real point of a third party is not necessarily to win elections, but rather to keep certain ideas in the forefront.  

There are lots of people now with explicit Libertarian leanings.  If there hadn't been a libertarian movement, crystallized by the Party organization, many of these people wouldn't have developed their own ideas as fully.  Libertarian thought certainly wasn't going to spring out of the authoritarian left-wing now devouring the Democrat party.  Nor would it likely spring up from crony capitalism of the establishment Republicans.  

It always needed its own space to refine its ideas and avoid the corruption of special interests and sabotage by competing ideologies.

This should probably be in the P&R forum. ha

this should probably be moved to the political board

However, it's here.

Seems like the big-L party is probably dead and a lot of the intellectual and philosophical support moving towards the State Capacity Libertarianism approach. Not sure if that is good or bad but see the argument for it. Even if that is not the case the party itself is unlikely to every offer a good vehicle for political change towards greater personal freedoms.

HOWEVER, as others noted, we don't really need the party as is as much as the adoption of a lot of the general ideas. I suspect that is more likely and that we're already seeing the lines getting drawn up for the emergency of some new parties -- or at least the existing parties remaking themselves into what would be unrecognizable based on positions of even 15 years ago.

to yours.  I identify as a Libertarian, but registered as an Independent.  This way, I get the bullshit mailers from both major parties.  Lol

 
I learned when I was younger that voting for the Libertarian candidates was just a waste of my vote.  The "fruitcake factor" as you call it means once you announce you are a Libertarian, no one takes you seriously, as a candidate OR a voter.  

support decrim is that it'll drive the price down substantially when all the college girls on Seeking Arrangement figure out that they can broaden their prospects and pay off their student loans in half the time without risk of being thrown in jail.

 
I'm sure there will always be the super expensive 'low volume' 'exclusive' girls that're charging 2k an hour, but if we get decrim passed, you can say goodbye to the $200-500 bracket, it'll be a race to the bottom, and if seeking arrangement is anything to go off of, and if you're a reasonably good looking dude that's reasonably respectful, the bottom is around 100 bucks a visit which will include some social time. It's simple supply/demand.

At that point, it probably makes zero sense to date anymore, just bang college chicks at 100 bucks a pop, it'll be cheaper than dragging ass through tinder for a couple hours a day and shelling out a couple dates to bang. Maybe I'm old fashioned, I don't really look forward to those prospects, but it's an inevitability, no doubt.

 

All that aside, have a look at the feminist women who are against decrim. It's always older housewives who are struggling to keep their husbands interested. They're not dumb, they know that they can't compete sexually with a 20-something uninhibited college girl, and they don't intend to try (which is probably the problem to begin with). It's interesting that a group of people who don't seem to have any qualms about subverting the nuclear family, and at times do so intentionally, but in this instance seem to be very hesitant to support something that would undoubtedly be a nail in the coffin as such.

Do you ladies really want to work for Escort, Inc?  Do we really want the hobby to be commoditized and corporatized?  The movie Idiocracy comes to mind, where the Lawyer stops off at a fast food place for a blow job.  If it is legalized, it will necessarily be heavily taxed and regulated.  There will be state agencies where pros will be registered, licensed and monitored with mandatory drug testing just like the Nevada model, doctors and lawyers and legal weed.   Can you imagine there being mandatory continuing education with classes like how to avoid teeth injury when giving a blow job and the proper positioning for reverse doggie with a banana split?

No I think we leave well enough alone, step up enforcement of trafficking and anti pimping laws.  Otherwise I fear the  demise of the independent escort.  Just riffing here, so hold on to your hate if you choose to reply.

Yes, the government tends to fuck up everything it gets its hand on, but lets look at legal weed for example. Yes, it's overtaxed and overregulated, but even the regulation capitol of the world, California has discovered the overtaxing it will simply drive it underground again.

 
The upside will be, even with over regulation and over taxation, is that prostitution itself would no longer be a crime in and of itself, and those girls who choose not to conform to the local regulations regarding registration, etc. will only be guilty of code violations, much like a free lance carpenter doing work that should be done by a licensed contractor.

 
Prostitution is already legal or at least "semi-legal" in most of the non Islamic world, Even in South America which is dominated by the Catholic Church, legalized prostitution works just fine.

You may be interested to know that the majority of weed sales in California are still by unlicensed shops.  Every few months law enforcement gets very proactive with enforcement.  This is largely at the prompting a legal weed shop owners complaining about not being able to compete.  They raid illegal shops and bust the workers.  They have the water and electricity and water shut off.  So there is that part of it that we could see cross over to legal prostitution and those who don’t play be the rules.

As for unlicensed contractors, at least in California, they have very little legal rights and cannot sue to collect for unpaid work among other things.

That doesn't seem to be how this works in all the places where prostitution is legal. Yes, there will be regulations so it will not be like some countries but I don't see how this type of service could ever be a commodity -- or at least no more than something like food service -- still find plenty of very high and middle tier offerings.

and the Islamic world seems to have its "marriages of convenience" which can last a few hours, days or weeks but don't require any type of divorce to end, just a prearranged contract termination.

What is that bit about roses and names?

Never underestimate American corporate interests.   There’s very little chance that any state is going to adopt the Costa Rican model, which mandates that the escort is completely independent and that it is an arms length transaction.

Besides don’t you want to be able to get a blow job while you wait for the barista at Starbucks gets your name wrong?