Fascinating. OK, so Germany has legalised prostitution and brothels. Fair enough, there are, as always, arguments on both sides but in general the argument is as it is with drugs. Legalization is better as it sweeps away the crime and violence associated with something that we know is always going to happen.
You do have to wonder a little though about the German methods:
A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual
services” at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her
unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.
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.
"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."
One of the arguments, oh so many years ago, for the creation of the welfare state, things like unemployment pay and so on, was that without it, women could be forced into prostitution as there was no other way, in bad times, to support themselves and their children. It does seem just a little, well, odd, that one now actually has to become a prostitute in order to gain the benefits of that caring and all embracing state.
(That inability to distinguish between a bar and a brothel is marvellous don’t you think? I have, on occasion, had a beer in a pub in Germany and I’m reasonably certain that I could tell the difference.)
As it happens I am not a consumer of the services of the sex industry but if I were this would make me rethink my patronage. I’ve had, in previous businesses, to interview those sent round by the local job centre, and while one or two of them were employable I can’t actually recall any desire to have sex with any of them. Rather the opposite.
Leave a Reply to Murky.orgCancel reply