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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   27783 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025

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Setting all the moral quibblings aside, the nuclear family is a very beneficial societal force, and prostitution a negative one, so it doesn't seem strange that people would promote the one thing and look down on the other.

While I'm sure there are plenty of people here who share this view, I'm not convinced that the existence of prostitution is inherently negative for society (the reality, of course, often can be). I think it's a good idea, for instance, for there to be an outlet for pent-up male sexual frustration that isn't rape/SA.

Fortunately we have invented video games which are infinitely superior to prostitution!

Glib answers aside, and conceding your point for the sake of argument - it seems to me that we would want to balance what you are saying against the demonstrated positive good of the monogamous model. Which I think suggests that having prostitution "normalized" is not the ideal. Again, agreeing with you for the sake of argument (I'm not sure that I do "for real" but I acknowledge that this argument is facially plausible and worth engaging with) it seems that the goal would be to have prostitution available enough to reduce violent crime, but suppressed or stigmatized enough to drive most people towards the nuclear family.

Which I think is historically a not unusual state of, ah, affairs.

Does anyone know what proportion of clients of prostitution are married vs single men (for any given time/place)? I feel like that's an important detail when discussing the impact of access to prostitutes on monogamy.

Not today, but off the top of my head I do know that the medieval church took for granted that urban men would not be virgins at marriage, although it deplored this, but considered it achievable to prevent fornication during courting/engagement. This points to most single men visiting prostitutes.

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