Consent

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

In a different discussion I saw an appropriate post regarding some nonchalant comments made by a 3rd party about prostitution, the gist was that what someone does with his/her own body is his/her own business, provided that no coercion or hardship is prompting the situation in the first place. That got me thinking on the concept of consent, specifically because I see an overlap between the current "age of consent" discussion and prostitution, in which both are sex related, and require the participants to be able to agree voluntarily to perform sexual acts. In the case of statutory rape, the idea is that a young person is not able to consent to such acts, the rationale being that there is no reasonable understanding of the consequences of said acts, at least up until certain age. In the case of prostitution, the individual should be able to consent of his/her own free will, acknowledging also the consequences.

The question goes to at what point are we able to actually consent? Definitions and legal terms tend to draw hard lines, but the reality is that there is a large space for grey areas, understanding of consequences can happen well before or after the legal age, and in the case of prostitution, at what point can we say that poverty and/or lack of alternatives becomes coercion? I certainly can see how the more unemployment you have in a society relates with how ubiquitous prostitution can be, but other considerations apply, if you can get a lower paying/physically straining job instead do you have a choice?

The classical example is public bathroom cleaning. This is a job usually low skilled, badly paid, strenuous, and potentially uncomfortable, and those performing such job would likely change jobs at the first chance, which begs the question, are they able to consent to do such job? The counter question is, if a regular badly paid job, and a better paying sex trade job are available to the same person are they able to choose? Is any choice better than the other if at all?

[Griffin NoName]

The classical example is public bathroom cleaning. This is a job usually low skilled, badly paid, strenuous, and potentially uncomfortable, and those performing such job would likely change jobs at the first chance, which begs the question, are they able to consent to do such job?

They have alternatives, for example becoming homeless and getting food at soup kitchens. So presumably it is a choice, at least of some sort, so one must assume consent.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

But the quality of that choice is incredibly poor!

In other cases there are other options but cost-benefit analysis apply: the amount of effort vs the payoff, at what point are you consenting if the choices are all bad?

[Griffin NoName]

But the quality of that choice is incredibly poor!

In other cases there are other options but cost-benefit analysis apply: the amount of effort vs the payoff, at what point are you consenting if the choices are all bad?

I did see a homeless man interviewed on TV who LIKED being homeless. He didn't really say why. But I somehow suspect he is one in a million. Yes, the choice is poor, and also as you say, what if all choices are bad. But I suppose one can consent, even to a bad choice you don't want to make. Does doing a job indicate consent providing it was not by coersion? I don't know. Another thing I saw on TV was an unemployed man who wouldn't apply for jobs at less than he was earning before, and he was getting "Job Seeking Allowance" - should this be allowed or should he be forced into shelf stacking or crop picking etc?

[pieces o nine]

Zono:  this is an excellent ethics question; it certainly doesn't lend itself to easy answers. I'm following the conversation while working on a response.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I did see a homeless man interviewed on TV who LIKED being homeless.

While it's true that some homeless people like being homeless I strongly suspect that the overwhelming majority of homeless people don't like it as much, nor have many other options.

Another example, a man has a choice to work as a miner, risking life and limb everyday plus the very high probability that his life expectancy will be 30% shorter than the average... or he can starve because there are no other jobs available, not much of a choice, is it?

[Swatopluk]

Another thing I saw on TV was an unemployed man who wouldn't apply for jobs at less than he was earning before, and he was getting "Job Seeking Allowance" - should this be allowed or should he be forced into shelf stacking or crop picking etc?

Until a few years ago this was legal over here within limits, i.e.an unemployed person would not lose the benefits when refusing a job that payed significantly less than the previous or the average for his previous line of work (iirc a quarter or a third less was the limit), also jobs one was clearly overqualified for one could refuse. By now this has changed in theory but the unemployment office usually acts reasonably not sending this type of job offers. Still in theory any job one could bodily do is now legally 'reasonable', i.e. refusal leads to benefit cuts.
Going back to the original topic, the above mentioned change coincided with another. Prostitution is now a legal job. So, in theory, the unemployment agency could offer sex work and cut benefits, if the offer is declined. There were speculations, whether this could be used to enforce a general benefit cut by simply 'offering' it to everyone in the secure knowledge that very few would accept. Iirc this fear was debated in parliament. Of course brothels do not usually seek employees (except maybe janitors) via the job centers but now they legally could.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Would't you have to qualify for a job in order to receive an offer? If a job places you in a serious psychological distress you wouldn't be qualified to do it.*

*scary though: if you are emotionally capable to cope with said job should you be forced to do it?**

**what if it turns out that I can cope with gay sex? I would never voluntarily seek such job but I wouldn't like the idea to choose between being on the streets or provide such services.

[Aggie]

Another thing I saw on TV was an unemployed man who wouldn't apply for jobs at less than he was earning before, and he was getting "Job Seeking Allowance" - should this be allowed or should he be forced into shelf stacking or crop picking etc?

Or perhaps be forced back to the same job at a lower rate of pay? Some of the new unemployment laws that Harper is pushing through suggest that employers will have the freedom to effect massive layoffs, then force unemployed former employees back to work at significantly a lower wage.

The question goes to at what point are we able to actually consent? Definitions and legal terms tend to draw hard lines, but the reality is that there is a large space for grey areas, understanding of consequences can happen well before or after the legal age, and in the case of prostitution, at what point can we say that poverty and/or lack of alternatives becomes coercion? I certainly can see how the more unemployment you have in a society relates with how ubiquitous prostitution can be, but other considerations apply, if you can get a lower paying/physically straining job instead do you have a choice?

I contemplate sexual ethics quite frequently, and tend to fret about questions at the other end of this argument. Where is the threshold of consent, and do things that lower the threshold of consent partially or fully negate consent?  It's generally recognized that having sex with someone too drunk to consent is wrong (and illegal), but at what BAC is one legally too drunk to consent?

At what point does cultural/social/peer coercion or lack of sexual education negate or reduce the ability to freely consent or decline? If someone isn't fully informed of the potential consequences of sex, can they adequately consent to the act? If consent is based on falsehoods presented by the other party, is it still consent? I assume 'consenting adults' in the usual sense for these questions.  What is considered coercion? Seduction is the process of manipulating another person to want to have sex with the seducer; does seduction reduce the threshold of consent?

[Opsa]

These are good questions.

IMHO there is no set blood alcohol count that would negate consent, since different people have different tolerances for alcohol. The main question is: did the party in question fully know what was going on and agree to participate? I myself have found myself in a situation where I was inebriated and the other party was suggesting sex, and I still had the wits to say no and get the heck out of there as gracefully as possible. I have found it to be wise to be aware of what's happening in any situation enough to know how to get out of it if it gets out of hand. If I get too foggy I will pour out the rest of my drink and steer away from the booze.

I know I have said this before, but when I lost my virginity at age sixteen to my steady 18 year old boyfriend of over a year, I had had a full sexual education through the public schools and was not drunk. However, I was not really ready. I believed that I would lose my boyfriend if I did not go all the way with him. This was statutory rape, even though I consented. I did not regret it and was not traumatized. The only thing it robbed me of was the experience of truly and wholeheartedly giving myself to the one I loved when I was ready to do so. BUT- I think a lot of girls lose their virginity this way. So was I whoring myself for the payment of love or was I used by a guy who said he loved me? Neither of those sound very nice, but it happens all the time and it's not the end of the world. I am glad we used condoms and avoided disease and unwanted pregnancy.

One problem I have with young girls selling their bodies is that old creepy guys are buying them. If an old creepy guy is renting a fourteen year old downtown and then coming home and looking at your teenaged daughter, that's ultra creepy. It's the same problem with porn. It's feeding a social disease.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

If an old creepy guy is renting a fourteen year old downtown and then coming home and looking at your teenaged daughter, that's ultra creepy.

Isn't that a pimping problem rather than a consent problem? If a girl isn't psychologically ready to do such a job (and I'd say that it is very hard for a young person to be ready for such thing) then she isn't able to consent, therefore she shouldn't do it and she should be protected by the state to prevent such circumstance, but pimping, while related to the problem isn't the same problem, any form of coercion should be illegal regardless of age or gender.

The grey area comes when the person in question has some clue about what (s)he is about to do and has a level of choice, while at the same time there are economical pressures to do so, or not that many jobs available, or labor intensive jobs that pay worse, etc.
---
I remember a number of articles I read in the newspaper before I moved to the States, that related the awful conditions of sex workers in Spain, and how many of these women were from Latin America, with promises of better pay and -allegedly- different jobs. At the beginning the stories were about sex slavery and so on, but as more info was dug, it was clear that the overwhelming majority of women knew that they were going to be sex workers, expected better working conditions, and didn't want to go back to Colombia, IOW, they knew what kind of job they were expected to do, and they chose to do that job, what they didn't choose was the abusive conditions in which they were expected to perform that job. To complete the picture many of their families didn't want them back, but to send money back. That's where things become uncomfortable, yes, they chose to be prostitutes, but the economic conditions under which they lived meant that the only way to get a 'good' [paying] job was to prostitute themselves. Technically they were free to choose (and indeed many other women chose not to become prostitutes) but there was a level of pressure that steered them in that direction.

[Aggie]

One problem I have with young girls selling their bodies is that old creepy guys are buying them. If an old creepy guy is renting a fourteen year old downtown and then coming home and looking at your teenaged daughter, that's ultra creepy.

I find the former much creepier than the latter, actually. The issue is the act, regardless of where money changes hands. While there are hypothetically ethical ways to carry out the sex trade (prostitution or pornography), IMHO the majority of these industries are not carried out ethically, and it's not easy for the end consumer to sort things out.

[Opsa]

I feel that it is the product (i.e. the prostitute or pornographic "model") that doesn't have things sorted out. Often they are on drugs, it is also said that they come from bad homes and are promised lots o'love and money by the pimps, who are only using them as tools through which to make money. Clearly it is the pimps and pornographers who profit from this stuff. The prostitute may choose to become a prostitute over living in a bad home and suffering from poverty, but it is not much of a choice. Surely if she was offered a fashion modelling job she would choose that over prostitution. The money is better, the social status is better, and there is less imminent risk of bodily harm, disease and unwanted pregnancy.

Who really chooses to clean out the portable toilets for a living? Which would you choose, if your choices were cleaning porta-potties or prostitution? Who really chooses to work at McDonald's, or as a maid at a motel?

If I had no other option except to work at McDonald's in order to bring home food for my kid, I would work at McDonald's. I would be a prostitute for McDonald's. It wouldn't be a choice of career, it would be a choice of living or not living.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

But the thing is that not every prostitute, nor every situation are the same.

There is the boy/girl sexually abused that becomes a prostitute when older (or in the worse cases right away).
There is the chronically poor who sees it as the only way out.
There is the drug addict who can only pay his/her habit that way.
There's the lucky few that having other options chose to do that job (usually upper middle class).
And there's the one who rationally concludes that making $100 for less than an hour's worth of effort is better than working 8 hours at $8.50 in the local Mickey D's.

Many (mostly) women working as prostitutes would not starve if they don't work as prostitutes but they clearly have a good economical incentive to do so, which begs the question, are they able to consent?

[Opsa]

I can't believe I looked this up, but according to Wiki Answers:
"Well depending on where they are located and how many clients they have they can gross anywhere from $30,000 to $200,000 a year. But take note that usually prostitutes have pimps so they would only get a percentage of what they make in a day, and also most of the prostitutes have drug addictions so half if not all will go to there drug habits."

On this website it says: (slightly edited for content)
"What I've heard is twenty to fifty for oral and fifty to a hundred for sex, maybe with extra money for w/o a condom, yeah. As for how much a night, how desperate is your character, and how long will s/he stay out? How busy is the area? If she's blowing another person every half an hour and staying out all night, she might be making five hundred dollars a night, more accounting for when she's (having sex) instead. Prostitution is not actually low-paying, but many street walkers are drug addicts due to environment and high rates of trafficking, and therefore spend a lot of their money on such things. Pimps or domesic abusers may take large amounts of a prostitute's income, and others are supporting their families."

You can also read Three Prostitutes Talk About Their Life on the Streets.

There may be exceptions, but none of these sound like anything I would call "consent". They sound horribly messed up.