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prostitution in the Trek Universe?

Strange, that you'd say so since a lot of hookers end up diseased, discarded, and dead. You want to try that again?

Wait, you don't want to talk about actual prostitution and the material conditions which drive people into working as prostitutes. No, you want to talk about prostitution as a sort of abstract concept right? We're supposed to imagine that in a world of legal prostitution, no one would be significantly exploited or harmed.



OK, here comes the point again [Bracketing, for the moment, the question of whether legal prostitution entails no harm to anyone (an assertion from hell)]. Try not to miss it twice.

1. T'Girl brought in libertarianism as an ideology which could justify Federation Prostitution.

2. The libertarian basically holds that person should be free to do whatever they wish so long as it does no harm to anyone else. If I want to smoke, that's my biz. If I want to eat fatty foods, that's my biz. Etc. Etc. Self harm is OK, so long as I do not harm others.

With #1 and #2 we have a justificatory logic for prostitution. Prostitution is justified, because it does not violate the other-harm principle advocated by libertarians.

If, however, we find an example that serves as an exception to the other-harm principle, however, then we discover that matters are more complicated than the libertarian suggests. In such a case, we would not be able to stand on libertarianism as a justification we could use for any activity.

That case is found in...

3. The German Cannibalist Here we have a case which puts our libertarian sensibilities to the test. If you say that the state should not allow for these activities (i.e., cannibalism), then you are not a pure libertarian and cannot, therefore, invoke simple libertarianism (resting on the other-harm principle) as the justification for prostitution.

It's funny that you object to the example, but do so under grounds which simply prove my point. You object to this example, because it involves self-harm, but so what? Self-harm is OK under libertarianism. You object to cannibalism which involves harm, but throw a thumbs up to prostitution because it does not. Libertarians, however, allow for harm so long as it is voluntary. If you really want to smoke Black Lung ciggaretes, the libertarian won't tell you "No."

Again, the example is offered by Micheal Sandel (an eminent philosopher) making the same point as myself.



LOL, even if I did, such notions would be irrelevant to our discussion, unless you want commit the genetic fallacy.



Wow, this is quite possibly the most ignorant thing anyone has ever said on the internet. Congrats.

If you take a reasonable person of good will (i.e., not you) and put them behind the veil of ignorance and tell them that they can pick one of two realities. You can work an average minimum wage job or you can live the life (it ain't just a job, there's a reason they call it "the life"), of the average prostitute. Which do you pick?



And there are some manual labor jobs which are exploitative and which I oppose on moral grounds.

As a conceptual ideal, it is possible to imagine women freely entering into this workforce freely. Then again, I can imagine honor among thieves, honest politicians, and unicorns. Moving away from the conceptual ideal, to the material realities that drive women into this trade in the first place complicates matters considerably.

In addition we have to consider the Kantian argument which is a priori.



Ah yes, if only prostitution were legal all the problems would melt away. A "legal" dehumanizing and degrading job is still harmful. The same sort of people who fall into illegal prostitution would wind up in legal brothels. The health checks benefit the Johns, not the prostitutes. When the prostitute gets a disease (when the condom breaks, when mouth-to-mouth contact, when mouth-to-genital contact occurs, etc.), it is the prostitute who is kicked out of the legal sex-trade. The Johns, however, are protected from her because she is put right back out on the street where the pimp is waiting for her and where the legal market forces her to make even riskier choices (for less money) than she did before.

At any rate, I think the issue is complicated. I am not sure whether continued criminalization, decriminalization, or legalization is the answer. This isn't as simple as talking about pot. Whatever the answer is, we have to consider which behaviors, in principle (regardless of effects), are acceptable and dignified enough that allow for them. We have to consider the material realities that drive people into this lifestyle. We have to consider how legalization ramifies.

If it isn't as simple as "Do what you want so long as you don't bother me" (which is what the cannibal example establishes), then we have to seriously consider the complexity of the issue.



Please cite these examples of legal prostitutes facing the sort of issues you bring up.

Your argument is nothing more than a continued assertion that prostitution is degrading. You don't say why, so I can't respond. It's just charging money for a service. And yes there are many worse jobs.

So you're dropping the charge of irrelevance with Sandel's example?


Um, no. Where did you get that from? As I wrote previously, that example involved killing and bodily harm. The state has an interest in trying to preventing those things.

Legal, safe, consensual prostitution is merely an exchange of a service for money. The state has no significant interest in preventing voluntary prostitution.
 
Um, no. Where did you get that from? As I wrote previously, that example involved killing and bodily harm. The state has an interest in trying to preventing those things.

Legal, safe, consensual prostitution is merely an exchange of a service for money. The state has no significant interest in preventing voluntary prostitution.

I got that from you not reiterating the charge in your last post connected with the fact that I offered a solid explanation of why neither I nor an eminent philosopher was "out of bounds" with this example.

You're still missing the point. But I'll give it one more shot. There is no direct comparison to prostitution being made here. Rather, attention is being paid to the libertarian ideology the underwrites the justification I am responding to in this thread. See below

1. What I am NOT arguing

a. Prostitution = Cannibalism

b. Cannibalism is bad.

c. Therefore, prostitution is bad.

2. What I am arguing

a. Libertarianism as commonly defined and defended (here and elsewhere) rests on the other-harm principle.

b. If the other harm principle is simply valid, then it can be applied universally without complication.

c. The case of "Consensual Cannibals" indicates that the other-harm principle cannot be applied universally without complication.

d. Therefore, we cannot assume that any behavior/activity (including prostitution) justified under this principle is simply justified. Ergo, things are not so simply justified.
 
Um, no. Where did you get that from? As I wrote previously, that example involved killing and bodily harm. The state has an interest in trying to preventing those things.

Legal, safe, consensual prostitution is merely an exchange of a service for money. The state has no significant interest in preventing voluntary prostitution.

I got that from you not reiterating the charge in your last post connected with the fact that I offered a solid explanation of why neither I nor an eminent philosopher was "out of bounds" with this example.

You're still missing the point. But I'll give it one more shot. There is no direct comparison to prostitution being made here. Rather, attention is being paid to the libertarian ideology the underwrites the justification I am responding to in this thread. See below

1. What I am NOT arguing

a. Prostitution = Cannibalism

b. Cannibalism is bad.

c. Therefore, prostitution is bad.

2. What I am arguing

a. Libertarianism as commonly defined and defended (here and elsewhere) rests on the other-harm principle.

b. If the other harm principle is simply valid, then it can be applied universally without complication.

c. The case of "Consensual Cannibals" indicates that the other-harm principle cannot be applied universally without complication.

d. Therefore, we cannot assume that any behavior/activity (including prostitution) justified under this principle is simply justified. Ergo, things are not so simply justified.


um, why are you arguing against libertarian ideology specifically?


I thought this was a discussion about legal prostitution.
 
TNG suggests humans still have problems with prostitution in the 24th century.

In The Perfect Mate (the one where one culture sends a woman to marry a man from another) Beverly has a problem with it;

BEVERLY:How can you simply deliver her like a courier into a life of virtual prostitution...

And yet on Risa apparently the waitresses will have sex with you if you display that horga'hn thing in the open. These employees are sex workers, then.

Sometimes it seems like Trek wanted it both ways-to show how libertarian and free the Federation was, and at the same time have very conservative values about things like sex, drugs, chewing gum etc.

I agree. It is okay for a person to want to be a prostitute as presumably the Risans, the Orion "not" Slave Girls and other sexually charged races want to do. And then all genders must be prostitutes in equal numbers. It is another thing as far as the Federation is concerned is someone is a prostitute because replicators took their job and that is how the milk is brought home, or daddy has the guns even if he doesn't make them work as sex workers. Suddenly they are not Libertarians but Socialists.

The Enterprise revel about the Orions make Captain Pike look better in hindsight because presumably he knew from captain Archer's logs that the dancers/hookers were not actually the slaves
 
I agree. It is okay for a person to want to be a prostitute as presumably the Risans, the Orion "not" Slave Girls and other sexually charged races want to do. And then all genders must be prostitutes in equal numbers. It is another thing as far as the Federation is concerned is someone is a prostitute because replicators took their job and that is how the milk is brought home, or daddy has the guns even if he doesn't make them work as sex workers. Suddenly they are not Libertarians but Socialists.

Yeah that is kind of double sided isn't it? Someone, a Risan for example, has a "legitimate" job working at a vacation resort.

Part of her duties-if a vacationer puts out an ahoreadahn whatever, then she is supposed to respond by approaching that costumer, they get a room and they do it.

Nothing wrong here, it's cute, it's fun. Riker apparently does this stuff a lot. :lol:

A poor woman from the wrong side of the tracks sells her body for money, and suddenly it's "prostitution".

I think it's because of the first few seasons of TNG. They seemed to portray this time as Utopian and libertarian (we don't have the same hang ups as they did 300 years ago).

But every now and then there are a few slips...like with what Beverly said.
 
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... like with what Beverly said
Nothing says that everyone in the 24th century has to be in intellectual lockstep. Beverly's value system might be simply more conservative than her fellows.

She wasn't expressing a universal truth, just her personal viewpoint on the matter.

:)
 
Nothing says that everyone in the 24th century has to be in intellectual lockstep. Beverly's value system might be simply more conservative than her fellows.

She wasn't expressing a universal truth, just her personal viewpoint on the matter.

:)

True, but I tend to see Beverly more as a "bleeding heart" type, of which I'm glad exists in Trek.

If the Federation is a future paradise, it's probably because of people like her. She's more "evolved" than 20-21 century people.

At the same time, that's what makes Beverly's type very judgmental, like some of things she's said about 20th century humans. Or her reaction to 20th century habits.

And there's the tricky matter of how she rejected her new Trill host once she saw it was a female instead of male.

So recreational drug use, sex for money, is free to do in the 24th century and yet, it is frowned upon at the same time?
 
And there's the tricky matter of how she rejected her new Trill host once she saw it was a female instead of male.


What's tricky about it?
She's heterosexual and has no interest in a sexual relationship with a female.
One has to be bisexual to be 'politically correct' these days?
 
And there's the tricky matter of how she rejected her new Trill host once she saw it was a female instead of male.


What's tricky about it?
She's heterosexual and has no interest in a sexual relationship with a female.
One has to be bisexual to be 'politically correct' these days?




Agreed. It's ridiculous to say that Beverly has to be willing to try bisexuality in order to be regarded as "properly enlightened."
 
So recreational drug use ... [snip] ... is free to do in the 24th century and yet, it is frowned upon at the same time?
When did we see this? There was a fair amount of drinking during TOS, less so in later series, but where was there "drug use." TNG did a whole episode about the evils of such, and Tasha admitted regretfully to some use when she was younger.

I don't remember free to do.

:)
 
So recreational drug use ... [snip] ... is free to do in the 24th century and yet, it is frowned upon at the same time?
When did we see this? There was a fair amount of drinking during TOS, less so in later series, but where was there "drug use." TNG did a whole episode about the evils of such, and Tasha admitted regretfully to some use when she was younger.

I don't remember free to do.

:)

With the Feds supposedly being a libertarian society, the show will give the impression that certain things are free to do, because they will never (with good reason) show it.

Like all the stuff with the co-husband/wife marriages, having sex with holodeck characters to blow off steam, etc. Even prostitution.

Or a liberal society that does things that would be almost unthinkable in our 20-21st century culture.

One example-in the 1st season of TNG, the mini skirts for both women and men. An attempt to show how humans evolved beyond sexism-(skirts are just for women). Lasted about 3 episodes :lol:

I was trying to figure out if "The Game" was clue to liberal drug use, since the players got rewarded in almost the same way a drug user gets rewarded by injecting a drug.

It seems like at first, it seemed OK to the crew, even when it was obvious that it got them "high". Even the Doctor tried it when she should have been the first to be aware of what it was doing.

Then it became "wrong" because they suddenly noticed how suspicious everyone's behavior became. It's a stretch, I know, I know :rolleyes:

The Beverly rejecting her former lover because she was now the same sex -- I actually agree on that one--what's wrong with preferring the opposite sex in the 24th century?

I was bringing up the idea of can you like the opposite sex in the 24th century without hating same sex situations in the future?

Because Trek put so much effort in the there are no prejudices/sexual hangups in the 24th century, almost as if to say also there are no preferences either. Or classifications etc.

It's like DS9's controversial Badda/Bing Badda/Bing , vs TNG's The Host if you think about it.

All this is theory and a little piss, I'll admit :lol:
 
Please cite these examples of legal prostitutes facing the sort of issues you bring up.

Your argument is nothing more than a continued assertion that prostitution is degrading. You don't say why, so I can't respond. It's just charging money for a service. And yes there are many worse jobs.

So you're dropping the charge of irrelevance with Sandel's example?


Um, no. Where did you get that from? As I wrote previously, that example involved killing and bodily harm. The state has an interest in trying to preventing those things.

Legal, safe, consensual prostitution is merely an exchange of a service for money. The state has no significant interest in preventing voluntary prostitution.
I am all for legalizing and regulating prostitution as the second-best solution in the real-world, basically giving rights to prostitutes, responsibility to their customers and fighting pimps.
That seems like the best solution to get rid off the violence. But there is also other harm done. Do you seriously believe that any woman can have a normal relationship after a certain number of years in this business? Would you be OK with your daughter doing such a job?

It's like with drugs, of course I am a die-hard liberal who applies Chicago-school logic here. Better legalize and tax drugs such that everybody and not just the Al Capones gain from the artificial scarcity that arises as a result of taxation respectively illegalization. But would you be OK with your son consuming heroine?

As much as I like liberal logic, there are limits to it. We wanna take care of ourselves, not just individually but collectively as self-destructive behaviour does exist. That's why I find it had to imagine drugs or prostitution in the idealistic world of Trek, not because it is explicitly forbidden but because nobody would even come up with the idea that something as intimate as sex can be a commodity (it is not just a random service) or with the idea of consuming something that seriously fu*ks you up. Last time I checked "Brave New World" described hell and not heaven.
 
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I am convinced that you cannot read or that you cannot reason.

You've gotta read. Seriously. Words are your friend.

sonak said:
Sorry, no. There was an earlier argument about this in the thread, but I really don't see

This isn't about what you can see, it's about what you can establish using reasoned arguments. Your (lack of) vision warrants nothing.

I'm a little late catching up with this thread, sorry. YARN, the general rule here on this board is to attack the post, not the poster, so cut it out with condescending personal remarks like the ones I quoted above.


I thought this was a discussion about legal prostitution.

Actually, it's supposed to be a discussion about prostitution in the Trekverse. Maybe it's time we got back on topic. ;)


I don't know about the Star Trek universe as a whole but I don't think there's much prostitution going on in the Federation, they have replicators and holodecks after all. However, I'm sure there are some religions somewhere in the Federation that practices sacred prostitution where the prostitution was part of their religion.

That's actually a pretty good explanation for for the traditions on Risa, now that I think of it. The Horghann thing does even look like an idol. It would certainly explain why sex is offered so freely with no money involved. Then again, the Risans might just have great (and sometimes weird) sexual appetites.


TNG suggests humans still have problems with prostitution in the 24th century.

In The Perfect Mate (the one where one culture sends a woman to marry a man from another) Beverly has a problem with it;

BEVERLY:How can you simply deliver her like a courier into a life of virtual prostitution...

And yet on Risa apparently the waitresses will have sex with you if you display that horga'hn thing in the open. These employees are sex workers, then.

Sometimes it seems like Trek wanted it both ways-to show how libertarian and free the Federation was, and at the same time have very conservative values about things like sex, drugs, chewing gum etc.

Sure, after all, the show was written by people living today in a society that's somewhat more prudish about sex than others and where prostitution is mostly illegal or at the very least considered immoral.
However, an in-universe explanation was already mentioned. People do have differing opinions and Beverly apparently thought helping along with someone else's prostitution was immoral.
I live in a country where prostitution is legal and I'm ok with that. But I would find myself in agreement with Beverly in this case because I felt that the woman in "The Perfect Mate" didn't really have a choice as she was bred for this purpose.
 
One example-in the 1st season of TNG, the mini skirts for both women and men. An attempt to show how humans evolved beyond sexism-(skirts are just for women). Lasted about 3 episodes :lol:
I have no evidence to back this up. However, I'd bet credits to navy beans that the genesis of the "skant" for men in TNG was the fact that Roddenberry, a noted horndog who tried to inject the objectification of women into all of his work, wanted to keep the kind of mini-skirt-wearing women he'd had in 60's Trek. But modern sensibilities in the 80's said "no, that's sexist." So he said, "no, it's not, we'll put the men in them too."

It's like DS9's controversial Badda/Bing Badda/Bing , vs TNG's The Host if you think about it.
"Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang" is controversial? Never heard that.
 
It's like DS9's controversial Badda/Bing Badda/Bing ...
"Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang" is controversial? Never heard that.
If you had DS9's Miles O.Brien, and Ent's Malcolm Reed in the same episode, and Miles (who is Irish) showed resentment towards Malcolm (who is English), because of deeds involving their ancestors that would be pretty controversial, and in the Star Trek universe really out of place.

Or if Captain Picard (who is French) were to berate verbally Germans in general, owing to events of four centuries before, that would be controversial, and kind of pathetic.

So when Sisko to Cassidy, went off on how blacks were treated in Las Vegas in the 1950's by whites, it was controversial and out of place in Star Trek.

And yes, kind of pathetic.

The events of the 1950's are four hundred years in the past for Badda/Bing, Benjamin just let it go.

:borg:
 
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To me, it just sounded as if he was against the whitewashing of history he thought was done in the holoprogram. I understand that and I'd feel the same.
 
It's like DS9's controversial Badda/Bing Badda/Bing ...
"Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang" is controversial? Never heard that.
If you had DS9's Miles O.Brien, and Ent's Malcolm Reed in the same episode, and Miles (who is Irish) showed resentment towards Malcolm (who is English), because of deeds involving their ancestors that would be pretty controversial, and in the Star Trek universe really out of place.

Or if Captain Picard (who is French) were to berate verbally Germans in general, owing to events of four centuries before, that would be controversial, and kind of pathetic.

So when Sisko to Cassidy, went off on how blacks were treated in Las Vegas in the 1950's by whites, it was controversial and out of place in Star Trek.

And yes, kind of pathetic.

The events of the 1950's are four hundred years in the past for Badda/Bing, Benjamin just let it go.

:borg:


No, not pathetic at all. It was totally understandable.

Think of a holodeck simulation of the antebellum U.S. South that had Sisko and Yates walking around, conducting business as typical citizens, with no one finding anything remarkable.

Also, groups that have tragic histories of oppression, whether Blacks, Jews, Irish, American Indians, or whoever should not "let it go." They shouldn't blame current folks for ancestor's crimes, but they should remember their heritage and the lessons of the past.
 
It's like DS9's controversial Badda/Bing Badda/Bing , vs TNG's The Host if you think about it.
"Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang" is controversial? Never heard that.

Hah! it Gene showed them because it took all of what, 3 episodes to smash that kind of utopia. :lol: Can you imagine going all the way to Voyager with those damn unisex skirts.

But that is what I mean by super Libertarian/liberal ideas in Trek.


Badda/bing was controversial in forums, reviews and discussions.

This is in comparison to "The Host" which was more quiet, not as noticeable, but there is a slight issue of homophobia depending on how you look at it.

Beverly is at first eager to meet the new host when she assumes it is a male. When she sees it was a female her facial expression changes, to obvious disappointment, and afterwards she is very distant.

When I first watched it, I always thought her response was normal, but then upon seeing some articles and looking back, a question that came up was Beverly bringing up an obvious sexual preference?

In the 24th century?

Should she have done it in the same sense that should have Sisko have brought up the racial reference?

Does that make them both racist/homophobes, or were they just stating a harmless opinion while being totally open minded?
 
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