It's funny how bigotry will out in these discussions. I'm reminded of the poster who insisted that an abused 10 year-old who was was being given sweets for sex was irredeemably corrupt.
prostitution in the Trek Universe?
- Thread starter Yevetha
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It's funny how bigotry will out in these discussions. I'm reminded of the poster who insisted that an abused 10 year-old who was was being given sweets for sex was irredeemably corrupt.
What the hell does bigotry have to do with anything? Domestic service is a job. Picking crops is a job. Blacksmithing is a job. When slavery was legal, those jobs were done by both slaves and free individuals. It’s strictly a matter of definitions.
All those times dad sent me out to shovel the driveway, I really was a slave. So, Volunteers at hospitals and other places are no longer doing any jobs, then? Slaves can be paid, even allowed to buy their way out of slavery. That's been done in the past, too.
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A pretty standard definition of prostitution is, the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. So if someone pays you to used a commercial holodeck (like the ones at Quark's), then that is prostitution. Even if the patron is having sex with what is essentially an non-living object.
Wrong, there are acts of prostitution where the woman (or the man) is a unwilling participant, however if payment is changing hands for sex, then it is a act of prostitution.
If the money goes to her master, or her pimp, or her madam, or her crack dealer, or even her own pocket, the individual is still a prostitute.
If someone is a slave in a modern day factory, they are a factory worker, the fact that they are there involuntarily doesn't change that they are a factory worker.
Prostitution is a act for payment, even if the payment isn't money.
It is debatable if they have a moneyless society, or merely a cashless society in the 24th century.
There no way around that there was money being use in the Federation during the 23rd century.
The impression I got from The Wolf in the Fold, is that the dancer Scotty left the club with was a prostitute, and that she wasn't going to be "giving it away."
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I suppose thinking about, maybe some people would prefer to be with a real woman, even if she is a prostitute. As opposed to having sex with a hologram. For some people I imagine there could be an element of 'fakeness' to using a holodeck/suite that they would find unappealing.
ie, different circumstance but same principle, how Kirk wasn't scared jumping over that river on his horse in Generations, as he knew it wasn't real
I nearly put in volunteers but thought you would be intelligent enough to realise that a volunteer cannot also by definition, be a slave.
well actually no, volunteers aren't doing "jobs" as meant in the normal sense. They're doing tasks for where they're at, but "job" usually means "employment." For example, if you were writing a resume, you'd put volunteer activities in a totally separate category than your employment history, because they're totally different things.
And you're really comparing doing family chores to slavery? You're either really into trivializing slavery or you just want to play semantic games.
It's taken 4 pages to figure that out?
And all the times your parents ...
feed you
clothed you
educated you
put a roof over your head
protected you
taught you to speak
kept you from freezing in the winter
... they were your slaves, shame on you.
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Whether or not the Federation is a moneyless economy, it's pretty clear that it is a society without poverty. There's no "working class" in the modern sense of the term -- no class of persons who have little wealth and cannot achieve economic security. And in a society that lacks genuine poverty, much of the incentive for women to become prostitutes--whether by choice, or by being forced into it by others hoping to profit from their sexual enslavement--would end. There wouldn't be a class of women desperate to support themselves anymore--no one left to trick into letting you kidnap them, no kidnapper living in poverty themselves seeking to use criminal activity to survive, and no women left who need to sell their bodies to survive.
I think that it's safe to say that the Federation has probably eliminated, or virtually eliminated, forced prostitution. Sentient trafficking is probably almost unheard of within the UFP's borders.
That doesn't mean all prostitution would end, though. In a Federation built on the ideas of freedom and self-determination, there's no rational justification for banning consensual prostitution. I strongly suspect that there will always be some people out there who are exhibitionists, who are strongly sexual, and who would therefore like to make sexual activity their professions. Not many, but human -- and probably humanoid -- psychology never lacks for outliers who defy conventional paradigms. And if, like me, you subscribe to the idea that the Federation possesses a currency of some sort (but that resources are available in such abundance that nobody needs to make money to live in reasonable comfort if they don't want to), there may well be some people who become prostitutes in order to earn greater wealth for themselves, if prostitution is legal and regulated for all participants' safety.
TL;DR: There are no sex slaves in the Federation. No one becomes a prostitute because they need to. Consensual prostitution would probably be legal in a society based on freedom, and a small minority of people may become prostitutes either because they're kinky or because it is a means to wealth. You wouldn't see desperate women working the corner to survive, but you might see comfortable men and women advertising their wares under specific, regulated conditions.
I think that it's safe to say that the Federation has probably eliminated, or virtually eliminated, forced prostitution. Sentient trafficking is probably almost unheard of within the UFP's borders.
That doesn't mean all prostitution would end, though. In a Federation built on the ideas of freedom and self-determination, there's no rational justification for banning consensual prostitution. I strongly suspect that there will always be some people out there who are exhibitionists, who are strongly sexual, and who would therefore like to make sexual activity their professions. Not many, but human -- and probably humanoid -- psychology never lacks for outliers who defy conventional paradigms. And if, like me, you subscribe to the idea that the Federation possesses a currency of some sort (but that resources are available in such abundance that nobody needs to make money to live in reasonable comfort if they don't want to), there may well be some people who become prostitutes in order to earn greater wealth for themselves, if prostitution is legal and regulated for all participants' safety.
TL;DR: There are no sex slaves in the Federation. No one becomes a prostitute because they need to. Consensual prostitution would probably be legal in a society based on freedom, and a small minority of people may become prostitutes either because they're kinky or because it is a means to wealth. You wouldn't see desperate women working the corner to survive, but you might see comfortable men and women advertising their wares under specific, regulated conditions.
Actually, you can volunteer for it, some wanted the fame of gladiators oddly enough. And then there are indentured servants, which amounts to slavery. But the point of volunteers and the shoveling was that they were doing a job, something your definition a job would preclude them having or doing as they are not paid. Or did you forget your definition, that I responded to? Slavery is a condition, not an activity. Slaves can do all sorts of jobs, or none at all. They don't even have to do a job to be a slave. Forced into prostitution, the job is no less a job or the person a prostitute for that person being a slave.
Is all this because you don't understand what I'm saying, or that you don't accept it. This conversation started with you not wanting me to 'get away with' calling forced prostitutes prostitutes, rather than slaves. I contended that they can be called prostitutes as a job is an activity, does not need to be defined by the condition of the worker.
I don't care whether you accept the idea that slavery is a condition, and that jobs are not defined by the condition of the worker being a slave or free. If you don't accept that, we'll disagree. But are you going to say you don't understand the argument I made?
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No, indentured servitude is a multi-year work contract, not a form of slavery, provided you entered into the contract voluntarily. The US military terms of service, strictly speaking, is a modern example of indentured servitude.
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But even by your own argument, it's still not the same. Under forced prostitution, the "act" is rape. Under voluntary prostitution, the act is consensual sex.
But even under "non-forced" prostitution, how voluntary is it really?
While you could probably find at least some prostitutes who entered in that particular career field completely out of choice.
How many others had some undesirable driving motivation to become a prostitute like drugs, psychological problems, recruited (but not enslaved) by someone, economic factors, hopelessness, etc.?
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if "economic factors" count as a reason for a job to not be seen as voluntary, then anyone who's not independently wealthy and therefore must work to support themselves is to some degree coerced.(which is kind of true)
Actually, in places where there is legal prostitution, it's often not that bad of a job-sex workers are unionized in a lot of places.
Prostitution is no worse than a lot of other degrading jobs out there-which is worse, prostitution or cleaning toilets at a shopping mall?
as to drugs and psychological problems I couldn't say, I've read little on the subject. I don't think legal prostitutes are over-represented for drug abuse or psychological problems, though. I could be wrong.
Yes. There's a reason that capitalism isn't compatible with a truly free society.
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