Addicted to Prostitutes?

On Wednesday, a study will be released that involves 200 Chicago men who have used prostitutes and were willing to answer questions about their experiences. I try to be objective when it comes to research methodology, but some things make me admittedly biased. For one thing, it's my personal belief that prostitution should be legal. There are a number of five-second arguments that one can make which would try and sway you to this point of view, but I'll try and limit myself to just one and get it out of the way early:

It shouldn't be illegal to sell something that you can legally give away for free.

That out of the way, I have to point out that this research survey "was designed by anti-prostitution activist Melissa Farley, who is controversial because academics have accused her of tilting previous research to support a political agenda. The Chicago study is part of an international project that includes surveys in Scotland, India and Cambodia. Critics of the Scotland survey called Farley's methods unscientific."

So right off the bat, not only should you take all of the results with a grain of salt, but you might want to think twice about putting that grain of salt in your mouth. I also want to add that Farley is based in San Francisco, which means that she's probably one of those misguided bleeding-heart "liberals" who really wants to take away liberties instead of protect them.

The main result of the surveys and interviews with the 200 men who frequent prostitutes is that they are conflicted about their behavior. Most of the men obviously said they believe there is nothing wrong with prostitution, but 83% of the interviewees viewed buying sex as a form of addiction. Most of the men believed that women became prostitutes of their own free will, but also acknowledged that the sex trade can be devastating to the women involved. 57% suspect that their prostitutes were abused as children. Almost a third said that they viewed prostitutes' relationships with pimps as "harmful". 40% of men said that they are usually intoxicated when they buy sex.

I'd like to discuss some of these results with my own worldviews.

You already know my stance on there being nothing wrong with prostitution - other than the fact that it's still illegal because it shouldn't be.

Believing prostitutes enter the profession of their own free will? I can side with that argument. After all, the root nature of prostitution is just payment and sex. Both of those acts have to be agreed upon in order for it to be prostitution. Without consent to be paid, it's not prostitution. Without consent to sex, it's rape.

Acknowledgment that the sex trade can be devastating to the women? Of course. I admit that it has the potential for destroying livelihood - and that it probably has. The way to stop that is by making it legal and being able to enforce safety issues and monitor things like any other business. Legalizing it as a profession would mean the possibility for health insurance and other medical benefits.

That prostitutes were abused as children? I can see that there could be a psychological standpoint of being abused as a child leading to sexual promiscuity and the possible increased risk of becoming a prostitute, but to make that assumption? I would think that there are more cases out there of other reasons to becoming a prostitute than child abuse. I would also think that prostitutes might use a sob story like one of child abuse to get more money from clients who might "want to help" and ease their possible guilt from what they've done. It can go either way.

That the relationship between prostitutes and pimps are harmful? I would have to agree, but mostly based on the fact that it's not legal, which means there's no laws protecting the girls. If you went to your office job and your boss beat you with his "boss cane" because sales projections weren't up for the quarter, there would be lawsuits and settlement money abound. A prostitute should be entitled to the same benefits if her pimp decides to beat her with his "pimp cane" because she's not pulling enough tricks or making enough cash. Imagine your job if there were no laws about what your boss could or couldn't do...

40% of men are intoxicated when they pay for sex? That's a no-brainer. Alcohol and other drugs lower inhibitions. Inhibitions are what keep you from doing things that you know you shouldn't do. Like break the law. By paying for sex. I'm shocked that this number isn't higher, but then again I'm sure that a number of these men have long since lost those inhibitions by rationalizing that 1) the law is wrong, so why worry about breaking it or 2) the need for it supercedes the reasoning against doing it.

I lastly need to touch upon that large 83% of men who said that they viewed paying for sex as an addiction. A lot of psychologists will agree that the difference between a compulsion and an addiction is that no harm is being done to the person or to a third party. Alcohol hurts the body and drugs hurt the body - so it's safe to call a compulsion to use those substances an addiction. Does a compulsion to have sex hurt people? Perhaps in an instance of rape or molestation, yes. Paedophiles and rapists would be considered, in my mind, as having deviant sexual addictions. But for run-of-the-mill sexual intercourse (or mild variations of kinkiness that may be involved in prostitution for extra fees)? I think it's a compulsion, and one that shouldn't be shunned or blocked off with laws.

Also, it's hard to define what the potential addiction is: the act of having sex, or the paying for it? Actually, it would be the act of having sex and the act of breaking the law. The rush of adrenaline that some people get when they break a law - THAT can be considered addictive. Which means that by making prostitution legal, those addicts would have to get their fix somewhere else - like robbing liquor stores and probably getting caught. Would I feel bad if making prostitution legal led to a rise in gun violence? Not really. It would take some pretty hard work to ever tie someone to gun violence as a direct result of legalizing prostitution. I mean, proving it in a court of law.

The last statistic brought up by this survey is what the anti-prostitution creator wants to tout as the best result of the survey: 90% of the men said that they would stop if they felt there was a likely chance they would be caught and prosecuted. I think that's just bad news. She wants to make it a logical reason to make the penalties harsher as a deterrent to these men. I think that the end result of that would be MORE suffering for the prostitutes that this woman is trying to "help" - as well as a potential rise in violent sex crimes.

The full results will be made public on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008. I really think that the only way to make these results valid is a complimentary study asking similar questions to the actual Chicago prostitutes. Otherwise, you're only hearing one side of the story, and that's not enough to make a fully-educated decision either way.

And I guess I should wrap up this post by saying that: Yes, I am a Chicago male. No, I have never paid for sex. Yes, I have actually known a Chicago prostitute. No, she didn't give "freebies" to friends. Yes, I still side with her anyway that it should be legal.

What do you think? Do you think that prostitution should be made legal in order to protect these girls - or do you think that prostitution should have harsher penalties in order to protect these girls?

(The article about the potentially-biased study)


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Correlation and Causation

Sweet Jesus, I am so incredibly pissed off over seeing yet another failure of a researcher producing yet another failure of an article based on some half-assed finding! Okay, so the person writing the article isn't exactly a "researcher" - more likely a journalist who was abysmal at every subject in school other than lying to the bullies to avoid getting beaten up or forging doctor's notes to get out of gym throughout high school.

Either way, a complete dipshit.

The article is about a study that showed a correlation between people who said they drink diet sodas and the subjects being overweight. That's seriously it. 41% of respondents who said they consume diet soda were overweight.

And the journalist immediately blurts out things like: "One recent study has shown that people who drink diet soda still have a 41 percent chance of being overweight."

Right off the fucking bat, with the ONE piece of real actual honest-to-goodness fucking SCIENTIFIC DATA and it's just slathered in make-up and given a skimpy bikini and made into whatever fashion of whore the journalist cares to make it out to be. They're actually implying causation IN THE CORRELATION!

It's not that those who consume diet soda have "a chance" to be overweight - it's simply that this percentage WERE overweight. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other, unless you feel like conducting THAT experiment to test THAT hypothesis!

Sure, they then go into some blather about "halo effect" and how you think you're being better to your body with certain consumables and it leads to overcompensation down the road for daily calories as a result. Again, nothing to do with the 41%. You can't just staple a fact to a scientific result and expect the resulting blood pool to be a testament to how the fact is represented by the lies you've made up about the data.

Not once did they ponder the notion that the obesity came first. Not once did they randomly speculate that instead of the consumption of diet sodas causing overweight participants that it MIGHT be the case of the participants being overweight causing them to consume diet sodas! I'm not saying that's the case - because I know better than to assume that correlation is grounds for causation - but I'm throwing out a tat for their tit in the grand scheme of Devil's Advocacy.

I happen to be overweight. And I happen to try and consume more diet soda as a result of being overweight. To hopefully see the result of being LESS overweight.

No matter what some bogus idiot decides to claim about the mangled remains of a once-adequately-scientific study.

(Judge the article for yourself!)


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Chicago vs. PETA: The Foie Gras Debate!

In the last installment of this debate, it sure as heck seemed like we were seeing the end of the story. If you read my post back then, Chicago Bans Food and PETA is to Blame, you'd remember that PETA used some dirty underhanded tricks to scare the politicians into signing the bill that effectively bans the sale/production/consumption of foie gras in Chicago.

You might have also noticed the tactics they DIDN'T use in their argument - THE FACTS.

Well, Chicago restaurants, business owners, and citizens who remember that this is still AMERICA and that PETA and that law do NOT have the power to take away our rights - they've made a petition to repeal the ban and the debate is underway in the weeks before the ban takes place.

So since I obviously side on the anti-PETA and pro-America end of the debate, I'm going to present you with the FACTS that those tree-hugging tofu-fartin' hippies were just going to hide under the hemp carpet and pray nobody ever found. Their main argument is that the foie gras method is cruel and painful. Their only evidence is that video showing a farmer forcefully over-feeding a duck, possibly playing some sappy or bone-chilling music for added effect.

Now then, for the defense - I've got a bunch of evidence to the CONTRARY of what PETA wants you to believe. First off, we'll tackle the easy matter of them being kept in cages as being "cruel". Well, the FACTS tell us that for the first 12-14 weeks, the ducks and geese are neither force-fed nor are they in cages at all. They roam free in lovely grassy areas. It's only the last 2-4 weeks that they are put in cages - which is ONLY done for the feedings - and then allowed to go back out and roam free. Possibly as free as the wind blows and/or the grass grows.

So now we get to the "painful" force-feeding done to fatten up those tasty livers before harvest time. I pose to YOU this question: If YOU had to undergo a painful process every day that was possibly "traumatic", what would you do? I'll answer for you, and hopefully you'll agree with at least ONE of the answers. I'm guessing that if this happened to you, you would:

1) Not like it. Sadomasochism aside, you would indeed feel pain or trauma.

2) Not want to get back in that cage where the traumatic pain happened.

3) Not want to go near the man that did this trauma to you.

4) Not do this act TO YOURSELF, since you obviously don't like it when someone else does it to you.

In exemplum, if a bully beat you up afterschool in the parking lot, you would cry because you got beaten up, avoid both the bully and that parking lot, and not beat yourself up because you obviously don't like getting beaten up.

ENTER THE EVIDENCE

Scientists did a study. You know, scientists with the numbers and data and logical reasoning that don't involve sappy videos to "make a point". REAL evidence and facts backed up with proof. The kind you'd hope to see in a real debate.

1) Not liking it; feeling pain. When the brain undergoes stress and/or pain, it shoots out corticosterone. And when they tested the corticosterone levels of these roaming-free ducks and geese during their FIRST force-feeding in the cages and two MORE force-feedings, there was NO significant increase in corticosterone. They also made sure that they were testing right and the ducks were able to make it by putting them in nets for 15 minutes, and sure enough there was corticosterone and obvious stress. Nets are bad for ducks and they get stressed by being in them. Force-feeding? Not really.

2) Avoidance of force-feeding cages. When ducks and geese were studied after the initial force-feeding, ducks only showed a little bit of avoidance and geese showed no signs of avoidance at all. And over time, the avoidance measured in the ducks became shorter with time.

3) Avoidance of feeder. When presented with a complete stranger rather than the usual caregiver, there was more aversion than with the caregiver - and both decreased greatly over time. So whether done by a stranger or familiar person, by the third feeding there was very little avoidance of the force-feedings. But we come to the final phase now, which I find to be the most damning against PETA...

4) Wouldn't do it to yourself. Guess what? Ducks and geese OVERFEED THEMSELVES! Geese spontaneously overeat grass and carrots by themselves at levels of over 3kg a day if left to their own devices. Ducks are not as large, but still undergo spontaneous hyperphagia (overeating) and can consume up to 750g when they do so. These are (shockingly) about the levels of overfeeding that the farmers force-feed them. So they're feeding them what they'd NORMALLY be eating when they overeat - they're just making SURE that they do it.

And no offense, but am I the only one who thinks of the farmer as "mommy" and the ducks/geese as "babies" and the phrase "Here comes the AIRPLANE!" coming into play with a funnel and feed instead of a spoon with mashed peas?

So ducks and geese regularly overfeed themselves. When farmers make sure they do it, they neither become afraid of the farmers, nor the cages where it happens, nor do they show significant signs of pain or stress when it happens!

The defense rests, your honor.

Time for you, the jury, to deliberate. PETA presented you with scary and mean-spirited video footage of a farmer force-feeding ducks. And while it may look painful to YOU, remember the FACT that it isn't painful to THEM. PETA plays on your emotions. Science plays on the facts. And while you may not LIKE the methods used in spite of the facts saying it's okay, you admittedly have the right to NOT eat/buy/cook foie gras. And guess what? If you have the right to NOT eat it, isn't it only natural that other people have the right TO eat it?

This is America. And if you can let PETA win and trick laws into effect that ban one kind of food, who's to say they won't get away with outlawing veal, or beef, or meat in general?

You have the right to eat meat. You have the right to eat whatever the hell you want. Fight for that right. Read more!