Again: it’s much more important to actually listen to and consult sex workers’ voices, something which the pro-Nordic crowd absolutely has not done.

I keep asking what you propose. I keep asking you for data. I keep asking you for anything at all.

Oh. You know a handful of consensual sex workers. My mistake.

Why would you have guessed that to be the case, when there is an enormous amount of data which is available to you with only a quick google search and that would show you otherwise? I suppose at the very least you have confirmed my suspicion: your arguments are based on guess work. I thought so. You don’t actually…

“The smallish amount of sex trafficking that actually exists”. I am stunned. There are tens of millions of human trafficking victims on earth. The average age at which people commence sex work is 13-14. How can anyone be laboring under the impression that trafficking is a small problem, or that most people involved in…

I’m not the one grouping them together. The sex trade has grouped them together. And you bet it matters that they’re in the minority. Those who enter the sex trade by choice are a privileged few. The vast majority, even amongst those not trafficked, are coerced, abused, raped and traumatized. Once again, in our entire…

Because it is, almost exclusively, an industry built upon the sale of sexual violence, which is illegal. Sexual violence is not an unintended consequence of the industry. It is it’s primary purpose. Sex workers who have agency are the minority.

Thank you. I’m doin’ my best. It is absolutely outrageous the targeted misinformation campaign that has occurred these past few days.

I’m confused. Where have you gotten the impression that I don’t have any desire to listen to sex workers? I have formed my opinions BECAUSE I have listened to sex workers. But sex workers are not a monolith. Some are for full decriminalization. Others are opposed. While I have been persuaded by the arguments of those…

Jesus Christ, more pathetically asinine and baseless assumptions about my motivations. It’s incredibly unbecoming. What’s icky to me is an industry built upon the abuse of literally millions of vulnerable people. Vulnerable people who, throughout this entire conversation, I am yet to hear you express even a modicum of…

So your benchmark for success is whether or not a country is better off than some SE Asian shit-hole? Really?

Your ability to project assumptions about me is impressive, but perhaps not in the way you would like. I’m not American. Beyond that my life experiences are none of your business.

I’ve lived there, pal. Trafficking is rampant. Abuse is rampant. Legalization in Holland has failed.

You... are you kidding?

“You’re upset by the analogy because you sense the damage it poses to your argument.”

I’m ‘fixated’ on it because it works, Bub. I’ve agreed it’s imperfect. But it works.

No, your analogy made literally no sense. Blaming an increase in grocery stores for an increase in robberies is entirely different to blaming legal brothels for providing deliberate cover to the black market. It was a ridiculous analogy and I’m embarrassed you’re trying to support it now.

That would be anything other than a ludicrous comparison if legal brothels were being robbed. Why don’t you try this one on instead:

Policing is not a magic bullet. A legal sex trade grows the market, and a legal sex trade creates conditions in which an illegal sex trade is far easier to cultivate.

It’s not an investment in the black market. Criminalizing the sex trade reduces the black market. Decriminalizing it contributes to the black market’s growth.