CC08 - Sex Selective Abortion

A Tool of Gendercide?

Recently, Mark Warawa, a backbencher of the governing Conservative Party of Canada, put forth a private member's bill in the House of Commons (M-408) asking the House to condemn sex-selective abortions.  Sex selective abortions, for the uninformed, is the act of terminating a pregnancy for no reason other than the sex of the fetus.

The rhetoric that is being used to support this motion is the idea that female fetuses are the primary target of sex selective abortion, and thus, as part of our society's focus on eliminating violence against women (since women are, apparently, the only members of society who should be exempt from violence), this should include the defense of female fetuses from the sexual violence of sex selective abortion.

Now, I will accept that there can be a cultural impetus for male preference when it comes to children, particularly in China and India, but I do not accept that this is a wildly practiced act in western countries and cultures.

However, as to be expected, the Opposition parties, the NDP and the Liberals, are slamming the motion as a 'back door attempt to reopen the abortion debate."

Now, there are two sides to this debate, and from where I'm standing, both sides are heavy on ideological rhetoric, short on reason, and seem to be missing a major point.

On the right, we have the Conservative back bencher who is advocating for the prohibition of sex selective abortion.  The justification being that sex selective abortion is used to discriminate against female fetuses and is, therefore, a kind of 'violence against women', something liberal western democracies seem rabid about preventing.

Now, there seems to be two schools of thought about this proposition, the first being that the motion is genuine, and is a sincere attempt to help prevent sexual discrimination against females.

This is something I must challenge, as I think the case has been made time and time again that the whole idea of preventing 'violence against women' or 'sexual discrimination against women' is inherently sexist and discriminatory by the very nature of the intent.  It can be argued and reasonably demonstrated that by advocating against "violence against women" or "sexual discrimination against women" one isn't interested in preventing violence or sexual discrimination in and of themselves, but instead ensuring that only men are the victims.  These positions are explicitly pro-female, and implicitly in support of violence and discrimination against males.

The second school of though about the back bencher's motion is that this is a sneaky attempt to get the foot in the door with banning abortion, and that using the "protect teh wimminz" hysteria as justification is simply a way to use emotion to blind people against the encroaching tyranny.

Again, I don't think this is a rational assumption either.  The idea that the government is just aching to stick its fingers into everyone's pregnancies and will use any means necessary to do so is hyperbolic and ridiculous.  The House isn't half filled with Snidely Whiplashes with dastardly plans.

I think it far more likely that the truth is somewhere in the middle, that abortion is seen by some on the right as a violation of a fetus' right to life and that sex selective abortion just adds bigotry into the mix.  Murder is bad enough, they seem to think, but sexual discrimination AND murder...that's a hate crime.

On the left, though, we have near unanimous opposition to the motion.  The opposition is based less on the principles involve, I think, than it is on simply political wrangling.  After all, the NDP wouldn't be a good opposition party if they ever agreed with the Government.

One group that is oddly opposed to the motion, though, are feminists, and this is where I think it gets really interesting.  One would think that they'd jump at the chance to support a motion that apparently is motivated by preventing violence against women, but they claim that the right of the woman to choose is absolute, even if it means that those women are choosing to sexually discriminate against female fetuses.  This ignores the whole issue of how choosing whether to have an abortion or not is a right that only women have, which inherently makes it sexually discriminatory, particularly when it's held to be 'absolute'.  I would go more indepth about that avenue of thought, though, but I don't think it's completely relevant to this issue.

A more sinister interpretation of the feminist position, though, isn't that sex selective abortion is abhorrent to them, and that they have to hold their nose when accepting it in order to support a woman's right to choose for herself.  Instead, consider that there are feminists (a quick browse through Radfemhub can easily support this point) who advocate for the eugenic cleansing of males from the populace, and the whole idea of sex selective abortion makes them giddy with glee.  If they cannot legislate a ban on male children overtly, then perhaps they can simply abort males into extinction.  Feminists who advocate for aborting male fetuses simply because they're male would be unable to do so if sex selective abortion was prohibited.  Sex selective abortion can be used as a tool for 'gender-cide', as Mark Warawa contends, but he seems to miss the point that male fetuses can (and presumably are) be aborted simply because they're male.

China and India may have a cultural bias against female children, but western society has a demonstrable ideological bias against males, and I think the concern over sex selective abortion being used as a tool to kill off female children misses half the problem.

CC07 - MRAs Behaving Badly

When Activism Gets Stupid

A few weeks ago, I challenged JtO, in a comment on one of his videos, to stop saying things with which I agree.  I think my exact phrase was "Dammit, JtO, why don't you ever say something I can disagree with?"  My point being that he usually speaks sense, and there is very little with which I could take issue in his positions.

Anyone who knows me personally will know that I love to debate issues, and I will point out any flaw I can find in any reasoning from any person who chooses to share his/her opinions.  To me, this is the way that I distinguish good information from bad, how I separate sound conclusions from unsound.  Any idea worth accepting is an idea worth challenging, and a major part of my character as a sceptic is to challenge ideas to which I'm exposed.

So, I tended to seek out questionable statements or conclusions made by JtO (and others, of course, I don't just pick on him.  I've rifled through the posts of GWW, RockingMrE, and TheIgnoredGender, among others, all looking for errors in reasoning that I could point out.  After all, any idea that cannot withstand some criticism, isn't worth accepting or believing in) over the dozens of videos and articles he's written.  And, like many of the other MRAs to whom I am subscribed, I've been unable to find any serious flaw in his reasoning or conclusions.  So, in a sideways compliment, I exclaimed "Why can't you ever say something I can disagree with?!"

It seems he's taken that comment to heart.

Well, that's a little hubris on my part.  I don't know if he even reads my comments, or if he did/does, remembered that one in particular.  But, it seems that JtO has put forth something that I can actually oppose.

In his most recent video, he talks about how well the Men's Rights Movement in Vancouver is going, and how they're hosting an anti-misandry summit at the end of September that they're calling "Mancouver, 2012".  In this video, he refers to Christy Clark ejecting men from the political process (which I think is the far more pertinant issue) but only briefly.  The point of the video is to promote a petition from VancouverMRA (the activist group of which he is part) that asks the government to officially rename Vancouver to Mancouver.

Now, I'm a bit confused by this.  On one hand, if this is a publicity stunt designed to draw attention to the Man-couver 2012 summit, or simply satire made in response to some other undisclosed petition by feminists that is just as ridiculous, then it's pure genius.  However, when I asked him to clarify, and by his own statements in his comment section, JtO  continuously asserts that they're perfectly serious.  It's not a joke.  Men built Vancouver, and thus, it should be called Mancouver.

The snowball rolled on from there.  Calls for renaming cities all across this country, such as Manilton and Manmonton, and even the country itself, Manada, poured in.  It started getting silly and absurd, and through it all, JtO was asserting that they were perfectly serious.

Now, I don't know if by "perfectly serious" he means "completely legitimate".  He seems to accept that the premise of the whole thing is ridiculously silly, but when told so, he simply answered with "Yes, but have you signed the petition?"

Like I said earlier, there are only two options that I see, and at the risk of setting up a false dichotomy, I'm going to lay them out here.  If there's a third option, I wanna hear it, but these are the two that I see, and to me they're mutually exclusive.

The first possibility, is that he's being completely facetious, that this is a publicity stunt or satire designed to illustrate the absurdity of a similar petition or claim being made by another source (of which I am unaware).

The more I read through the comments section, the more I am inclined to believe this possibility.  As one of the comments stated "It's [the petition] a reminder to a flaming bigot that men built the city that has her in office."  I think, from context, that this commenter is referring not to the mayor of Vancouver, but the Premier, who, as I alluded to earlier, has been banning men, from other politicians all the way down to the serving and custodial staff, from her political meetings.

The second possibility is that he's dead serious, that he denies any role that women played in the development and sustenance of Vancouver as a city, and thus feels completely justified in demanding that it be renamed to reflect this.

When I challenged the absurdity of this assertion with the statement "Lets swap the roles and see if this is just as absurd. If feminists were to advocate renaming the city "Femcouver", would it still be justified? I think not." he replied, "Rename it Femcouver? Absurd, females didn't build the city."

In the end, it seems reasonably clear to me that this is a simple tongue in cheek action, that, despite his assertion to the contrary, isn't a serious initiative.  He doesn't honestly believe that Vancouver should be renamed Mancouver.

My issue with this whole endeavour, though, serious or satirical, is that it will likely jeopardise any credibility the MRM has.  The first petition to government from this group (to which I am privy) and it focuses on the arguably irrelevant detail of the city's name?  It makes us all look like fools.

I draw the analogy with the people who wanted french fries to be renamed "Freedom Fries" when France refused to support the US in war.  They were never taken seriously again, and I fear that this will be the future for MRAs if this plan goes on.

Even as a publicity stunt, this carries with it danger, I think.  If this draws people's attention to the MRM, even peripherally, do we really want this petition to be the first thing people learn about us?  It seems like all it will succeed in doing is making people think that if the name of the city is the biggest issue we care about, then we're not worth listening to anyway.

The issue doesn't stop there, either.  An MRA from Edmonton recently exclaimed excitement and glee to me about a news story on the CBC talking about how the Fringe Festival posters were 'vandalised' and 'defaced' with advertisements for the Edmonton MRA group.  While it means that the MRM is being talked about on the CBC, it also means that it's being associated with vandalism, no matter how benign.

Now, while the recent campaign of postering in Vancouver that resulted in a feminist assaulting a construction site safety officer didn't even make the back page of the community newsletter, the simple stickers used by the Edmonton group made it to the CBC.  Not to mention that the posters put up by both the Vancouver and Edmonton groups are regularly vandalised and defaced.  This goes to show that bad behaviour by feminists is ignored, but bad behaviour by anti-feminists is Front Page News™.  We're already fighting an uphill battle, in my view, after fifty years of feminist doctrine influencing public zeitgeist, and we need all the public goodwill we can get.  It seems to me that these initiatives, the petition to rename Vancouver, and the vandalism of unrelated advertisements in Edmonton, do nothing to further the goals of the MRM beyond garnering publicity, and that publicity is gained at what cost?

After all, how can we expect to be taken seriously or respected if we do not behave in a serious or respectable manner?  For us at this time, bad behaviour, even relatively harmless bad behaviour, has a disproportionately harmful effect that, in my opinion, far outweighs any benefit such behaviour may generate.

CC05 - The Sanctity of Marriage?

Who Has the Ultimate Authority to Sanction Marriage, the Church or the State?

I recently had a conversation with a woman on YouTube, who was asserting the position that the State cannot be trusted with maintaining the binding nature of marriage, and that the power to adjudicate marital matters needed to be returned to the Church.  The idea was that many of the issues that men face today in our gynocentric society when it comes to the forced breakup of their families was due to the fact that a secular system heavily influenced by feminsim was in control of marriage and its participants.

The idea that the marriage is a bad thing for men is a fairly new one.  The prevailing belief seems to be that men use marriage to take their women 'off the market', to reserve a uterus for the gestation of their future children.  Feminists would argue that marriage has long been a tool used by the "Patriarchy" to enslave women in a domestic setting.  Many second wave feminists openly declared that in order to truly liberate women, the idea of marriage had to be destroyed.

"The nuclear family must be destroyed... Whatever its ultimate meaning, the break-up of families now is an objectively revolutionary process." -- Linda Gordon

"We can't destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage." -- Robin Morgan

Feminist theory and how it's been put into practice has basically removed any benefit from marriage that men ever had, and the tool through which this destruction of the family has been wrought is the State and the Judiciary.  For men, becoming married is now essentially a "full risk, no reward" event.  It is no wonder that many men these days aren't interested in getting married these days.

In all secular countries, there are entire sections of legal code dedicated to adjudicating marriage.  Many of these laws have been designed specifically to remove any power men have in a marriage, the idea being that if the man has any power, then the woman must be oppressed.  While rational people understand that men and women compliment each other in a relationship, feminists in particular, and adjudicators in general, see the relationship as adversarial, in which one party is the submissive victim, and the other a domineering abuser.  And, let's be honest, men are usually painted as the domineering abuser.

Which brings us to the question, should the State remain the adjudicator of marital matters?  I would say...no.

This woman's suggestion was that if we returned the power to adjudicate marriages back to the theocrats, then women wouldn't be able to use the law to coerce money from their husband, and then toss them to the wind and deny them access to their children.  They wouldn't be allowed to seek a divorce simply because they were bored, as many women do these days.  There is very little risk for a woman seeking divorce, and many benefits, so when they tire of the man to whom they're wedded, they can simply say "I'm out", claim 'irrecocilable differences', and then take half his stuff, and half his paycheque and wander off to find a new, better man.  Having the Church in charge would 'fix' a lot of the issues that men are facing due to our legal system and family courts.

So then, should the Churches be back in charge?  To this, I also say no.  I mean, why swap one authoritarian overlord for another?

It seems obvious to me that the nature of a relationship is based on the people who participate in it.  Submitting to an outside authority for the validation of that relationship seems...superfluous to me.  All it can accomplish is detract from an already existing relationship.  Unless one's relationship conforms to the ideals of the authority to which one supplicates, one will invariably find denial and reproach regarding the nature of one's relationship from that authority.  Banning same sex marriages is a perfect example.  ANY authority beyond the people in the relationship has the potential to place limits on what can or cannot be a valid marriage.

When a marriage breaks down, it is then that authority to whom the ex-couple once again supplicates themselves in order for a 'final ruling' on the division of assets, etc., a situation that usually ends in the destruction of one of the parties.

The 'sanctity' of marriage is a fallacy, in my opinion.  Sanctity is subjective, and the only people who can declare the nature of their relationship as 'sacred' are the people involved in that relationship.  I think the only way we can honestly be fair about marriage is to remove ALL external authorities from the definition of marriage.

This is what I would propose:

We treat marriage like a business contract.  Each party involved agrees to a list of stipulations and obligations requested by the other(s), and offers a list of his/her own requests from them.  A clause is drawn up that outlines the penalties for failing to adhere to the agreement.  Hell, one could even put a time limit on the partnership.  The point is, that the people getting married are the ones who define the boundaries of their relationship, and they define the penalties for violating that contract.  That way we don't have to worry about the government dealing social issues like 'gay marriage' or 'polyamoury', or whatever the case may be.  And, to quote a YouTube comment: "As for Churches, Mosques, and Pirate Ships, their marriages should be ceremonial only."

In the end, I wouldn't want a government bureaucrat defining my relationship with my spouse(s) anymore than I would want a religious theocrat doing it.  The only people who should have the right to define my relationship should be me and my partner(s).

That being said, there are only two requirements that I would hold as essential prerequisites for these relationships.  All parties involved should be adults capable of giving informed consent, and they should be able to demonstrate said consent.  Other than that, leave the law out of it and let the people decide for themselves.

CC04 - Chivalry is Dead, and Feminism Killed it.

The Intellectual Fallacy of Chivalry in the Modern Age

　

Chivalry can be defined as "favourable or courteous treatment or behaviour towards women, especially by men" and I'm concerned with this notion that a man is OBLIGATED to behave in a chivalrous manner towards women, and that the failure to do so is indicative of misogyny.  The belief that I often see women in today's modern age expressing is that if they're not being treated favourably, then they're being discriminated against, or that the person who's not favouring them is doing it because (s)he hates women.

The very notion of chivalry is predicated on the idea that women are poor, weak, and incapable of self-actualisation, and thus, must be treated deferentially in order to protect them from all the nastiness in the world.  This is because, it can be argued, that in the days before modern science and medicine made living a productive life relatively easy to the way it was even two hundred years ago, a woman's life was worth far more to the survival of the species than that of a man.  The prolonged protection of a man's life made little sense, particularly after he'd sired children, but protecting the lives of the tribe's women, usually through the sacrifice of the lives of the men, was paramount to survival.  Women carried, birthed, cared for, and taught the children in the tribe, and losing a woman often meant losing a whole family.  Losing a man simply meant that man's woman found a new man.  A woman's role was far more important than that of a man's, and thus women were held in higher esteem and more resources devoted to their protection.

This sense of "protect the women at all costs" evolved into the chivalric code that permeated the middle ages, and with which we readily identify, even today.  However, in today's age, when technology has advanced to the point now that women can take care of themselves with relative ease, the need to protect them from the burdens of life is no longer needed.  After all, in an age when women are demanding fair and equal treatment, then they deserve fair and equal treatment. Treating people differently based solely on their sex is the very definition of sexism.

The concept of chivalry itself is misogynistic, in the idea that a woman must be protected from all the nastiness in the world because she, as a woman, cannot handle it. So, while women will often bristle at the idea that they are incapable of holding open their own door, or paying for their own meal, or fighting their own battles, they still expect that men behave in a manner that prevents them from HAVING to do these things. They want the favourable treatment without understanding the unfavourable discrimination that inspires it.

An argument can also be made that chivalry is misandrist, in the sense that men are obligated to carry the burdens of women in addition to their own, that the needs of men are secondary to the needs of women. When women were believed to be (or in actuality were) unable to meet their own needs, chivalry was needed to ensure women's safety and wellbeing. But in an age when women have the opportunity to, and are quite capable of, meeting their own needs, then the obligation of shifting the burden of meeting those needs to a man simply because he's a man is misandrist.

If you're a female, worthy of dignity and respect, and deserving of fair and equal treatment, then you had better not expect a man to treat you favourably because of your gender. Whomever gets to the door first opens it, walks through, and then the polite thing to do is hold the door open for whomever may be following. Whomever asks the other out on the date pays for the date. And if you pick a fight or get attacked, it's not the duty of a man to come to your aid.

The societal pressure on men to behave in a chivalrous manner (pay for dates, hold open doors, act as unpaid bodyguards for random women, etc.) is an obligation that no longer carries advantage.  We have a word for obligation without advantage.  It's called "slavery".  Thus, obligating a man to behave chivalrous towards a woman is akin to enslaving that man to the woman, that he is responsible for her welfare and wellbeing, merely by virtue of her sex, often at the expense of his own.

Now, please understand, that it's not to chivalry itself that I'm opposed. What I'm opposed to is the expectation of women that all men behave chivalrous, or that women are entitled to favourable treatment by men simply due to their gender. Let me say that again. It's not the ACT of chivalry that's wrong. It's the EXPECTATION of chivalry that's wrong. A man can still choose to behave chivalrously towards a woman, but it is not his DUTY to do so, and women have no reason to feel entitled to it.  In fact, chivalrous behaviour doesn't even have to be sex specific.  Women can hold open doors for men, etc.  So the idea that only men can be chivalrous and only women can be the subjects of that chivalry is flawed.

Examples of chivalrous behaviour that some women tend to expect from men:

1) Holding open the door. Chivalrous etiquette often dictates that if a man and a woman approach a door together, that it's the responsibility of the man to open the door, wait for the woman to enter, and then follow behind her. Whomever gets to the door first is deemed irrelevant. This is what's called the "Ladies First" rule. Preferential treatment based on gender is sexism, plain and simple, and no one should expect it. If the genders are treated fair and equal, then it shouldn't matter who opens the door for whom.

2) Giving up a seat. If there are ten seats available and twelve people show up, then chivalry demands that a man who has a seat must give up his chair to a woman who is standing. Irrelevant, it seems, is the consideration of who was on time and who was late. "First come, first served" apparently only applies between men. If a man arrived at the function on time, then why should he be expected to stand so that a woman who was late and couldn't get a seat can sit? If she wants fair and equal treatment, then she can stand. Maybe next time, she'll be on time. This also goes for buses and trains. A man is not obligated to give up his seat to a woman any more than he is to do so for another man.

3) Carrying luggage/parcels/groceries/etc. The expectation that a woman who is carrying something heavy must be relieved of her burden by a man is another example of sexism. If a woman has a heavy bag, then she is responsible for carrying it. Again, I want to point out that if any person sees any other person struggling with a heavy load, then the polite thing to do is offer assistance, regardless of gender. But the expectation that a woman, merely by virtue of being a female, is either too good or too weak to carry her own bags and thus must be rescued by a man is sexism. A man is not obligated to carry a woman's bags any more than he's obligated to carry another man's.

4) "Women and children first." The idea that a man must face danger or sacrifice himself to ensure the safety or wellbeing of a woman is another one of the chivalrous obligations that is unjust in a society where women deserve fair and equal treatment. A woman's life is worth no more and no less than a man's, and yet, men are easily obligated or expected to sacrifice themselves to ensure a woman's survival, and a man is deemed a 'coward' if he allows a woman to suffer harm in his place. "Ladies first" only seems to apply when it comes to walking through doors or deciding who gets the first turn in a game. "Ladies first" is conspicuously absent when it comes to facing danger.

So, ladies, if any of you are ever annoyed, irritated, or upset at a man for not holding a door open for you, consider whether you're entitled to that treatment because you're incapable of fending for yourself. If you can open the door yourself, then you shouldn't be expecting a man to do it for you, because when he doesn't, it's because he's offering you fair and equal treatment, something that everyone deserves, men or women.

Basically it comes down to one thing.  If a woman believes that she is entitled to a form of treatment or allowed a certain behaviour and the only justification she can call upon is "because I'm the girl", then that's an aspect of this chivalrous entitlement to which I refer.  In my personal life, I've known quite a few women who honestly believed that they didn't have to carry boxes, or shovel snow, or pay for drinks, or whatever, because "they were girls".  The only reason you shouldn't carry a box is because you're weak.  The only reason you shouldn't shovel snow is because you're weak.  The only reason you shouldn't pay for your own drinks is because you're cheap.  Being a girl has nothing to do with it, unless you want to equate being weak and poor with being female, and that's an assertion I do not accept.

Chivalry and Sexism are two aspects of the same issue: gender discrimination. Fair and equal treatment means that favourable treatment based solely on gender is just as wrong as the unfavourable treatment.

CC02 - Legalised Prostitution

Why Hookers Shouldn't be Criminalised

In March, the Ontario Court of Appeal decided to legalise brothels and heavily modify many laws regarding prostitution in Canada.  Many people opposed this decision, declaring that prostitution is evil, immoral, or dangerous, and thus, should remain outlawed.  Personally, I've never seen the logic of those arguments, particularly ones based solely in ideology, the "I don't like prostitution, so it should be outlawed" arguments.  Oddly enough, not only are religious groups opposed to the legalisation, but feminist groups are as well, openly declaring that it's now easier than ever for "perverted men to prey on vulnerable women," once again showcasing the misanthropic feminist narrative that men are pure evil and women simply objects to which things occur, which is, of course, nonsense.

The whole debate around prostitution shouldn't be seen as an ideological one.  It should be treated as a pragmatic one, because the simple fact is that prostitution exists, it has always existed, and so long as humanity reproduces sexually, it will most likely continue to exist.  Disliking it or believing it immoral is just as irrelevant to the issue as open, wholehearted support.  Instead, the issue needs to be addressed from a practical standpoint, to ensure the rights, safety, and autonomy of sex workers and their clients are protected.

The big problem with the prohibition on prostitution is that, by making it illegal, we encourage human trafficking, pimping, and drug abuse within the criminal system.  People who work in legal brothels, that are sanctioned and regulated by the government, are there of their own free will, are treated with respect and dignity by the establishment, the law, and the users (and if they're not, the brothel has security), are clean and drug free, and can negotiate their own price. It's the illegality of prostitution that makes it so dangerous for its workers.  This is why the argument that banning prostitution is the only way to protect sex workers doesn't make any sense.

There are three big problems with the concept of prostitution being illegal.

The first is morality. Some people believe it's wrong to buy and sell sexual favours. Some people believe it's perfectly fine, and others, quite frankly, don't care. The great thing about morality is that it's personal. If you believe that prostitution is wrong, then don't be a prostitute or hire a prostitute. Morality cannot be legislated, and doing so should never be attempted.

The second is that by making prostitution illegal, you take the power away from the workers and give it to the people who control them. When the demand for a service doesn't go away as its supply diminishes, the price for that service goes up, and it changes prostitutes from the they who render service to commodities to be bought and traded. Human trafficking, drug addiction, and abuse are all systematic tools used to control the flow of that commodity. It's by forcing prostitution underground and into the black market that dehumanises the prostitute, not the act of prostitution itself.

The third problem is less about the prostitutes themselves, and more about society as a whole. When the government decides that we, as a society, are not allowed to do something, then they have to spend money enforcing that. Beyond the obvious human cost of illegal prostitution, the policing and prosecution of prostitutes and the health care for their continued drug addictions and/or injuries are all drains on the economy, and any money that is made flows into the criminal network instead. Legal prostitution could be regulated and taxed just like any other business, and would be a net financial benefit to the public purse.

Let's use the analogy of cigarettes vs crystal meth. They're both drugs, they're both addictive, and they're both highly detrimental to a person's health. But the only difference is that cigarettes are legal and meth is not. Every major problem with crystal meth (that differs than those of cigarettes) stems from the fact that meth is illegal. You don't see stockpiles of paper being stolen to make into tubes, or some person's basement exploding because (s)he was sloppy drying his/her tobacco plants. There's a whole industry built up around producing cigarettes safely, cheaply, and up to standards set by the government.  The only real legal issue regarding cigarettes is smuggling, and that's more a result of excessive taxation than illegality.

The same should be done with prostitution. Take the power away from the criminal syndicates who prey on people in bad situations or kidnap them from all over the world to be trafficked into sexual slavery, and give it to the person actually doing the work: the prostitute.

By allowing a legal venue for prostitutes to organise and support themselves (usually in a regulated brothel), perhaps even unionised (I've seen stories about the prostitutes unionising in brothels, but I cannot remember from where), we open a legal channel through which those services can be accessed. If it was suddenly cheap, easy, and safe to hire a healthy friendly prostitute in a brothel instead of the dangerous, expensive and risky process of hiring some gang member to lend you a person to rape while (s)he is high on meth or chained to a pipe, then don't you think that demand would shift away from the illegal prostitutes and into the brothels? When demand goes down, there's no money in running prostitution rings, and prostitutes stop being commodities and return to being service providers.

By allowing brothels to be sanctioned by law, we take one huge step towards protecting all prostitutes (and their families) by providing a setting in which willing and capable workers can choose to work safely, and take the demand away from criminals who see prostitutes as nothing more than livestock.  And, if the prostitute decides (s)he isn't interested in being a prostitute anymore, quitting is no different than any other job.  There's no gang or drug addiction to keep the prostitute trapped in a situation (s)he isn't interested in continuing.