I started thinking about that particular juxtaposition the other day, while mulling over the implications of, as Leg Iron so enchantingly puts it, “free sex for cripples”.
One local authority has agreed a care plan including payment for a 21-year-old with learning disabilities to have sex with a prostitute in Amsterdam next month.
His social worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said social services were there to identify and meet the needs of their clients – which, in the case of an angry and frustrated young man, meant paying for sex.
Another care worker said staff at her council had been told that trips to lap dancing clubs could be funded, if it could be argued that it would help the "mental and physical well being" of their client.
As you’d expect, most of the blogposts I read on the matter were principally concerned not with the morality or otherwise of prostitution, but with the morality of using tax-payers’ money to fund access to prostitutes for a select group.
Hyperbolic remarks about the apparent entitlement of every 30 year old virgin followed, as did queries as to the gender fairness of the situation – again not from a morality of prostitution standpoint, but with regard to disabled females’ entitlement to enlist a gigolo on the public dime.
What really made my head fizz though, was wondering how these local government departments squared the prostitution arrangements with their supposedly suffocating poltical correctness, gender sensitivity and all that other opressive socialist guff.
Also on my mind was the on-going actions of local authorities against their local providers of prostitution.
But the squaring off of the PC principles was the one that really made me think.
I started to research the feminist position on prostitution. I soon found what I should have known all along – there is no settled consensus (on anything) amongst feminists, any more than there is a settled consensus (on anything)amongst libertarians.
I ended up reading through this site. It’s a bit of a mess, but the content is worth reading – you can download it all as a PDF here.
Handiest, though, is the summary chart (PDF) of the positions of various branches of feminism, which helps convey how muddied and fraught with internecine squabbling the situation is. Click the table to enlarge it.
At this point, I was overcome with cognitive dissonance and shelved my thoughts without putting pen to paper on the subject, as I had originally intended.
It was a tweet from @AbsolutLaudanum pointing me to her blog, that presented me with this jolly excellent video on the titular subject. Well worth 10 minutes of your time.
Food for thought.
AJ
Al Jahom's Final Word 
That table….what a hoot!
The hubris of the ‘wimmins’ lefties. They think they can kill the worlds oldest profession? Good luck with that then!
I think on a more specific note that ultimately the consumer is going to be as ever unsatified by the state sponsored shagathon. Just when you want a bit more the ‘cuts may bite’…ouch! Probably best to allow the user to fund his own sex life from his/her own funds…much as the rest of us have to.
As my father in law said on our wedding day. A woman is a debt that you never finish paying for…not counting the debts she runs up too!
I think we’d all (cept for the ‘wimmin’s ishoos feminista’s) be happier is the state legalised it, regulated and taxed it on the Dutch model. Think of the extra tax! Hump your way out of recession. I’m fecking for England! and so forth!
Feminazis think that they have the right to tell both men and women how to behave and what to think. They are the Pretorian Guard of the Righteous. The correct answer to them is ” F*** Off before I make you cry.”
Just a suggestion …. I would not dream of telling anyone how best to deal with Fascist Scum like that.
As for legalisation of Prostitution the sooner the better for everyone. More protection for the “working girls”, men able to get honest commitment free sex , less crime and disorder including fewer sex offenses and tax revenues coming in instead of money being spent on pointless police operations ( see Anna Raccoon’s blog on Operation Pentameter)