Neurath's Boat

International Day to End Violence against Sex Workers

It is, of course, fairly common to encounter people talking about sex trafficking in various political discussions, or to encounter it as a plot element in entertainment. It seems worth blogging about because it's an area where I have somewhat contrarian opinions, as a result of having looked up some of the academic research on the subject at various times. This has led me to be a follower of various sex worker advocates, whose work I would recommend. The most crucial piece of information for anybody actually interested in the well being of women who have engaged in sex work is that sex workers consistently experience more abuse from police than from clients or employers. This is why pretty much all sex worker advocacy organizations favor decriminalization (repeal of laws against prostitution) as the single policy most likely to benefit sex workers.

The day for this event was chosen to coincide with the sentencing of Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer, who murdered several dozen sex workers over the course of many years; of course another hoped for advantage of decriminalization would be to make it possible for sex workers to get help from the authorities when threatened, instead of facing prosecution themselves. It is also hoped that decriminalization would reduce the stigma, and make it more likely that the authorities will take harm to sex workers more seriously; the indifference of the police certainly contributed to Ridgeway's ability to get away with his crimes for so long before finally being caught.

This issue is also why I am not one of those enthusiastic about Kamala Harris, the senator from California who many are talking about as a possible presidential candidate; I am quite unimpressed myself by her record as a prosecutor, particularly because of her publicity-seeking prosecution of Backpage for carrying advertisements for sex work. Backpage and similar online resources have a long history of cooperating with investigations of underage or coerced prostitution; forcing those who formerly employed such services to advertise in more underground channels actually hinders the effort to deal with those problems.

I personally consider the well-being of sex workers a sufficient reason to advocate for decriminalization, but for those who need added incentive, there is also research linking decriminalization to an overall reduction in sexual violence. In any event, those are some scattered thoughts on a topic I probably don't blog about enough; attempting to make up for that a little today.

Textbooks

I'm going to be teaching "Logic and Probability in Scientific Reasoning" in the spring. My usual practice is to distribute PDFs for any class I teach, but due to a combination of desire for consistency with the way the class is taught by the usual instructor (someone other than me, obviously) as well as my not being aware of comparably good resources anyway, I am likely to use Skyrms' Choice and Chance and Hempel's Philosophy of Natural Science in this case. The latter can be found used on Amazon for around $10 at the moment, but there are only about five copies listed at that price before it gets to much more expensive ones, and new it is $70 (which seems absurd for a tiny book with a dead author). Skyrms' book is over $100 new, and seems to be $40-$50 used. This, and my usual desire to not impose absurd textbook costs on my students, makes me curious about the ethics and legality of mentioning to the students how easily I found PDF copies of both books on the web. I know I couldn't legally just send them the PDFs I found; when I directly distribute PDFs for other classes, they're either public domain or (perhaps borderline) things that are downloadable by anyone with access to that school's library (and so that they'd be able to download legally themselves with a little hassle).