It would be impossible to do any meaningful study into the question.

That sounds like an interesting challenge. I’ve certainly seen research in other areas that test more difficult hypotheses. You folks sure love your absolutist language.

No there has been no research at all into whether anorexic teens were influenced by air-brushed photos.

That’s an interesting assertion, as potentially flawed as the argument it is objecting to.

Perhaps when I have a bit more time I will put it to the test.

No there has been no research at all into whether anorexic teens were influenced by air-brushed photos.

Actually, there has been a lot of psychological research into this issue. In short, it’s a classic case of ‘Not everyone who sees the images gets an eating disorder, but people with eating disorders often report that the images contributed to their problems’

Very, very tricky situation.

There’s nothing “mere” about property rights. It presents a firm basis on which to proceed in discussing laws etc.

I hope your alternative “idea[s] of human rights” aren’t just one of those lists of entitlement type rights, like, say the “right” to be forced to go to school, or the “right” to have whatever healthcare a state committee thinks you should have, etc etc.

Quite how your dilution of human rights to mere property rights represents a bulwark against conscription into state run brothels is a complete mystery.

Your conception of self-ownership is not the only idea of human rights around, and to represent its opponents as being against human rights and the rule of law in general is quite profoundly mistaken. And I struggle to see how this is not obvious to you.

Your “liberatarianism” says that we are born into this world with only the right to use our body as we like and as others are willing to trade with us to make use of it. In many parts of the worls this DOES result in pretty girls who own nothing being forced into prostitution as it’s the only thing they can do to keep them and their relatives alive.

Yes, but the difference between allowing something, and the state having the right to require it, is that you can escape from the former but not from the latter.

There is a fundamental difference between making a choice between circumstancially limited alternatives (every human alive, even the wealthiest, suffers limitations by circumstance) and being forced into doing something by state power. Many people do unpleasant jobs purely for economic reasons. I used to work in maintenance, which involves a great deal of sewage. I’ve been splashed with it, sprayed with it, had a face full of ancient piss from a surprise leak. My dear departed mum was horrified that her son was doing such work. Me, I didn’t exactly revel in it, but still preferred my job to those done by the miserable office sweats on the Orwellian open plan floors above. But if the state is going to save one girl from sex work (as you seem to desire), will it save another from sewage work? Who’s going to decide what are acceptable professions and which are beyond the pale? Liberace?

But if the state decides it needs brothels for the good of its troops, and it will conscript girls into working in them, now there is no possibility of them avoiding that work. Rather than being victims of circumstance- which is unfortunate- they are victims of deliberate collective malice. Let’s get away from sex. My uncle was enslaved during the war as a mineworker. He died this year, gasping desperately from emphesema. The state who enslaved him didn’t even say thank you. Conscription- slavery- is what happens when you take the brakes of the state by saying that the mob’s will is more important than the individual’s will. There is really no difference between a Bevin Boy and a girl in Hitler’s Joy Division, except the latter job is cleaner and has fewer health risks.

It’s funny. Us ivory-tinklers are portrayed by collectivists as being extremists. And yet the desire for self-ownership is the most natural thing in the world, an inherent part of the human spirit. Try forcing a girl to have sex with you, and you’ll see her natural instinct for self ownership in all its glory. Respect her instinct, by asking politely, and you’ll see how natural the idea is.

If you start from self ownership as axiomatic, all the laws everyone agrees on on an everyday basis- against murder, assault, rape, theft and fraud naturally follow. Take it away, and all you are left with is the hope that some bastard won’t shove you down a mine or into a brothel some time. You’ve nothing but the hope that the dictatorship will be benign. Liberatarians are after something a bit more solid than that.