Congratulations… you’ve managed to completely fail to engage with any point I’ve actually made in the piece above! The “oldest profession” wasn’t even an argument; the argument (1) was that prostitution is ‘inevitable’ (of which prostitution being popularly called the ‘oldest profession’ was a mere opener). Your only argument to the contrary is that we haven’t “tried to get rid of prostitution”; I would counter that that is precisely what we’ve tried to do – and failed miserably – for centuries!

Your parting insult is befitting such an ill-considered response. But thanks for reading anyway….

You, Sir, are an idiot.

First, I’m not “sending” “signals” at all; that is a phrase people use when they don’t know how to use the English language to make a logical point.

It isn’t inconsistent to say that a guy is responsible for his actions while there are perfectly valid reasons that he is prone to acting that way. We see this argument most often when discussing these kinds of violent crimes; the fact that certain conditions led to the crimes (and that those conditions may be attributable to any number of other people) does not affect the place of responsibility, on the guy who committed the crimes. The only exceptions to that rule are in cases where children or geniunely mentally disabled people are the perpetrators: in that case a court of law must decide on the merits of the case who is responsible (if anyone) and why. But Steve Wright has no claim to being mentally disabled because he was exposed to violence as a child, even if the repercussion of those experiences was that he felt a desire to be violent himself. If he chose to act upon those impulses, he was responsible.

On the second point you raise, where you interpret me saying “his having to break the law in order to visit a prostitute” as me saying that the laws against prostitution forced him to do so, you’ll note the qualifier in that sentence, “in order to visit a prostitute.” Another way of writing this sentence would be to say that, ‘if he wanted to visit a prostitute, the only way he could do so was illegally.”

I hope this clarifies things a little.

John is more than capable of answering for himself and I’m sure he will, but I don’t think he is saying Steve Wright is not responsible for his actions.

Re-read ths part: “state created the circumstances in which these women were vulnerable to attack, by making their profession illegal in the first place. It’s true that the women decided to do it, regardless of the risks, and Steve Wright is a reprehensible killer who should be locked up for life or sentenced to death for the killings. But it was the law which created the conditions necessary for these attacks to occur as they did, and which gave Steve Wright his opportunities.”

I thought that was quite clear.

S.

In the Supersize Me post, you said that the responsibility for eating sensibly fell on the individual. Here you seem to be saying that the responsibility for the murders falls on the government rather than the individual who did the killing.

Isn’t this a little inconsistent of you?

Fiona