Why is Prostitution still legal in Poland?

According to wikipedia entry for: Prostitution in the United Kingdom

only if a prostitute has been “subjected to force”

Read it more carefully:


Particularly section (a).

I'm sorry, but I think it's you who should read it more carefully :)


from wikipedia.

No. check out the concept of strict liability in English law - especially the burden of proof surrounding voluntary action.

Link to a interesting blog I read recently:

The Prostitution of Poland

From Eastern Europe Watch:

One of the most depressing features of contemporary life is how money power and consumer values dominate most aspects of human existence. And in the process has reduced life to a constant form of prostitution or, in the neoliberal buzzword term, "selling yourself". The disintegration of Polish culture under the neoliberal experiment unleashed by the doctrinaire Balcerowicz back in 1990 and reinforced since has made a mockery of the notion of a Catholic Nation. Only money and a crude materialism now prevail. That is shown in the way Polish women are now regarded as commodities in the brave new world of an unfettered free market. When I first went to Poland in 1999, the three questions one was asked on a persistent basis were,

1) Why are you in the Poland?

2) How long are you in the Poland for?

3) What do you think of Polish women?

davidaslindsay.blogspot.com/2010/12/prostitution-of-poland.html

I don't know what strict liability means (however I guess that the sentence in brackets is an explanaition) but is it really crucial here?

The point is that the points you quoted above refer to the case when a woman is forced to prostitution. I understand that it puts a fear on potential "clients" because they can not be sure if a woman is not forced to do it. None the less it doesn't prove your point about prostitution not being legal in Great Britain (now and before).

Actually it does - due to the strict liability rule and the broadness of the definition of 'control'.


Leszek Balcerowicz didn't invent it - the brothels in pre-war Poland were famous, and there was certainly plenty of prostitution in the 70's and 80's. That article reflects the writers petty political prejudices more than an objective appraisal of the situation. The language he used in the excerpt gives a pretty big clue.

80's I have been told many a story of Polish women entertaining Arabs in Warsaw in the aforementioned period, many of them married as well, the husband would turn a blind eye, for a few green backs. Good to see things have moved on, or have they.

Really? Who is that?


Do the prostitutes who work in Mecca wear hijabs?


Why would you approve of a law that discriminates based on sex? How can a person who receives money for an illegal purpose escape punishment while the one who pays the money is prosecuted? Very illogical but it shows you the power of our feminized culture.

I wonder if you know that the word 'hijab' just means 'ppropriate clothing'.


It doesn't. The law is the same regardless of the gender of those involved - ad in case you hadn't noticed, it isn't 'an illegal purpose' either.

I agree that prostitutes in Mecca should wear appropriate clothing. Of course we know what strict Muslims consider appropriate, don't we?


You seem to ignore the point that both parties to an illegal activity should be held equally liable for that activity. As to you suggesting that prostitution is not illegal then why should anyone be held legally liable?

I do, though I doubt you do.


Once again, you've missed the point. It is illegal to pay for sex - therefore anyone paying is legally accountable.

You doubt needlessly.


You miss the larger logical point. The fact that a certain law exists does not make it a good law.
By your 'logic' why not make only the recipient of an illegal act accountable and not the person who pays? That sort of thinking also misses the bigger picture.

I'll put this simply for you. If prostitution is illegal than both participants in it should be legally liable. How can a participant in an illegal act not be held to the same standard as the other participant (the other half) of that act?

It isn't. Paying for sex is illegal.


The bigger picture is that prostitution is exploitation of the desperate, by the sleazy.

You continue to skirt (pun intended) the issue. If paying for sex is illegal then why isn't receiving money for sex illegal? Since there is an agreement to receive illegally paid money then logically the recipient should also be prosecuted or fined or whatever the penalty is on the other end of the transaction. It takes two to tangle.


In some cases it is but in many other instances it is not. There are women who financially exploit men and love their lifestyle. Some are quite successful at it.

5newsonline.com/news/northwestarkansas/kfsm-ua-study-affluent-educated-women-may-choose-sexual-prostitution-20110512,0,7610638.story

From the link: ""Our model demonstrated that the prostitution market may be pulling educated women - these so-called 'high-opportunity-cost' women - out of the conventional labor market and the marriage market, in many cases," said Jennifer Hafer, a doctoral student in the Graduate School of Business at the University of Arkansas. "The findings suggest that these women are not forced into the prostitution market but rather choose to enter it for many of the same reasons that people enter the conventional job market - money, stability, autonomy and even job satisfaction."[/i]

Why should it be?


Not necessarily.


In almost all cases.


There are also diamond studded iPhones. But not usually.

There aren't many women (or men) who say "hey, I could be a brain surgeon or a stock broker or a lawyer defending the needy, or maybe just live off investments; but no. I'll stand in the street selling my fanny to Beer Belly Bobs and hope I don't get picked up by a serial killer."

In your fantasy world that may happen - but in reality, no.

.....because it's logical, a concept you seem to have difficulty with.
For example, one of many I could give.....If I knowingly accept stolen money and am willing to do something for it, then I should be prosecuted just as the person who stole the money. That is the law for all such transactions. Why should the prostitute be exempt?


You are indeed naive, or you want to believe that almost all prostitutes are enslaved. Most prostitutes do it out of their own free will. In the part of town where I live, the prostitutes live in high rises, eat at the best restaurants and wear clothes from the highest priced stores. They give every indication that they love their lifestyle. The next level of prostitute does it part-time to pay the bills or to take vacations with. Some are even college girls paying off their tuition. I would call these 'middle class' prostitutes. The low end are street walkers who are usually into drink or drugs or have bad gambling habits. Some of these women do have pimps and some are female pimps. The lowest end women who are forced to prostitute are not really prostitutes but slaves. They are the vast minority of such 'workers' although those with certain agendas prefer to believe otherwise.

Simple - it isn't illegal. For centuries it was, and that didn't work, so the law was changed. You seem to confuse a twisted for of logic with common sense.


Most prostitutes around the world do not


Most do it out of sheer desperation. To believe otherwise is disingenuous.

Jon, have you read Freakonomics or SuperFreakonomics? You should.

Here's some stuff from their website: freakonomics.com/tag/prostitution/

And you can read some of SuperFreakonomics here:

harpercollins.com/browseinside/index.aspx?isbn13=9780060889579

And here's a decent article about them:

abcnews.go.com/2020/superfreakonomics-prostitutions-perks/story?id=8844755

I've read the first and it's a great book!

Super is not quite as good but has lots more about prostitution (a high-end call girl who kept lots of records saw the first book and wrote to the authors). She answers some questions from the website's readers here:

freakonomics.com/2010/02/10/superfreakonomics-book-club-allie-the-escort-answers-your-questions/

You got too much time on your hands, writing about prostitution, nobody cares, by the way check out Roksa.pl, even a loser like you could get laid there

This isn't shocking since they can make several hundred or thousand dollars a day, and might even enjoy the sex with some of the men. Beats manual labor, or even office work.

The only legal prostitution is in marriage.

Where you overpay and the man is the kurwa.

That's actually a pretty good topic for a discussion.


Risking a shitstorm over my head I will say that few Poles are religious in a way that makes them actually follow the good book in every day life ( contrast with some Americans, for example ). So many Poles will be token Catholics, whose ties to the Catholic church do not go beyond visiting the church on a Sunday/holiday and paying off the priest for his services ( wedding, etc. ).

So the obvious moral conflict between legal prostitution and Roman Catholicism isn't simply present in the heads of 99% of "Roman Catholic" Poles.

Based on the same "thinking" many Polish Catholic girls don't have the slightest problem with abortion.


It wasn't just the Arabs. In Warsaw in the 1980's "bladzie" ( a word my Polish friend used to describe them back then ) were simply everywhere, every restaurant or club that catered to expats doing business in Warsaw had their own stable of "bladzias" ready to do whatever for a few dollars. Also in every single hotel I visited in Poland at the time there was at least 1 night porter or cleaning lady that suggested, in broken English, that if one wanted fun was just a few dollars away. Of course everyone who was "in" on the thing got a cut from whatever the girl made and still the pro's probably earned more than 1 month of their official Polish salary for 1 night of work, in hard currency too.

Then there were the taxi drivers. Every other time I took a taxi the bloke at the wheel suggested he knows a few girls I'll like and can arrange everything. It got a bit annoying at times.

Regarding the Arabs I heard ( I'm probably not the only one ) the stories about some Libyan or Palestinian students ( there was plenty of them in Poland in the 1980's ) who would offer Polish girls they met at university or in the dorms the magical "one dollar" for a night of ******* and they supposedly found takers.

Prostitution was a HUGE part of the underground Polish economy in the 1980's. A humorous note of warning to anyone who ever used a Polish prostitute in the 1980's - they all had two sets of pimps. One was the gold-chain wearing thug with a knife who made sure no one "bothers" the ladies and the other one had a uniform and worked at the local branch of SB ( Communist political police ). Apart from a free monthly **** the SB guy got all the tidbits about foreigners from the prozzers he had "under" him, so if you used one --> they have it on file somewhere :)

Which leads nicely into it all being proper and legal in Poland up unto this day. Things have supposedly improved in a way that nowadays a woman who owns a mansion, 3 cars and 2 companies in Poland cannot simply claim she got it all from whoring around ( that was supposedly a fire-proof way of avoiding taxation on undisclosed income in Poland in the past ).

But a "kurwa" in Poland is still a holy animal and her trade is steeped in tradition so much it is considered sacred ( bit of sarcasm here ), so I don't see Poland putting any squeeze ( tax or criminal ) on prozzers any time soon.

I can't remember any Palestinian's or Libyan's in Poland in the 80s, my student years,

Maybe you studied at a provincial university.

Warsaw, Cracow, Tri-City and Lodz --> they were always around. Especially visible in Lodz where the University taught Polish for beginners to all foreign students.

We missed glorious times.

I personally found it rather annoying, some of these girls were notoriously hard to shake off if they knew you had cold hard cash. Also, I knew for a fact that 99% of them "cooperated" with the SB ( Political Police ), so everyone that really really just had to "help" a foreigner by providing access to a prostitute naturally came under suspicion. Usually for a good reason.

Other than that it made me a bit sad sometimes, all these women ( quite often - university graduates ) whoring themselves out like that and getting treated like cheap trash by sometimes not-too-bright expats for a few dollars. Some of them, as someone pointed out already, were married, sometimes even with children and still being a "dollar" prostitute on the weekends was their main source of pride ( "I'm so pretty they pay for me IN DOLLARS" ) and a life's accomplishment. A truly sad state of affairs, it wasn't just a "Polish" thing though, it took place in the whole Eastern Bloc.

Now apart from "bladzie" there was also an issue most expats who did business in Poland encountered more than once in the 1980's --> regular ( by that I mean "non-prostitutes" ) Polish women falling head over heels over guys who had:

a) dollars in their pockets,

b) foreign passports and thus an ability to "get them out of this hell-hole".

Every foreigner who came to Poland often enough in the 1980's most likely encountered more than one Polish woman ( some married, some with children, some with "responsible" jobs - doctors, journalists, etc. ) who told him in no uncertain terms that she would completely drop everything they had ( kids included ) in Poland and run off with him if he was only willing, along with the usual bullshit about what a great wife she'd make based on the virtue of being Polish.

Some of these girls, again, had acute problems with taking "no" for an answer even if the object of their "affections" was happily married.

I had that happen to me more than once in the 1980's, I think I described a bit where I dumped one such girl on a friendly Swede somewhere on the forum.

So in my opinion it was actually more sad than glorious, but to each his own, if having women worship you on their knees because you had a few dollars and a foreign passport or being neck-deep in prozzers for 30 dollars worth of money are your definition of glorious, then yes, you missed out on some glory days.