Where do the protections of free speech end? For one professor, it ended when he argued that pedophilia is not morally wrong. The university he works for suspended him, and he has now sued. And speaking of pedophilia (which we both think is morally wrong by the way), how might it be looked at differently 100 years from now? Will it be similar to how society views homosexuality now versus how it was viewed 100 years ago? If science were to determine that pedophilia is not a choice, should future societies stop treating it as a psychiatric disorder, as they did with homosexuality in the 1970s? And finally, we talk prostitution and discuss a very scary facial recognition website.
1. Topics
2. Additional Resources
3. Merchandise/Support the Show
4. Contact Us/Follow Us/Rate/Subscribe
New episodes every week!
Listen, rate, follow, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts!
Follow us:
5. Credits
Where do the protections of free speech end? For one professor, it ended when he argued that pedophilia is not morally wrong. The university he works for suspended him, and he has now sued. And speaking of pedophilia (which we both think is morally wrong by the way), how might it be looked at differently 100 years from now? Will it be similar to how society views homosexuality now versus how it was viewed 100 years ago? If science were to determine that pedophilia is not a choice, should future societies stop treating it as a psychiatric disorder, as they did with homosexuality in the 1970s? And finally, we talk prostitution and discuss a very scary facial recognition website.
1. Topics
2. Additional Resources
3. Merchandise/Support the Show
4. Contact Us/Follow Us/Rate/Subscribe
New episodes every week!
Listen, rate, follow, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts!
Follow us:
5. Credits
This week, you might wanna go over that disclaimer a couple of times. Welcome to Subpar Talks. Hey everybody. Welcome to Subpar Talks where we have conversations about everything. I'm Jeff. And I'm Chris. Thank you again for joining us. And of course, before we get going, here is our disclaimer. Listener discretion is advised. We are going to curse from time to time. And depending on the episode, we are going to touch on some mature subject matter and we inject our humor into a lot of this stuff. So if that is not your cup of tea, then perhaps this podcast is not for you, but for everybody else, get ready and settle in because here we go with this week's topics. I just gave the disclaimer, and uh, if you're unsure of exactly what that disclaimer was, then you might want to go back, just rewind, uh, a little bit, and listen to it again, because we're starting off with a bang here. Take it seriously. Yeah. So the initial, uh... Well, there's actually a few topics here, I think, and we'll just see where this goes. It's actually kind of a free speech thing first, but I have a feeling this might take a left turn in a second. But, I came across this, uh, I don't know, a couple of weeks ago, maybe. There's a professor at State University of New York at Fredonia, so... S U N Y, I think they say SUNY, it's a state college system and they have different locations around the state. Anyway, Steven Kirshner is his name, and he has not even been allowed on campus for more than a year because of remarks he made on a podcast in 2022 when he questioned whether it is even moral for an adult male to have sex with a willing 12 year old girl. Alright. Yeah, alright. So yeah, that's, and I got this from the New York Times, by the way, so that's where a lot of my information, at least initially here, comes from. Um, he said, I think I've got his full quote here in a second, but he said, it's not obvious to me that this is in fact wrong, but he said, as a matter of law, it should be criminalized. After he made that statement, some conservative group... Like, published it on Twitter, uh, I think it was Twitter, it was some social media, and the whole thing just blew up after that. And so the president of the university called his comments, quote, absolutely abhorrent, and he said that the professor was being reassigned to duties that did not require contact with students. And get this, he announced an investigation into the professor and he directed police to search his office and seize his computer. Whoa. Yeah. Like, that's serious shit. Excessive. Yeah. It sounds like it. Just initially sounds like what the hell. Can they do that? I don't think so. I mean, he, he says that's what the professor ordered them to do, but the police aren't going to go see somebody's stuff. Just... Well, and
Chris:is that like university police? And when I say, can they do that? That's what I'm thinking. Like, what can, uh, what do you call that? A private police force? What can they do that's different than, you know, looking for probable cause, for example, or needing probable
Jeff:cause. That's what I was gonna say, it's gotta be probable cause, uh, it's a public university, so it is gonna be public law enforcement entity, and I was gonna say, they can't just go in and seize the stuff at the direction of the president, but if it's university property, like if they're talking about the, the computer belongs to the university, then yeah, absolutely, they could do that. Yeah, but launching an investigation into the guy, what the hell? So anyway, the professor has now sued the university, as I think he should. The school, the university, is of course defending its actions. Saying that suspending the guy was necessary because of, of threats. There were a bunch of threats against him once his statements came out. And alumni has freaked out over this and the school said they're losing money. They're not getting donations. Yeah, exactly. Follow the money. Yep. Comes back to money always. I liked the way the, uh, whoever wrote this article, and I'll post this in the episode notes, of course. I like the way they put this, because this is a big time question. Can public universities, which are bound by the first amendment, restrict professors from campus because of comments they made on a podcast? Should they do so when threats are involved? And what is the marker of an actual threat anyway? So what happens if somebody says something on a podcast, or a radio show, or whatever, and then there's a threat against the university? Does that give a university just A license then to suspend the professor. Like, I don't know what the line is here, but I got a whole problem with them suspending him in the first place.
Chris:Yeah, I've thought about that just more generally about what people do outside of work in, in any respect, really. I mean, as long as I'm not talking about breaking the law, I'm talking about anything that they do that might be deemed inappropriate, whatever is like, yeah, but you're not on the job. So, at what point can you do or say something without it affecting your job versus, OK, now you've gone so far that, well, we can't have you working here because of what you did or said. Right? And it's, it's confusing to me as to exactly when you get in that situation. And see here again. What if, alright, so that's a, a state college, but what if he were a middle school teacher? You know, it's that, it's not like he's teaching the age kids that he's even talking about. Yeah. He teaches
Jeff:adults. It said one of the students, uh, like she spearheaded this whole thing. She started a petition among students on campus. to get him suspended because she feared for her safety. I don't know if she feared for her safety because of the threats against him, like somebody's going to bomb the campus or something, or was she freaked out at what he said and so now she's scared of him? If that's the case, that's a bit of a stretch. She didn't, like, she's an adult, as you said, like, what is the, what is the fear there? That doesn't make any sense. And, and that question I just asked, like, I could totally see that coming up in the U. S. Supreme Court. Like, I think that's a question they probably need to settle. And as far as I know, they've never settled it. What right do professors have to make statements outside of their work environment and have that affect their career? I don't know. There was a case a couple of years ago in the Supreme Court where a girl had, uh, she was in high school, uh, or she might have been like, like middle school, like eighth grade, but whatever. She, uh, had tried out for the cheerleading squad and didn't make it. And she went on Snapchat and talked about how this fucking school, they don't know what they're doing, just, just... Subpar Talks, LGBT, subpartalks. com, www. independentjeff. com, www. independentjeff. com, www. independentjeff. com There might be some comparisons here, but I don't know. The podcast, by the way, I don't know anything about it, but it is, that he was on, is called Brain in a Vat. I like the title. Brain in a Vat. But here's the, the format for each episode. They'll have a guest on who will present a thought experiment. And then the hosts spend the rest of the episode questioning. Uh, the guest about it, whatever they brought up, OK? So, here's his full quote. Imagine that an adult male wants to have sex with a 12 year old girl. Imagine that she's a willing participant. A very standard, a very widely held view is that there's something deeply wrong about this. And it's wrong independent of it being criminalized. It's not obvious to me that this is, in fact, wrong. I think this is a mistake, and I think that exploring why it's a mistake will tell us not only things about adult child sex and statutory rape, but also about fundamental principles of morality. So
Chris:I feel like I have a million things running through my mind and I'm trying to get it all going in
Jeff:one direction. Got to get your thoughts together. Yes.
Chris:So first of all, back to the whole free speech thing, this was not, I just. I don't see this as, and like I said, maybe it would be different if he were like a middle school teacher. I don't know. But in the situation of him being a college professor, so we're talking about that age, students, and so on. First of all, he's not saying he would do it. That's kind of important right here that he's, he's not saying he would do it. He's not even advocating for it. So I think that's a huge thing. I'm more so just think it's a big deal that people ought to be able to do and say certain things outside of their job without threat of retaliation of getting fired for whatever
Jeff:that was. It's And he's a philosophy professor. Holy shit. They'll say all kinds of shit in the classroom just to get exactly stimulate people's minds and get them talking and thinking about stuff. And he did say it should be criminalized. Okay.
Chris:So that's, so let's go down that road for a second because I have a point of confusion here. He thinks it should be criminalized, but he's not sure that there's a moral issue. Why would we criminalize something that we don't feel like is an issue?
Jeff:Well, I, it kind of makes me want to go to that episode and listen to it, to listen to his reasoning. And I don't know what his rationale is for criminalizing something in that context that he doesn't see as immoral. Although we have many laws. in our society that prohibits certain behaviors even though those behaviors are not immoral in and of themselves like jaywalking like that's not nobody's going to argue that that's immoral we still make it illegal though so i don't know what his justification is because obviously this is quite a bit different than jaywalking yeah uh i don't know it it makes me want to listen to his reasoning You know,
Chris:on the one hand, I think it's inter I find all of this so interesting, is the way our, uh, our viewpoints change about age is, and it's all relative. That's the thing. It is all relative. A 12 or 13 year old used to be middle aged. I mean, think about that. You know,
Jeff:that's Girls used to get married at 13. Yes. If you weren't married at 14, back a long time ago, like, what's wrong with you? You're an old maid at 14. Better hurry up.
Chris:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so I think about things like that and go, yeah, they're getting ma married at 12 and 13 and obviously hurry up and have kids because that was probably the whole point anyway. Yeah. And, and so these things used to happen. Now we want to think that we've evolved from that somehow and. Number one, we can and do live longer, therefore 12 and 13 seems like such a young age, again, relatively speaking, it wasn't so young in those relative terms, if you're only going to live to twice that age. But, You know, our, our ideas and thoughts around all of that have changed so much. And it, that's, what's making me go back to think about that is that, Hey, everything that we're talking about and saying, Oh, is it a moral issue or not used to be completely acceptable and
Jeff:completely the norm, which makes me think his whole line of questioning is relevant because people's standards change. What's normal now, or what was accepted 200 years ago might not be accepted now, or what's accepted now might not have been accepted 200 years ago. They used to kill gay people like a long time ago, like if you were caught having sex with somebody of the same sex, they'd just kill you. Like that was a Sometimes they still do. Yeah. That was a capital offense. And then at some point they figured out, well, maybe we shouldn't kill people for various reasons. Uh, we shouldn't kill people just for doing that. We're still going to criminalize it though. Hell, up until 2003, there were a bunch of states, mostly in the South, that still made that a criminal offense. And that's no longer the case now. Because we've learned so much more, we're more enlightened, as you said, we have evolved, or at least we like to think that we have, where we don't criminalize homosexual conduct anymore, it kind of makes me wonder, they used to treat homosexuality as a disorder, right? Right. Like they, it used to be classified as a disorder, and I think it wasn't until the 1970s that they stopped referring to it. And
Chris:isn't that the way we think of pedophilia?
Jeff:Yeah, pedophilia now is considered a psychiatric disorder, and it's treated as such. In 100 or 200 years, are people going to look at it differently, and no, fuck off everybody, I'm not advocating that it should be acceptable in society, I'm just saying, will we be looking at it differently, just like people look at homosexuality now? Subpar
Chris:Talks, LGBT, subpartalks. com, www. independentjeff. com, www. independentjeff. com, www. independentjeff. com, or lack thereof. becomes completely different. And yeah, I think talking about homosexuals is a perfect example. You know, yeah, you're, you're killing them. You're you're casting the, you know, their outcasts. It's a mental disorder. It's a choice. I mean, how about that? Right. Just talking about. Like, hey, you can just stop it. You, you can stop it. It's a choice. Isn't that the way we look at pedophilia is, hey, you're messed up. Just
Jeff:don't do it. Don't do it. Now here's the major difference between the two. You're talking about, in the instance of gay sex, you're talking about two people who are willing participants who, under the law, are able to consent, whereas when you're talking about somebody who's a minor is not able, I mean, that's statutory rape, they're not able to consent. So I think in that sense, there's a massive difference between what is morally wrong and not. But,
Chris:there's, sure. Well, and then, let's go down that road. Where does the age, first of all, the age of consent in different states is different. But, my general question is, where does that age come from? You know, whether it's 18 16 or whatever it happens to be, there's some arbitrary aspect to it. There is. And, so, why isn't it 12? You know, it seems like most people would think that sounds ridiculous and, and I would agree that does sound ridiculous, but that's now because of the way we look at age in general, if that 12 year old were half to two thirds of their dying age, then we'd go, Oh, well, of course they can make their own
Jeff:decisions. Right. Yeah. I don't know. And it does seem arbitrary. And I think in the past. Oh, I don't know, 30 years or so, I think states, quite a few have revised their ages of consent because I know some states used to be like 14 and again, just saying that it seems really, really young, but yeah, what is the line, like who decides what that is? No, in the Texas legislature, and I'm sure a bunch of other states. They didn't consult with actual medical experts on this at all. They just picked some random number. Yes, that would be, yeah, just, uh, too much for them. So they just drew a line in the sand and pick some random age, but I don't know. And I mean, if, if you're going to make that kind of decision, I would want people who are experts, like they know this stuff, so let's get some, you know, actual medical guidance on it. Alright, so I'm looking at, um, Wikipedia. Pedophilia is listed as a psychiatric disorder in which an adult or older adolescent experiences a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children. Although girls typically begin the process of puberty at age 10 or 11 and boys at age 11 or 12, psychiatric diagnostic criteria for pedophilia Extend the cutoff point for prepubescent to age 13. So there's some actual science. So what do we call it
Chris:if they're between 13 and 18?
Jeff:Oh, okay. I'm really glad you asked that. You haven't watched the series. You need to, and I think it's still on Netflix. It's only two seasons. It's called Mindhunter, and it's about, I've brought this up before, but it's about the FBI's Behavioral Crime Unit, and how that whole thing got started in the 1970s, and they're the ones who started profiling serial killers, and really learning about them and all that, and so in Season 2, They're having all these, uh, and this actually did happen. They were having all these kids murdered in Atlanta and there's, it's just generally called the Atlanta child murders. And this was like 1979, 80, somewhere around there. And they're trying to profile this guy. And they're looking at who his victims are, and his victims are like, 14, 15, 16 years old, and one of the guys in the behavioral crime unit says, Oh, he's not a pedophile, he's a hebophile. I'm like, what the hell is that? What is that? Well, that answers your question. Like, that's somebody whose primary or exclusive attraction is to somebody who's already reached the age of puberty, but they're not an adult yet. So it's like... Whatever those ages, I guess, 14, 15, 16, whatever. Yeah.
Chris:I never really thought about that, that there was any distinction. I guess I just thought age of consent or not.
Jeff:Yeah. Oh, here, OK, here it is. OK. In popular usage, the word pedophilia is often applied to any sexual interest in children or the act of child sexual abuse, including any sexual interest in minors below the local age of consent. Regardless of their level of physical or mental development. This use conflates the sexual attraction to prepubescent children with the act of child sexual abuse and fails to distinguish between attraction and prepubescent and pubescent or postpubescent, Jesus Christ, minors. Researchers imprecise uses be avoided because although some people who commit child sexual abuse are pedophiles, Child sexual abuse offenders are not pedophiles unless they have a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children, and many pedophiles do not molest children. So, evidently, people tend to use the term wrong. And I've heard that. I've, like, You know, somebody who has sex with a 16 year old, they call him a pedophile. So that's technically incorrect. Yeah,
Chris:well, that's, that, that's very interesting to me, that clarification, because obviously there is a big difference between a 16 year old and an eight year old and looking at that person and going, Oh yeah, I'm attracted to whichever age that is. That's crazy. Well, I say that. That's the whole topic here. Right. It's crazy. Is it not crazy? How are we
Jeff:defining it? Yeah. Uh, it's one of these, uh, and there are many areas like this, but where science and law converge. And, uh, I would hope always that the law follows the science, uh, in whatever we're talking about, but a lot of times it doesn't. This whole thing with the professor, it reminds me, it's one of my favorite quotes. And, uh, I put this in every syllabus that I create for my courses. It's from Aristotle, and he's, he wrote, The mark of an educated mind is to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. I love that. I do too. And so what does that say about all the people who have freaked the fuck out over what this professor says? Or said? Exactly. They're uneducated. Yeah. They don't have an educated mind.
Chris:Well, that's what, that's what I enjoy about this conversation right here, is to be able to, to question, hey, what, what might it be like in a hundred years? You know, uh, look back a hundred years and the attitudes toward, toward gays, homosexuals, and where we are now with that, yeah, look forward a hundred years, is it going to be different toward pedophiles? Should it be different? I mean, in my thinking, my, my mind, the, the environment I've grown up in, et cetera, everything put together, no, I can't imagine that I could envision a world, I was trying to think as big as possible, I can't imagine envisioning a world Subpar Talks, LGBT, subpartalks. com, www. independentjeff. com, And go, OK, where exactly is that difference?
Jeff:Speaking of podcasts, and I highly recommend this one. Uh, I think it's like eight or 10 episodes, but it's called Hunting Warhead. And I didn't even really know what it was about, but I went on Reddit and looked for recommendations for podcasts and that one came up and it is about, it's about law enforcement, uh, a law, well, a journalist starts this whole thing, but. It also covers a lot of law enforcement, of tracking down this guy, and his screen name is Warhead, tracking down this guy who's running this child abuse website on the dark web, and uh, You know, people are publishing or uploading pictures of child pornography on there. And, and so in one of the episodes, they interview, I don't know if he's a psychologist or psychiatrist who specializes in this stuff. And he explained kind of what I read a while ago, just because. Somebody is a pedophile doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to seek out and try to abuse kids. In fact, he said a lot of pedophiles, a lot of the ones that he has interviewed through the years with his research, they feel tortured. They don't like that they have this. They don't know what it comes from. They want to suppress it, but they don't quite know how, which is why they've sought out therapy. They, they think they need help, and they, the idea of molesting a kid, like, freaks them out. Like, they don't want to do that. They do realize it's wrong, morally, wrong to do it. And then, he also said, a lot of people who do abuse kids... And this is what I read earlier, what I read to you, is they're not necessarily pedophiles, they're predators. They see an opportunity, and they take advantage of them, but their primary or exclusive attraction is not to, to kids. I just, I found that interesting. That's a, that's a very good point. Yeah. Yeah. It's the, you know, the science behind it. So check this out, talking about how things are gonna be in a hundred years or two hundred years. This sounds like, well, I'll just read this, but, I mean, they're doing research into this stuff. Although what causes pedophilia is not yet known, researchers began reporting a series of findings linking pedophilia with brain structure and function beginning in 2002. Testing individuals from a variety of referral sources inside and outside the criminal justice system, as well as controls, These studies found associations between pedophilia and lower IQs, poorer scores on memory tests, greater rates of non right handedness, greater rates of school grade failure over and above the IQ differences. Subpar Talks, LGBT, subpartalks. com, www. independentjeff. com, www. independentjeff. com, www. independentjeff.
Chris:com, Those, uh, what do you want to call them? Symptoms?
Jeff:Yeah. You think the childhood head injuries resulting in unconsciousness might have an effect on the IQ scores? Yeah. I think there might be a connection there. Or next time you drop your kid, go,
Chris:Oh my God, they're going to be a pedophile. Better get them tested.
Jeff:Yeah, that's fascinating. And that's recent. Like they started looking into that in 2002. Hell. Yeah. That's just a couple of decades. How are things going to be in two more decades? Exactly.
Chris:Well, and you know, just generally speaking about the brain, everybody admits that they're, and I find this fascinating that they say it because to me, from the outside, I feel like there's a lot that we know about the brain. I mean, look at the brain surgery that they can do and issues they can correct, fix, prevent, whatever. And yet, the medical industry as a whole. We'll still say that there is so much that we don't know about the brain, so little that we understand. And so you read something like that and go, yeah, so they've only been doing these studies for, or figured that out 20 years ago. That's amazing.
Jeff:Yeah. So, this professor, um, the New York Times article says he's written on this topic in depth for years. In 2017, tell me if you have this on your bookshelf, in 2017 he published a book entitled Pedophilia and Adult Child Sex, a Philosophical Analysis. Sounds like he's a little ahead of us, I think so. An abstract of the book describes it as a look into the moral status of such sex. Which he has said strikes him intuitively as sick, disgusting, and wrong. Oh, get this, this Dr. Kirshner, he's built his career on taking provocative, though rigorously and professionally argued positions that may horrify or amuse people. OK. Is it morally OK to fake an orgasm? That's one of his papers. I'll tell you his answer in a second, but think about it. Is it morally OK to prefer Asian romantic partners? Ooh, I dig Asian women. Donna Chang. Is it morally okay to not leave a tip?
Chris:We're going to discuss each
Jeff:of these. Yeah. Like, do you think personally? Well, okay.
Chris:We've had questions. I mean, you and I have talked in the past about differences between. Morally, something being morally wrong versus something being ethically wrong.
Jeff:Mm
Chris:hmm. Yeah. I don't know. Is that a moral question or an ethical question? Because what I think it is, is a misrepresentation. It's a lie. Is it not? Like.
Jeff:It is a lie. Oh, I don't think about that. That. I'm essentially
Chris:saying I had an orgasm when I didn't, and so it's a lie, I guess, I mean in that way, I guess you could say it's
Jeff:morally wrong. Is it ever OK to lie? Well,
Chris:and that depends on where you're coming from about lying, because from a, a, uh, well I can at least say from a Christian perspective then, lying is just not OK, period. But people lie all the time to protect other people's feelings. I mean, there are certainly reasons that people lie that can be presented in a justified
Jeff:way. So if you fake an orgasm and I mean, I could make a case that it's morally OK. You're faking an orgasm that's going to boost your partner's self esteem, going to make them more confident. Like, protect their feelings? Protect their feelings, yeah. Yeah, how's your relationship gonna go when you tell them the truth? Fake, fake, fake, fake. For what it's worth, he said it is morally okay to fake an orgasm. So it's got a link here, it linked to the paper, but I think you have to pay to read the research. And honestly, I'm not sure I'd want to. Because it'd be a bunch of, you know, well, I don't know what the fuck he's got in the paper, but I don't really wanna read an academic paper on whether it's okay to fake an orgasm.
Chris:No, not that topic by itself. Some of these other questions are interesting though.
Jeff:Yeah. How about, is it morally okay to prefer Asian romantic partners? Sure. What would be immoral about that? Yeah, I think so too. He, he said, yes, it's morally okay. And I mean, people have their, their preferences, different races, ethnicities. Well,
Chris:that's what I was going to say, though. There are certainly people who would say that interracial relationships are not okay, but, but I'm not sure on what grounds that is from someone who feels that way, is that, is that a moral argument? Is it an ethical argument? Is it purely. Based on some kind of religious feeling. I mean, where does that come from?
Jeff:All I've ever heard for arguments against that is. It's not God's will.
Chris:If he wanted us to be together,
Jeff:he would have made us the same. Yeah. Put us on the same parts
Chris:of the
Jeff:planet, whatever. Right. Okay. Is it morally okay to not leave a tip? I think
Chris:in extreme cases, yes. I have never. The only time, actually, I don't know if I have never not left a tip, I know I have left a penny
Jeff:before. I left a penny once too, yup.
Chris:Yeah. And I say before, I, I can think of two times that I know of. And that was, that was just, uh, the service was literally horrible. Um, they were doing absolutely nothing for me. Anything that I got, I was having to ask for like, okay, then you're not doing what your job is. So what am I, what am I paying for? What did I just pay for?
Jeff:Oh, you're a John. So he says, um, it is not morally okay to not tip unless you explicitly tell the server you're not tipping. No, I don't agree. That was my whole reason for leaving the penny is I wanted them to know I just didn't forget. Exactly. This was a conscious decision on my part. Yeah, I'm telling you now, little, yes, that's the message in the penny right there. I'm not tipping you more. This was a conscious decision on my part to leave you as little as I possibly could. Well, and at
Chris:what point am I supposed to tell them before that? Certainly not while they might still be doing anything for me and they can spit in my food, run it through the toilet or who knows what. Never mind that I'm going to continue sitting there and give them an opportunity to shoot me. I might be the very last straw, you know? Oh, no, yeah. Like, I've, after everything I've been through today and now you're not gonna tip me? That's it. No thank you. I leave the penny and get the fuck out the door.
Jeff:So it's going to be really interesting to see what happens with this. I, again, I think this could be a case that could end up in the U. S. Supreme Court. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm sure this is not the only instance of something like this and it's not going to be the last and it's important free speech stuff. I think the Supreme Court needs to weigh in on it. Yeah, they should.
Chris:Okay. So I came across an article the other day that I didn't even know that this was a law at one point. I have a problem with the law itself and that's why it was an issue. But there's a, there's a law in Dallas, I guess it's just the city of Dallas. I don't think it was even Dallas County. I guess just the city of Dallas that's called manifesting prostitution. And so basically police could arrest someone that they believed was involved in prostitution, even if they did not catch them in an act. Um, such as exchange of money, something like that. They don't even have to catch them in that. I have a big problem with that.
Jeff:Yeah, I think I do too. What would this involve? What is, are there any examples?
Chris:So, there weren't any specific examples of what they could catch them doing. It just says that they don't have to catch them in a transaction exactly. Which means... If you were talking to a prostitute on the street... And appeared that you were trying to engage with this person for a sex act, then they could arrest you. Anyway, that law was struck down as I think it clearly should have been, but now they're rewriting the law and it doesn't go into detail about how they've rewritten it, but all of the people on the city council, except one. Voted in favor of what they have rewritten. So this one person that voted against it says that the reason they were voting against it is because they feel like prostitution is more of a human trafficking problem than prostitution itself. So basically it's more a symptom of the problem. It's manifesting human trafficking in that way. Yeah. And, uh, the way they are trying to. Attack prostitution with this law is not going after the real problem
Jeff:that I think I tend to agree with it. I'd have to know more, but I think I tend to agree with that. If you're just targeting the people who are talking to a hooker or whatever, that's not solving any sort of problem. Like, what are you doing? Well,
Chris:and they're saying too, you know that, that the majority, I say the majority, probably a huge majority of these people are of the prostitutes are working for pimps. I mean, that's the whole idea. If they think this is a human trafficking problem, then somebody is out there controlling it says, You know, like they're watching their every move. So if you're going to cut off their business, then what's going to happen to the prostitute when they turn up
Jeff:with no money? Oh, good.
Chris:They're just going to get, they're going to get the shit beat out of them. And
Jeff:then what? That's like arresting... OK, well, there's a larger topic here, should prostitution be legal, we'll circle back to that in a second. That's like arresting the prostitutes though, that doesn't do anything either. Like, what are you doing? Because if it's the pimps that are controlling stuff... Yeah,
Chris:the only, the only thing I can think in that context is kind of like you're cutting off their supply. You know, if you, if you take the prostitutes away from the pimps, or take the money away from the prostitutes... Then what do the pimps have to traffic at that point? I'd figured they'd just find something else to do though. I mean, first of all, you know, they say there's plenty of trafficking in the porn industry. Well, then they could go that direction. I mean, there are other things that could happen where, where trafficking could still be successful, but I guess that's it is kind of trying to choke off the supply. of hey, there's not going to be anybody, you know, getting with the prostitutes and paying them. So now the pimps don't get anything
Jeff:from it. They need to go after the pimps. Although that's going to be comparatively harder to do. I mean, the prostitutes, they're on the front lines. It's easier to spot. The pimps are working behind the scenes. Yeah, it'd
Chris:be very difficult. I don't know how you would, I don't know how you'd
Jeff:go after them. I don't either. Aside from, like, actual human trafficking, sex trafficking, so in other words, not counting women who are not forced into this, so if a prostitute of her own volition wants to do this to make money, should that be legal? I,
Chris:I mean, you know, we've talked about this and I, I don't really, I could, okay, I'll say this. I could probably be swayed either way. This is one of those things where I could be on the fence and I could be talked into or out of it. On the one hand, I think kind of the, the free enterprise idea is like, Hey, you want to do this and you paint like. This is what I'm offering and this is how much I want for it. And somebody on the, on the other end says, okay, I will pay you that much money. And you've come to an agreement for an exchange of service. Then what just happened that adults shouldn't be able to do?
Jeff:It's a business transaction.
Chris:Yeah, it is. And, and on the flip side, uh, not the flip side as this is not a, a contrary argument is what in the hell is the difference between people going out on dates? They go out on dates and somebody pays for meals, pays for whatever activity, going to a movie or concert or whatever it happens to be that you go to. And then you go have sex? Are people going to, to just meet up and have sex without all of that? Probably not. So...
Jeff:Right. Yeah. Yeah, what's the line there? And I don't know, but they have, there are whole, there's a whole, like, escort industry. I remember seeing these ads in the paper, like, when I actually read a newspaper, like, the Dallas paper, like, there would be, like, ads, they didn't call themselves escorts, but that's clearly what it was, like, you're going to a business lunch and you need somebody there with you, like, but you can't tell me that when you plunk down 200 a meal for this woman and take her to whatever You know, theater, whatever, play or whatever. You can't tell me there's not some expectation after that. And yeah, so exactly what are you paying for? I just, uh, I don't, I I'm inclined to say that it should be legal. And again, somebody who wants to do it their own of their own volition there. It's, it's a totally conscious choice they're making to do this. And somebody wants to pay that woman for that, for that service. Why should government leaders tell them that, no, you can't do that? Seems to me like they should be able to do it. And there's a way to do it because in Nevada, it's legal. I think it's dependent upon the county, but in Nevada, it's legal. And they have, I don't know what they call them brothels or whatever, but they have women who work there. And I've read about this before, but they have, like, those women have to undergo regular testing. You know, they make all the, the men who come in, the Johns, they make them wear protection. And, uh, the women have to report their income, you know, cause if you legalize something now you can tax it, you can regulate it. Seems like that should be the way to go, but I don't know. I think when you bring up legalized prostitution... People think, Oh my God, we're just going to have hookers, you know, on every street corner. And that's not, at least that's not what I'm talking about. Like in a controlled environment. That's kind of what I was
Chris:thinking too, though. Okay. You're okay. You're talking more control. So more like when you talk about legalizing marijuana, for example, it's got to go through dispensaries, right? You're not talking about that. It's just legal to go sell it on the
Jeff:street. Exactly. So, yeah, same with alcohol. Like, you have to buy alcohol from, uh, somebody who's got a license to sell it. I couldn't go in the street corner now and start selling beer. Like, that would be illegal. Yeah. And here's another one. What's the difference? OK, so... If John wants to pay Sue for sex, OK, that's illegal. But if John and Sue are gonna have sex, and Bob is gonna film it, and pay both of them to do so, that's legal. That's porn. How is that legal? But the first scenario is not. I
Chris:don't know.
Jeff:I don't know. That seems kind of messed up. Something's missing. I agree. And here's another thing I wonder. I don't, I don't know the history here, but when did prostitution become illegal? I don't know that either. I mean, I know a long time ago, like, Ancient Greece or whatever, weren't they fucking people left and right? Like, you could pay, you know, just go anywhere and pay somebody to have sex? There were whores in the Bible, I know that. So... Right. But was it legal? I don't know. I don't know. But I'm watching, uh, I need to pick it back up, but I'm watching Deadwood on Max. And it's about Dudwood, South Carolina, it was a mining town, you know, gold was discovered there, so it's this mining town, and I mean, it's pretty rough, a mining town in the late 1800s, and they've got whorehouses there, and it's totally legal, so what happened that it Governments started saying, no, we're not gonna allow that. And why was that a thing? I don't know. I don't know the history there. I don't
Chris:know. Was it, was it too much religious influence then?
Jeff:Is that where that came from? Uh, it wouldn't surprise me a bit. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty fascinating, I think. Yeah, it is. Uh, Manifesting Prostitution.
Chris:Yeah,
Jeff:that sounds worse than it is, I think. It does, it sounds dirty. What are you
Chris:showing?
Jeff:Now what position is that?
Chris:I don't know. You show me, you manifest that again. Alright.
Jeff:How much will it cost me? Okay, last topic here, and I was alerted to this in an NPR article, uh, about a week ago, it's called PIMEyes, P I M E Y E S. com, PIMEyes. com. No, I haven't heard of that. So it is a, it's a facial recognition website. And what it allows you to do is to upload a photo to the site. And it's gonna scour the entire internet for that face. And it's gonna bring back results to you of everywhere on the goddamn internet that that face appears. And it is wild. That
Chris:doesn't
Jeff:sound like a good idea. No, it doesn't. I checked it out earlier today and holy shit. Now I didn't do my picture. I'm scared to put my photo on there, find out where all the hell I am on the internet. I don't want to do that, but I just picked some. So I was looking at, uh, I was looking at stuff on, on the Cowboys, Dallas Cowboys, and there was a fan, uh, that was kind of prominent. In a picture, and so I saved that photo to my computer, and I uploaded it to PemEyes, and there were like three faces in there, so it asked me which, which of these faces do you want to search, and I clicked the one in the middle, the one that was the most prominent, and it takes like, I don't know, 10 seconds to come back? And this poor guy, he has no idea, I mean, I don't know who he is, and I've already closed the site out, but I found all these different sites where he had his picture taken. I mean, he was at a church service, he was, uh, playing hockey, he was, I don't remember what else. I saw, but it's scary. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah. And concerning. Yeah, it's concerning and I don't know really what the end point is and I don't really know what my point in bringing this up is other than it's just freaky and fascinating at the same time. I guess it's just more of this is where we're headed, AI stuff like this. Uh, more facial recognition, but who's got your info? Who's got your likeness out there? What are they doing with it? All sorts of stuff like that. Who's got
Chris:it? Why do they have it? What are they doing with it? Well, and this goes back to, you know, the first conversation about employers, anybody associated with your work. They could just take one of your pictures, upload it, find out, oh, here's a picture of them doing XYZ on the weekend. You're
Jeff:fired. Or a prospective employer. So before you go to your interview, I'm going to upload your picture there. See what all the hell you've been doing. Yeah. And I remember thinking about this and we've already started to see this. I remember thinking about this more than a decade ago. We are. Entering an era where you are having people run for office, public office, and they have a significant social media presence and you know what they say. I mean, that stuff never goes away. So they're going to be digging stuff up from Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat from years and years ago. And then it's a larger question. How do we treat what somebody did when they were. 18 versus now they're 40 years old. How do we, how do we treat that? You know, what were they posting on social media back then, man? There's a lot there. There
Chris:is absolutely. Well, and you hear that now, I mean, it's not necessarily from social media, but it's what did this politician do, you know, 30, 40, 50 years ago and yeah, not about posting, but just their actions at all and yeah, now it's going to live.
Jeff:Indefinitely. Yeah, so anyway, pemeyes. com, go there if you dare, and enter your picture. All right, if you like this kind of stuff, then this is your type of podcast and you should absolutely, without a doubt, positively follow us on whatever platform you listen to podcasts on, because that way you're going to get new episodes delivered to you every single Tuesday when they drop. And while you are there, we would really appreciate it if you would rate us. And of course, we'd like it if you'd give us five stars. We have a website that is subpartalks. com. There you can email us, you can leave us a voicemail. We're always going to read those and listen to them. If you have a suggestion for topics we should cover on future episodes, go ahead and do that. Uh, we always take those into consideration. We are on social media on X. We are at Subpar Talks on Facebook. We are Subpar Talks. If you want to follow our personal X accounts, you can do that as well on there. I am at Independent Jeff. And we have some other social media links on our website. Check that out. And last, but never ever least, please share this podcast on social media. Get the word out to your family, friends, colleagues, whoever you encounter. Because the more people we have listening to this show, the easier it is for us to get this content to you every single week. Thanks for joining the pedophilia hour, everybody.
Chris:Yeah, this was a full on sex show.
Jeff:Yeah, really. Well, not
Chris:full on, just... Not full frontal? No. Sidle? Sidle,
Jeff:yeah. Yeah. Well, we, we tackled it, but, you know, that's why we give the disclaimers, so yeah, buckle up. And this was one of the buckle up shows. No kidding. All right, very good. That is an episode wrap, and we will be back next week. Until then, so long. The End! Don't forget to subscribe, leave a like, and a comment! Special thanks to... Thanks for watching!