Should Prostitution Be Legalized?
Prostitution can be defined as the practice of providing sexual services in exchange for money. It is considered one of the oldest professions on Earth; perhaps it came after humans had learnt hunting, gathering and subsistence farming. Although ubiquitous around the world, virtually all cultures regard it with contempt. Prostitution is legal in merely a handful of countries – notably Germany, Switzerland, Venezuela, Mexico, Côte d’Ivoire – and it is subjected to heavy regulation even where it is legal.
Is prostitution only sex for recreation and should be legalized so that more and more people can gratify themselves safely? Or does it show up a society dominated by the males in which the women are still victims with practically no voice at all?
Prostitution should be legalized
Steven D Pinkerton, Professor at Medical College of Wisconsin; Paul R Abramson, Professor of Psychology at UCLA; and Mark Huppin coauthored a book named Sexual Rights in America in 2003. They wrote “prostitution is an unpopular form of sexual expression” arguing later in the book “what if only popular forms of artistic expression were granted constitutional protection?” The authors insisted “sexual choices are certainly as fundamental to our lives and artistic expression” and constitutional guarantees shouldn’t be taken away just because “they upset the traditional order”.
The authors of Sexual Rights in America also wrote in the book that the availability of commercial sex partners helps channel away excess sexual energy in males which otherwise, could have been directed at unwilling sexual partners. Therefore, they conclude, prostitution is conducive to the social well being.
An article published in the Freedom Daily titled ‘The Case for Legalized Prostitution’ by Paul Armentano in December 1993 reasoned that banning prostitution prohibits one’s most basic and inherent rights. The writer also said there was no justification for the government to get involved as long as the prostitution transactions are voluntary. He also wrote that whereas roughly half of the street prostitutes in Washington D C were HIV positive, and the fraction was even higher in cities like New Jersey and Newark, not even a single HIV infected prostitute could be found in Nevada, where it is legalized.
“People have the rights to control their bodies, even in ways that are demonstrably or potentially harmful.” That is what Ari Armstrong wrote on the website of Colorado Freedom Report on 27 April 2005 in his article namely, ‘Legalize prostitution to reduce harms.
Kathleen Peratis, co-chair of the Sexual Harassment Practice Group at Outten and Golden LLP, wrote in her essay Insight on the News on 17 July 2000: “They (women) have not been abducted or coerced or enslaved” continuing that many enter “the sex industry as a part of an economic strategy to support themselves” She added in her essay that lamenting prostitution is one’s personal views.
Veronica Monet, a prostitute herself, wrote in a 1994 Gauntlet, a newspaper in Canada, article that many of the prostitutes are educated and come to this line after trying out a lot of things. She added being a prostitute was the best alternative available for her and it’s even better than being the president of a company.
Eddie Tabash, an American lawyer and political and social activist, wrote in Los Angeles Times in 1993: “…we should stop turning some of them into criminals merely because they have chosen to exchange sex for money.” He also wrote that women should not be jailed merely because they have chosen a particular profession for whatever reason.
An article which appeared in The Humanist in 2003 named ‘Prostitution, Humanism and a Woman’s Choice’ by Kimberly Klinger advocated that uncomfortable attitudes of the society towards sexuality have made it difficult for women to be fully liberated. She added that women could only be free if their personal choices are respected and protected.
Annie Sprinkle, a former prostitute and sexologist, wrote on her website that people like her were heroes, fighting against the prejudice that our society has developed against sex. She wrote she was a proponent of the fight of the prostitutes to have a legal right for financial compensation for their work.
In her essay Instigations from the Whore Revolution: A Third Wave Feminist Response to the Sex Work Controversy, posted in April 2001 on Eminism.org, Emi Koyama wrote: “… there is nothing wrong with holding the view that sexuality and romance should go hand in hand. However, when a dominant group forces its version of sexual ideology on the marginalized group, it becomes a sexual oppression.” She concluded that making it illegal the behavior of a minority, whose sexual manners are different from the majority, is no less than oppression.
Sex is done for pleasure and in this sense, according to Catherine La Croix, “[it] is no more moral or immoral than the chocolate or distilling industries.”
In his article Burnout Among Female Indoor Sex Workers, Ine Vanwesenbeeck of the Dutch Expert Centre on Sexuality wrote in December 2005 that female prostitutes in Netherlands, who work mainly indoors, don’t show more work related emotional exhaustion that female health care workers show.
Diana Hsieh posted an essay The Psychology of Prostitution on her website on 12 October 2003 and raised doubts over the popular belief that prostitution is, in any way, more psychologically harmful than other professions.
A November 2000 article in The Lancet titled ‘Prostitution, Public Health and Human Rights Law’ tells us of a study carried out in 1998. The study found out that the infections due to sexuality transmitted diseases were eighty times more common in street prostitutes who were working illegally than their counterparts working in legal brothels. The article was co-authored by Christopher Fairly, Beth Gaze and Bebe Loff.
John Godwin, policy analyst at Australian Federation of AIDS Organizations, wrote in the April-May 2003 issue of HIV Australia that not only the non-criminalized sex workers in Australia had meager rates of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections but overall enjoyed better sexual health than the general community.
Margo MacDonald, an independent member of the Scottish Parliament, told in the interview to the BBC on 11 October 2002 that no underage girls were to be found when there had been tolerance zones but because they were no longer accepted, the police never know where the girls’ locations were and where they would go. She added the rate of HIV infection in Edinburgh, where the first tolerance zones were established, was lower than the general public.
Legal prostitution helps lowering the incidences of rape, according to Linda M. Rio Reichmann of the American Bar Association. She wrote in 1991 in the Archives of Sexual Behavior citing a study conducted in Queensland that there was a 149% increase in rape incidents when the legal brothels were closed in 1959.
Prostitution should never ever be legalized
Posted on the website of Coalition Against Trafficking in Women – Asia Pacific, the August 1997 paper SEX: From Human Intimacy to Sexual Labor or Is Prostitution a Human Right? by Cecilia Hoffman argues that prostitution reduces women to a commodity which can be bought and sold at will.
Another article titled The ACLU is Fighting for the Trafficking of Women Worldwide (January 2007) by John Bambenek points to the fact that women involved in prostitution have higher incidences of drug addiction and legalizing this industry will only it worse. He also wrote that arguments like ‘legalization will stem the abuses’ is based on false premises that regulation will stem the abuses because legalization would only lead to more women being forced into the trade.
What is the guarantee that legalizing prostitution will not have unintended consequences? Thomas Kleine Brockhoff, Senior Director for Policy Programs at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, cites the example of Amsterdam where both prostitution and marijuana is legal. He writes in his article Legalization Opens Criminal Floodgates that legalizing marijuana and prostitution has only made the city a magnet for drug traders and human traffickers.
Although Germany legalized prostitution in only 2002, it took only four years for the sex trade capitalists to build up a work force of 400,000 women for an industry which has become a multibillion dollar business. Bonnie Erbe writes June 2006 article in Seattle Post Intelligencer that prostitution is “demeaning to women”.
In her speech at the University of Michigan Law School, Andrea Dworking, an activist, a former prostitute and an author, says by its very nature prostitution is abusive and it is an abuse of a woman’s body.
It is only a misguided fact, writes Jeffrey J. Barrows of the Christian Medical Association, that legalized prostitution will keep a check on the HIV infections because a prostitute goes for regular medical check ups. He writes: symptoms have appeared and add to it another two weeks for the results to come out. Then, asks the author, how Even supposing that a prostitute serves 10-15 clients a day and undergoes an HIV test every week, it’d not be before four-six weeks that many clients would this prostitute have served and exposed to the infection? The answer is more than 600 clients in the best circumstances.
It is a wrongly held notion that prostitution has always been around and it is not possible to stop it therefore legalizing is the only option. Slavery can also be traced back to the earliest historical records but today, it doesn’t virtually exist. Lisa Thompson of the Abolition of Sexual Trafficking for the United States Salvation Army says it only takes positive motivation, right evidence to change the way people behave.
Joseph Parker posted an article How Prostitution Works on the website of Lola Greene Baldwin Foundation in 2009. The article ridicules the notion that prostitution is a ‘victim-less crime’ and stresses it’s only a term invented by those people who are profiting from the sex industry in one way or another. The article tells that there is only a small minority of people involved in the trade who have come voluntarily into it and don’t want to change it.
Prosecutor General of Bulgaria, Boris Velchev, authors in his article Precious Thoughts on a Sensitive Bulgarian Subject that there is no way to know what happens behind closed doors of these public house and therefore there is no reason to believe that the women there are not being exploited. Legalizing prostitution is equal to legally allowing to someone to exploit others.
According to the Former Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden, Margareta Winberg, there is no point in legalizing a trade in which the women and children are regarded as commodities and fight against this social malign can only succeed if we “stop being stooges” of the industry.
The arguments, writes Esohe Aghatise of Associazione Iroko Onlus, which claim regulation protects women involved in sex trade is are deceptive because prostitution itself is a kind of violence against women. A refusal to admit this fact and legalizing prostitution will only worsen the situation.
Those who advocate prostitution should think only once how would they feel if they had to tell someone that their mamma or sister works in the sex industry? Legalizing prostitution will only result in a denigrating society.
Gunilla S. Ekberg of the Swedish Division for Gender Equality said in a seminar held in Stockholm in 2002 that prostitution should not be confused with sexual liberation. It is torture, it is rape and it is humiliation, thus men who use prostitutes are no better than rapists or sexual predators.
Data collected by Margarita Alegria, PhD, for an article published in the American Journal of Public Health in December 1994 brings out some appalling facts including that 70% of the prostitutes, who participated in the study, had high levels of depressive symptoms.
Legalizing prostitution will open the way to establish ‘red-light areas’. It is not difficult to imagine what their social impact would be and how many women would willingly work it those areas?
Conclusion
It is beyond doubt that sex is an essential need for humans and it is as basic as eating food or drinking water. Moreover, a couple can’t remain bonded if there isn’t a healthy sexual relationship between them. On the other hand, the conditions under which women are brought into the sex industry are also not a hidden fact. These women are often abused and exploited and legalizing prostitution will only add to the suffering of these poor women. Sweden can be a role model, where prostitution is decriminalized but paying someone for sex can make you land up behind bars. The fear of prosecution has not only stalled the market growth and but it is declining. If accompanied by rehabilitation program mes, this Swedish model could be an answer to problem which still stares us all in the 21st century.
