Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review

To Protect Women, Legalize Prostitution

by | Oct 1, 2019 | Amicus , Criminal Justice , Labor and Employment , Sex Equality |

To Protect Women, Legalize Prostitution

Prostitution is a sensitive subject in the United States. Frequently, arguments against prostitution center around concern for the health and safety of women, and those concerns are not unfounded. Prostitution is an incredibly dangerous profession for the (mostly) women involved; sexual assault, forced drug addiction, physical abuse, and death are common in the industry. For the women who work in this field, it is often very difficult to get help or get out. Many sex workers were sold into sex trafficking at a very young age and have no resources with which to escape their forced prostitution, or started out as sex workers by choice only to fall victim to sex trafficking later on. Moreover, since prostitution is illegal in most places in the United States, there are few legal protections in place for prostitutes; many fear that seeking help will only lead to arrest, and many who do seek help are arrested and then have to battle the stigma of a criminal record while they try to reintegrate into society.

So why is the response to such a dangerous industry to drive it further underground, away from societal resources and legal protections?

When people argue prostitution should be illegal, in many cases their concern comes from a place of morality , presented as concern for the health and safety of women. People believe that legalizing prostitution will only lead to the abuse of more women, will make it harder for prostitutes to get out of the industry, or will teach young women that their bodies exist for the sole purpose of sexual exploitation by men.

However, legalizing prostitution has had positive benefits for sex workers across Europe . The most well-known country to have legalized prostitution is the Netherlands , where sex work has been legal for almost twenty years. Bringing the industry out of the black market and imposing strict regulations has improved the safety of sex workers. Brothels are required to obtain and renew safety and hygiene licenses in order to operate, and street prostitution is legal and heavily regulated in places like the Red Light District . Not only does sex work become safer when it is regulated, but legalization also works to weed out the black market that exists for prostitution, thereby making women safer overall. Also, sex workers are not branded as criminals, so they have better access to the legal system and are encouraged to report behaviors that are a danger to themselves and other women in the industry. Finally, legalizing sex work will provide many other positive externalities , including tax revenue, reduction in sexually transmitted diseases, and reallocation of law enforcement resources.

It’s true that current efforts by various European countries to legalize prostitution have been far from perfect. In the Netherlands, certain components of the legislation , such as requiring sex workers to register and setting the minimum age for prostitution at 21, could drive more sex workers to illegal markets. Not only that, but studies indicate that legalizing prostitution can increase human trafficking.  However, even those who are critical about legalizing prostitution can recognize the benefits that legislation can have on working conditions for sex workers. If countries with legislation in place spend more time listening to current sex workers, the results of decriminalizing prostitution include bringing safety, security, and respect to a demographic that has traditionally been denied such things.

The underlying reason that people are uncomfortable listening to sex workers about legalizing prostitution has nothing to do with concern for the health and safety of women. If that were the genuine concern, prostitution would be legal in the United States by now. The underlying reason people disagree with legalizing prostitution is that prostitution is viewed as amoral because it involves (mostly) women selling their bodies for financial gain. However, telling women what they can and cannot do with their bodies does not come from a place of morality: that comes from a place of control.

People, especially women, sell their bodies for financial gain in legalized fashions on a daily basis. Pornography is legal, and so is exotic dancing. It’s common for people to have sexual relationships with richer partners so as to benefit from their wealth, whether this is through seeking out wealthy life partners or through the less formal but increasingly prevalent phenomenon known as sugar-dating . It’s also common for people to remain in unhappy relationships because they do not want to lose financial stability or spend money on a divorce.

So, what’s the difference? Why are these examples socially acceptable, even encouraged, but prostitution is seen as so appalling?

The difference is that in all of these other situations, it is easy for people to pretend that the women involved are not actually selling their bodies directly. It’s easy to pretend that the pornography actors are just people having consensual sex that the viewing public just happens to be privy to observing . It’s easy to pretend that exotic dancers are not actually selling their bodies because they are not directly engaging in the act of sex. It’s easy to pretend that people who enter into or remain in sexual relationships with wealthy partners could be there for reasons other than financial gain or security.

Prostitution does not allow the general public to have the benefit of these pretenses. Rather, the industry is honest about how sex and money are directly related. And for many individuals, this is an uncomfortable notion. It is even more uncomfortable for some people to believe that women should be allowed to have the control over their bodies that would permit them to engage in prostitution voluntarily; they cannot allow themselves to believe that women would choose such a profession. Yet rather than recognize this reality, those who oppose the legalization of prostitution march forth with arguments about concern for the safety of women. They fail to realize that criminalizing prostitution does not help sex workers, and their arguments lead to legislation that harms women while operating under the morally-driven guise of wanting to protect them.

Instead of forcing sex workers to conduct their business in unregulated black markets where their lives are in danger, all for a mislabeled purpose of “saving” women, take actual action to save women. Legalize prostitution, impose strict regulations, and construct comprehensive support systems that allow sex workers to do their jobs safely.

The desire to protect women from sexual abuse will always be valid, and if anything is a desire that should be more widespread in the United States. What is disingenuous is opposing legalized sex work for reasons that purport to be women’s safety, but that are actually coming from a place of discomfort over women openly engaging in sexual interactions for financial gain. If you are uncomfortable with the idea of women having sex for money, then you should also have a problem with pornography, exotic dancing, and people dating for money. If you do not have a problem with all of these socially accepted practices but have a problem with prostitution because it is “morally questionable,” then you have lost your right to any forum where decisions about the safety and rights of women are being made.

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Should Sex Work Be Decriminalized? Some Activists Say It's Time

Headshot of Jasmine Garsd

Jasmine Garsd

prostitution should be legalized essay

LGBTQ, immigrant rights and criminal justice reform groups, launched a coalition, Decrim NY, in February to decriminalize the sex trade in New York. Erik McGregor/Getty Images hide caption

LGBTQ, immigrant rights and criminal justice reform groups, launched a coalition, Decrim NY, in February to decriminalize the sex trade in New York.

Sex work is illegal in much of the United States, but the debate over whether it should be decriminalized is heating up.

Former California Attorney General and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris recently came out in favor of decriminalizing it , as long as it's between two consenting adults.

The debate is hardly new — and it's fraught with emotions. Opponents of decriminalization say it's an exploitative industry that preys on the weak. But many activists and academics say decriminalization would help protect sex workers, and would even be a public health benefit.

Queen Honors Activist Who Fought To Decriminalize Prostitution

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Queen honors activist who fought to decriminalize prostitution.

RJ Thompson wants to push back against the idea that sex work is inherently victimizing. He says for him it was liberating: Thompson had recently graduated from law school and started working at a nonprofit when the recession hit. In 2008, he got laid off with no warning and no severance, and he had massive student loan debt.

Thompson became an escort. "I made exponentially more money than I ever could have in my legal profession," he says.

He says the possibility of arrest was often on his mind. And he says for many sex workers, it's a constant fear. "Many street-based workers are migrants or transgender people who have limited options in the formal economies," he says. "And so they do sex work for survival. And it puts them in a very vulnerable position — the fact that it's criminalized."

Thompson is now a human rights lawyer and the managing director of the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center. It's among several organizations that are advocating bills to decriminalize sex work in New York City and New York state. They already have the support of various state lawmakers .

Juno Mac: How Does Stigma Compromise The Safety Of Sex Workers?

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Juno mac: how does stigma compromise the safety of sex workers.

Due to its clandestine nature in America, it's extremely hard to find reliable numbers about the sex trade. But one thing is for sure: It's a multi-billion-dollar industry. In 2007, a government-sponsored report looked at several major U.S. cities and found that sex work brings in around $290 million a year in Atlanta alone.

Economist Allison Schrager says the Internet has increased demand and supply. "Women who pre-Internet (or men) who wouldn't walk the streets or sign with a madam or an agency now can sell sex work, sometimes even on the side to supplement other sources of income," she says.

So what happens when you take this massive underground economy and decriminalize it? Nevada might offer a clue. Brothels are legal there, in certain counties.

In Shrager's book, An Economist Walks Into A Brothel , she investigated the financial workings of the Nevada brothel industry. She found that on average it's 300 percent more expensive to hire a sex worker in a Nevada brothel than in an illegal setting. Shrager thinks it's because workers and customers prefer to pay for the safety and health checks of a brothel.

"Sex work is risky for everyone," she says. "You take on a lot of risk as a customer too. And when you're working in a brothel you are assured complete anonymity. They've been fully screened for diseases."

Legalizing Prostitution Would Protect Sex Workers From HIV

Goats and Soda

Legalizing prostitution would protect sex workers from hiv.

But many activists and academics say decriminalization would help protect sex workers and could also have public health benefits.

Take the case of Rhode Island . A loophole made sex work, practiced behind closed doors, legal there between 2003 and 2009.

Baylor University economist Scott Cunningham and his colleagues found that during those years the sex trade grew. But Cunningham points to some other important findings : During that time period the number of rapes reported to police in the state declined by over a third. And gonorrhea among all women declined by 39 percent. Of course, changes in prostitution laws might not be the only cause, but Cunningham says, "the trade-off is if you make it safer to some degree, you grow the industry."

Rhode Island made sex work illegal again in 2009, in part under pressure from some anti-trafficking advocates. That's the thing: The debate about sex work always gets linked to trafficking — people who get forced into it against their will.

Economist Axel Dreher from the University of Heidelberg in Germany teamed up with the London School of Economics to analyze the link between trafficking and prostitution laws in 150 countries. "If prostitution is legal, there is more human trafficking simply because the market is larger," he says.

It's a controversial study: Even Dreher admits that reliable data on sex trafficking is really hard to find.

Human rights organizations including Amnesty International support decriminalization. Victims of trafficking might be able to ask for help more easily if they aren't afraid of having committed a crime, the groups say.

prostitution should be legalized essay

Cecilia Gentili is the director of policy at GMHC, an HIV/AIDS prevention, care and advocacy nonprofit in New York. Erik McGregor/Getty Images hide caption

Cecilia Gentili is the director of policy at GMHC, an HIV/AIDS prevention, care and advocacy nonprofit in New York.

Former sex worker Cecilia Gentili says she might have been able to break free much sooner had it not been for fear of legal consequences. She left her native Argentina because she was being brutally harassed by police in her small town. She thought she'd be better off when she moved to New York, but as a transgender, undocumented immigrant, she says she had few options.

"Let's be realistic," Gentili says, "for people like me, sex work is not 'one' job option. It's the only option."

Gentili says that when police busted the drug house in Brooklyn where she was being held, she debated whether to ask for help. She figured she was in a very vulnerable position, as a trans, undocumented person. She stayed quiet.

These days Gentili is the director of policy at GMHC , an HIV/AIDS prevention, care and advocacy nonprofit in New York. She's advocating for New York City and state to decriminalize sex work.

prostitution should be legalized essay

Rachel Lloyd is the founder of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, a nonprofit for sexually exploited women in New York. Jasmine Garsd/NPR hide caption

Rachel Lloyd is the founder of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, a nonprofit for sexually exploited women in New York.

But many believe the sex industry is just fundamentally vicious and decriminalizing it will make it worse. Rachel Lloyd is the founder of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services , a nonprofit for sexually exploited women in New York. She says there's nothing that will equalize the power unbalances in the sex industry.

"The commercial sex industry is inherently [exploitative]," she says. "The folks who end up in the commercial sex industry are the folks who are the most vulnerable and the most desperate."

When she was a teenager, Lloyd sold sex in Germany, where it's legal. But she says that didn't make it any less brutal for her.

The Surprising Wishes Of India's Sex Workers

The Surprising Wishes Of India's Sex Workers

"Those power dynamics of exploitation were still there," she says. "When ... legal johns came in, they were the ones with the money."

Lloyd says she doesn't want sex workers to be persecuted or punished. But she doesn't think men should be allowed to buy sex legally. She says that would be condoning the same industry that brutalized her and the women she works with today.

But decriminalization activists say that sex work has and always will exist. And they say bringing it out of the shadows can only help.

Read more stories from NPR Business.

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Mellissa Withers, Ph.D., M.H.S

Criminalize vs. Decriminalize Sex Work: The Debate Continues

The matter of how to legislate sex work is complex and nuanced..

Posted July 22, 2022 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

  • The Fundamentals of Sex
  • Find a sex therapist near me
  • Policies that criminalize sex work exist on a broad spectrum: from prohibition to abolition and neo-abolition.
  • Views about sex work have shifted in many countries, resulting increasingly in public support for the decriminalization of prostitution.
  • Decriminalization and criminalization policies and implications typically vary from country to country.

This post was co-written by Mellissa Withers and Tasfia Jahangir.

Prostitution, a form of sex work, is a longstanding, yet highly stigmatized occupation. Sex work is an umbrella term that includes any type of labor where a sexual service is provided in return for a benefit. Sex work includes prostitution (direct sexual services), as well as other activities like pornography , and phone sex. It is important to note that sex work refers to a consensual transaction between adults and should not be mistaken for sex trafficking, which can involve violence, threats, deception , or other forms of coercion and exploitation.

Contentious debate surrounding the nature of prostitution exists. Because most individuals in this occupation are either cis- or transgender women , and the majority of sex buyers are male , conversations around sex work are deemed as crucial feminist issues.

However, the discourse on prostitution is also highly polarized among feminists. On one hand, many perceive sex work in general as a means of improved conditions for working people through which they can gain economic liberation from a patriarchal system. On the other, it is viewed as an entrenched system of gendered violence built upon the sexual and economic exploitation of the most marginalized.

Over time, these contradictions have globally influenced a wide range of legislative approaches to sex work in general and prostitution in particular. Here, we examine some of the empirical research that is available within different legal approaches to sex work, particularly as they relate to the health, safety, and overall well-being of sex workers.

Criminalization

Feminists who demand the eradication of commercial sex argue that framing sex work as work normalizes the sex trade and silences the violent and exploitative reality of the sex industry.

Criminalization policies broadly aim to reduce the perceived individual and societal harms of prostitution by introducing laws and regulations explicitly targeting those engaged in prostitution. Such approaches exist on a broad spectrum, from prohibition to abolition and neo-abolition. Prohibition policies directly make prostitution illegal and have been adopted in the United States (Nevada is an exception), 30 nations in Africa, over 25 countries in Asia, and at least 20 in Europe. Abolition, the most prevalent approach worldwide , makes all formalized activities related to prostitution illegal, such as pimping, brothel-keeping, and procuring. As of 2022 , at least 62 countries around the world are implementing policies making prostitution illegal.

Neo-abolitionism, otherwise known as the “Nordic model,” involves policies that make the purchase of sex work illegal, while the sex workers themselves are not penalized. Neo-abolitionism is unlike the prohibitionist or abolitionist models where sex workers who are charged with the crime of prostitution or crimes related to prostitution can be fined or arrested. Proponents of the Nordic model view prostitution as inherently harmful and aim to end sex work by reducing the demand for commercial sex. This viewpoint has been a contentious issue within the women’s rights community in many countries and globally.

Decriminalization

Views about sex work have shifted in many countries, resulting increasingly in public support for the decriminalization of prostitution . Organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as prominent anti-trafficking groups like Anti-Slavery International and the Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women, all support the decriminalization of all adult prostitution on human rights grounds.

Criminalization of sex work is a social justice issue because it disproportionately impacts women, people of color, immigrants, and LGBT individuals (particularly transgender ), communities that are already over-policed and heavily criminalized, as well as more vulnerable to negative health outcomes, such as HIV. Such groups favor a harm reduction approach to sex work; instead of attempting to prevent a behavior, harm reduction efforts prioritize the safety, rights, and dignity of individuals engaging in the behavior.

Other drivers of the increasing public and governmental support for decriminalizing prostitution exist:

  • Clear evidence from around the world shows improved health outcomes. Studies in settings where prostitution is criminalized have reported higher drug use, lower condom usage, higher STI rates, and a host of other negative health outcomes as compared to settings that have decriminalized or legalized it. Studies have shown access to and utilization of health services among sex workers is also significantly better where prostitution is decriminalized.
  • Decriminalization can also improve worker protection and labor rights . Redirection of the attention to the occupational dimension of prostitution may enable sex workers to secure labor rights, unemployment benefits, health care, and life insurance if sex work is decriminalized.

Decriminalization also improves safety for sex workers . Human Rights Watch has consistently found in research across various countries that criminalization makes sex workers more vulnerable to violence, including rape, assault, and murder. Criminals may see sex workers as easy targets because they are unlikely to receive help from the police and, in fact, intentionally avoid the police. Criminalization of prostitution exposes sex workers to abuse and exploitation by law enforcement officials, such as police officers. Reports of extortion, harassment, and physical and verbal abuse of sex workers by police officers are common. Sex workers will be more likely to secure police protection to deal with threatening or violent situations. Criminalization further marginalizes sex workers, by pushing them underground. For example, in Sweden, where the Nordic model originated, sex workers say the policy resulted in sex work shifting to clients’ homes because of fears of clients being arrested. But this shift means that sex workers have fewer escape options if a client becomes violent . It also undermines sex workers’ ability to seek justice for crimes against them. A 2014 report by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) found that decriminalization of prostitution contributed to a large decrease in rapes.

The opposition to the decriminalization of prostitution suggests that the anticipated benefits of decriminalization have been exaggerated. Critics cite research examining the experiences of sex workers that points to the inherently marginalizing and violent nature of the profession itself, suggesting that decriminalization is not the magic solution that has been suggested.

prostitution should be legalized essay

For instance, in New Zealand, where sex work is decriminalized , one study that utilized qualitative interviews conducted with sex workers in the city of Christchurch revealed that a majority of them did not feel that decriminalization has curbed the violence that they experience. Even in areas where prostitution is decriminalized, sex workers may confront exceptional risks of assault and murder . Similarly, it has been found in Austria and Netherlands that legalizing and regulating sex work has not decreased the prevalence of the illegal, underground practices of the sex industry , therefore suggesting that the abusive work environments of sex workers have not improved. In fact, despite legalization efforts in countries such as Netherlands and Denmark, licensed brothels did not welcome regulatory inspections , and sex workers still had to resort to anonymity, secrecy, and informal cash transfers. However, more recent evidence indicates that there are highly frequent inspections, as well as sanctions for non-compliance.

In the real world, sex work legislation is much more complex and nuanced and “not monolithic." Decriminalization, and criminalization policies and implications will rarely be identical from country to country. For example, the selling of sex is considered legal in both Bangladesh and Netherlands. However, the Netherlands enforces a high level of organization and regulation, while Bangladesh has a much more informal sex work industry. Moreover, the legality of sex work can vary not only between countries but also within them, across different legal jurisdictions. Countries like the United States, Mexico, El Salvador, and Australia demonstrate such regional variations .

Domestic sex industries do not exist in a vacuum, and these complexities are further exacerbated when considering the potential impact of the domestic sex trade on international sex trafficking. According to the International Labor Organization , an estimated 11% of trafficking cases worldwide constitute forced commercial sexual exploitation. Research on human trafficking is riddled with reporting biases. Given its subversive nature, there are numerous methodological constraints to gathering conclusive and accurate evidence on this topic.

Although the wide range of differences in policies within and across countries theoretically provide ample opportunity for “natural experiments," the nature of the sex work industry is largely covert and stigmatized. As such, it is difficult to gather sufficient data and conclusively understand the effect of different legal frameworks and policies, preventing experts in the field from coming to a consensus on the best legislative approaches to address the impact of sex work. Furthermore, while many current or former sex workers have vocalized their own rich perspectives from having worked within the industry, they are often excluded from these larger conversations in research and policymaking, in part due to stigma . This gap, as well as the contextual differences that give rise to variations in sex work legislation, requires proposed solutions on this issue to utilize more community-informed approaches. These inconsistencies reflect the multifarious debate surrounding the legal stances on sex work.

Mellissa Withers , PhD, MHS, is an Associate Clinical Professor of Preventive Medicine and Director of the Master of Public Health (MPH) Online Program at the University of Southern California.

Tasfia Jahangir worked as a Research Assistant with Mellissa Withers at the Institute of Inequalities in Global Health at the University of Southern California. She is currently a Master of Public Health Candidate at Emory University, and an incoming Fulbright Research Grantee at the University of Toronto.

Weatherall, Ann and Anna Priestly. 2001. A feminist discourse analysis of sex “work.” Feminism Psychology 11: 323-40.

Saunders, Penelope. 2005. Traffic violations: Determining the meaning of violence in sexual trafficking versus sex work. Journal of Interpersonal Violence 20: 343-60.

McMann, J, Crawford, G, and Hallett, J. 2021. Sex worker health outcomes in high-income countries of varied regulatory environments: A systematic review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 18(8): 3956.

Weitzer, R. 2007. Prostitution as a form of sex work. Sociology Compass, 1(1): 143-155.

Weitzer, R. 2021. Legal prostitution systems in Europe. In H. Nelen & D. Siegel (Eds.), Contemporary Organized Crime , 2: 47-64, Springer International Publishers, 2021.

Mellissa Withers, Ph.D., M.H.S

Mellissa Withers, Ph.D., MHS , is an associate professor at the Institute on Inequalities in Global Health at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine.

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Why Prostitution Should Be Legal

"Sex workers are, for the most part, just ordinary women who are doing a job."

Prostitution , sex work

“But what if it was your daughter? Surely you wouldn’t want to see your child do sex work.”

Thus goes the common refrain whenever the topic of decriminalizing sex work arises.

Ask yourself how you would feel if Weeks — porn star Belle Knox — was your daughter. I submit that virtually every honest person — those with children of their own, as well as those who merely possess a functional moral imagination — will admit to being appalled at the thought.

I tried this experiment and discovered that I do not like to imagine my family members having sex of any kind, paid or unpaid.

However, I do not have a daughter. But, then, as Elizabeth Nolan Brown points out, the people making this argument do not necessarily have daughters , either. So, here is a brief list of professions I would not want my fictitious daughter to enter into:

Professionally playing any sport that involves head trauma. (It’s unlikely the NFL is going to let women start playing, but, if they do, I don’t want her getting CTE.)

Being a war reporter. (Everyone I’ve met who has done war reporting has “hilarious” stories about the times they almost died, which I’d find much less hilarious if they were coming from my child.)

Any profession that promises people a quick, easy and most likely ineffective way to solve their problems, like hawking untested diet pills. (It’s deeply immoral to prey on vulnerable people’s hopes.)

Becoming a spokesperson for the alt-right. (The Devil has enough advocates.)

You can agree or disagree with me that I’m right to not want a daughter to enter into those professions. The fact remains that, regardless of how I feel about them, my future daughter has a perfect legal right to pursue them.

People are allowed to enter professions that might be unsafe. People are allowed to enter into professions where their body is seen as a tool of the trade. People are allowed to enter professions that seem morally questionable. The only time that isn’t the case is when a woman is having sex as her profession.

"People are allowed to enter professions that seem morally questionable. The only time that isn’t the case is when a woman is having sex as her profession."

At least, it isn’t the case in the United States. There are a great many countries where sex work is legal, such as New Zealand, which decriminalized sex work in 2003. The results of the Prostitution Reform Act have been beneficial for sex workers. A study from the Christchurch School of Medicine found that “90 percent of sex workers believed the PRA gave them employment, legal and health and safety rights. A substantial 64 percent found it easier to refuse clients. Significantly, 57 percent said police attitudes to sex workers changed for the better.” Prostitutes also reported being able to go to the police when they were hurt or threatened, and one sex worker successfully sued a brothel owner for sexual harassment .

Lives for sex workers in countries like New Zealand are getting better.

Meanwhile, in the United States, we’re cracking down on tools sex workers use such as backpage.com. The website, which allowed escorts to list their services, was shut down earlier this month, and the co-founders and others associated with the company were charged with facilitating prostitution. Attorney General Jeff Sessions described the website as the “dominant marketplace for illicit commercial sex, a place where sex traffickers frequently advertised children and adults alike." (One co-founder has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to facilitate prostitution; the other co-founders have pleaded not guilty.) The Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) legislation promises to further reduce legal protections for these sites, which means that more of them will likely shut down in the future.

Trafficking, in which women and children are forced into sex work (or other occupations), is morally heinous. Not because it’s sex work. Because it’s forced.

However, criminalizing prostitution—or sites that facilitate sex work transactions—thereby pushing it further underground, isn’t necessarily thought to be helpful when it comes to ending trafficking.

The ACLU explains that people being trafficked “are vulnerable because they often work in jobs that are hidden from the public view and unregulated by the government.”

Critics of decriminalizing prostitution often point to increased reports of trafficking in countries that have legalized prostitution, such as Germany . It is, however, quite possible that’s because people finally started seeing trafficking and began reporting it in greater numbers. Beyond that, a Harvard Study on the topic noted that, “The likely negative consequences of legalized prostitution on a country’s inflows of human trafficking might be seen to support those who argue in favor of banning prostitution, thereby reducing the flows of trafficking…However, such a line of argumentation overlooks potential benefits that the legalization of prostitution might have on those employed in the industry.”

Countries like New Zealand, which have decriminalized all acts of prostitution, seem to have better luck in terms of the wellbeing of sex workers, perhaps because their focus was on creating legislation that “safeguards the human rights of sex workers and protects them from exploitation.”

Reforms in countries like New Zealand seem to show no increase in trafficking, and research suggests that “decriminalization has had little impact on the sex worker population at all, apart to provide it with protection.”

Amnesty International has likewise pushed for decriminalization of prostitution , claiming that, in addition to pushing for policies that protect sex workers from harm and coercion, “Sex workers must also have a say in developing laws that affect their lives and safety. But without decriminalization, they cannot expect equal treatment under the law to achieve these ends.”

Until sex workers are heard and respected, nothing is going to change.

"Until sex workers are heard and respected, nothing is going to change."

Which is an important reminder that you don’t have to look to Amnesty International to figure out how to feel about the shutdown of, for instance, backpage.com. You can look directly to the sex workers it affects.

One sex worker told Newsweek that as a result of the shutdown she was, “devastated and terrified” and that “people are going to die” as prostitution will be forced further underground and prostitutes will have to work with more dangerous people.

Others have described how Backpage helped them, writing , “Backpage gave me a basic screening tool, and access to money, and food, and shelter. Backpage kept me alive.”

We should be listening to them, and involving them in reform, because they’re the people this will impact.

If there is something to be afraid of regarding people entering sex work—beyond the fact that it is a very dangerous profession —is that it tends to render women voiceless. Society will too easily dismiss what they have to say because many people have been told that they do not need to listen to sex workers, or regard them with anything other than disgust or pity.

"Sex work tends to render women voiceless"

ABC recently shared a video wherein Stormy Daniels, a sex worker, said that Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen, “has never thought that the little man or, more especially, women, women like me, mattered. That ends now.”

But it doesn’t. One of the first comments on that video, which was liked 8,000 times, declares, "you got paid for sex...hello your [sic] not like other women."

There are a lot of people out there who do not want to accept the reality that, for the most part, sex workers are just ordinary women who are doing a job they may like or dislike to various degrees for ordinary reasons (to pay their rent, or support their kids, or to save up money for future goals.)

"There are a lot of people out there who do not want to accept the reality that, for the most part, sex workers are just ordinary women who are doing a job they may like or dislike"

This isn’t a problem with sex work. That’s a problem that has to do with the extent to which we disown individuals, especially women, who do sex work. Often, in the case of porn, we disown them while simultaneously enjoying the work they produce.

When we decriminalize sex work, sex workers lives get better. It makes it possible for them to go to police when dealing with unruly clients, rather than being reluctant to do so because it’s illegal. It allows them labor rights that mean if they’re employed, they can expect clean healthy workplaces from their employers. In Nevada, at legal brothels, 84 percent of prostitutes remarked that their jobs felt “safe.” That was “largely because the police, employers and co-workers were there to protect them.”

There’s evidence to indicate decriminalization makes non-sex workers environments better, too. When Rhode Island decriminalized sex work for six years from 2003 to 2009, a study by UCLA found there was a dramatic drop in STDs and rape . The study’s authors remarked that, “decriminalization could have potentially large social benefits for the population at large—not just sex market participants.”

We need to realize that, like every other woman, sex workers are already someone’s daughter. They’re also their own person. And we have to start listening to what they have to say.

Headshot of Jennifer  Wright

Jennifer Wright is BAZAAR.com's Political Editor at Large. She is also the author of 'Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes That Fought Them' and 'It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Break-Ups In History.'

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prostitution should be legalized essay

Should Prostitution Be a Crime?

A growing movement of sex workers and activists is making the decriminalization of sex work a feminist issue.

Credit... Holly Andres for The New York Times

Supported by

By Emily Bazelon

  • May 5, 2016

L ast November, Meg Muñoz went to Los Angeles to speak at the annual West Coast conference of Amnesty International. She was nervous. Three months earlier, at a meeting attended by about 500 delegates from 80 countries, Amnesty voted to adopt a proposal in favor of the “ full decriminalization of consensual sex work ,” sparking a storm of controversy. Members of the human rights group in Norway and Sweden resigned en masse, saying the organization’s goal should be to end demand for prostitution, not condone it. Around the world, on social media and in the press, opponents blasted Amnesty. In Los Angeles, protesters ringed the lobby of the Sheraton where the conference was being held, and as Muñoz tried to enter, a woman confronted her and became upset as Muñoz explained that, as a former sex worker , she supported Amnesty’s position. “She agreed to respect my time at the microphone,” Muñoz told me. “That didn’t exactly happen” — the woman and other critics yelled out during her panel — “but I understand why it was so hard for her.”

Muñoz was in the middle of a pitched battle over the terms, and even the meaning, of sex work. In the United States and around the globe, many sex workers (the term activists prefer to “prostitute”) are trying to change how they are perceived and policed. They are fighting the legal status quo, social mores and also mainstream feminism, which has typically focused on saving women from the sex trade rather than supporting sex workers who demand greater rights. But in the last decade, sex-worker activists have gained new allies. If Amnesty’s international board approves a final policy in favor of decriminalization in the next month, it will join forces with public-health organizations that have successfully worked for years with groups of sex workers to halt the spread of H.I.V. and AIDS, especially in developing countries. “The urgency of the H.I.V. epidemic really exploded a lot of taboos,” says Catherine Murphy, an Amnesty policy adviser.

Onstage , wearing a white blouse with lace, her face framed by glasses and straight brown hair, Muñoz, who is 43, looked calm and determined as she leaned into the microphone to tell her story. She started escorting at 18, after she graduated from high school in Los Angeles County, picking up men at a dance club a couple of times a week and striking deals to have sex for $100 or so, at a hotel or their apartments. She had a part-time job as a restaurant hostess, but she liked feeling desired and making money on the side to spend on clothes and entertainment. “I really, really did love the work,” she told her Amnesty audience of more than 100. “I was a little reckless.” The same recklessness led her to methamphetamine. When her parents found out she was using, they sent her to rehab. She stopped escorting and using drugs and found a serious boyfriend. When she was 24, the relationship ended, and around that time her parents sold their house. Muñoz started living on her own for the first time. With rent and car insurance to pay, and a plan to save for college, escorting became her livelihood. “I was moving toward a goal, and sex work helped me do that,” Muñoz told the crowd.

A few years later, however, another ex-boyfriend, with whom she was still close, started to take advantage of the underground nature of Muñoz’s work. At first, she told me, he asked her to pay to get his car back after it was towed. Then he started demanding more money and dictating when she worked and which clients she saw. Muñoz didn’t exactly seem like a trafficking victim; she was driving her own car, going to school and paying her expenses. But looking back, she says that’s the way she sees herself. “Because the work I was doing was illegal, he started to hold it over my head. He blackmailed me by threatening to tell everyone, including my family.”

The man was violent, and Muñoz extricated herself with the help of a friend, whom she later married. Haunted by the control her ex-boyfriend had exerted over her, she founded in 2009 a small faith-based group called Abeni near her home in Orange County, to help other women escape from prostitution, as she had. A couple of years later, Muñoz, who now has four children, started letting herself remember the period earlier in her life when escorting served her well, as a source of income and even stability. Struggling internally, she had a “crisis of conscience,” she says, and came to regret her assumptions about what was necessarily best for Abeni’s clients. She stopped taking on new ones, and then turned Abeni into one of the few groups in the country that helps people either leave sex work or continue doing it safely.

At the Amnesty conference, Muñoz told the crowd that she thinks decriminalization would have benefits for many people by bringing the sex trade out from underground. “I believe in the empowered sex worker,” she said. “I was one. But the empowered sex worker isn’t representative of the majority of sex workers. It’s O.K. for us to be honest about this.” She was referring to the social and economic divide in the profession. Activists in the sex-workers’ movement tend to be educated and make hundreds of dollars an hour. The words they often use to describe themselves — dominatrix, fetishist, sensual masseuse, courtesan, sugar baby, whore, witch, pervert — can be self-consciously half-wicked.

Some of their concerns can seem far removed from those of women who feel they must sell sex to survive — a mother trying to scrape together the rent, say, or a runaway teenager. People in those situations generally don’t call themselves “sex workers” or see themselves as part of a movement. “It’s not something people we work with would ever talk about,” says Deon Haywood, the director of Women With a Vision in New Orleans, an African-American health collective that works with low-income women and trans clients. Some of them sell sex, Haywood says, because it’s more flexible and pays better than low-wage work at businesses like McDonald’s.

Human rights advocates tend to focus on people in grim circumstances. “Like many feminists, I’m conflicted about sex work,” says Liesl Gerntholtz, executive director of the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch, which took a stand in favor of decriminalization four years ago. “You’re often talking about women who have extremely limited choices. Would I like to live in a world where no one has to do sex work? Absolutely. But that’s not the case. So I want to live in a world where women do it largely voluntarily, in a way that is safe. If they’re raped by a police officer or a client, they can lay a charge and know it will be investigated. Their kid won’t be expelled from school, and their landlord won’t kick them out.”

Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, along with other groups that support decriminalization — U.N.AIDS, the World Health Organization, the Global Commission on H.I.V. and the Law and the Open Society Foundations — acknowledge that there can be grave harms associated with the sex industry, but say that they see changes in the law as a precondition to reducing them. Last year, an analysis in The Lancet predicted that “decriminalization of sex work could have the largest effect on the course of the H.I.V. epidemic,” by increasing access to condoms and medical treatment. Governments can free themselves to crack down on trafficking and under-age prostitution, human rights advocates argue, if they stop arresting consenting adults.

It’s a pragmatic argument. But the sex-workers’ movement also hinges on an ideological conviction — the belief that the criminal law should not be used here as an instrument of punishment or shame, because sex work isn’t inherently immoral or demeaning. It can even be authentically feminist. “Once you’ve done it, you always know: When it comes down to it, I have everything I need to survive,” says Anna Saini, a former sex worker who is now a sex-worker activist and law student living in Brooklyn. “That’s powerful.” This view poses a deep challenge to traditional Western feminism, which treats the commercial sex industry as an ugly source of sexual inequality.

prostitution should be legalized essay

The activists themselves are a fractious bunch. They belong to a variety of small and sometimes competing groups and question one another’s bona fides on social media and a blog called Tits and Sass . Women who publicly argue the case for decriminalization tend to be white. Women of color say that it’s harder for them to get an audience; they also don’t want white women to speak for them. Trans women raise similar objections. “Don’t tell my story in support of a cis woman’s story,” Monica Jones, who is black and transgender, cautioned me. She did sex work without qualms to help pay the tuition for her social-work degree at Arizona State University. “If you want to be with me, you’re going to pay me or buy me a ring,” she says frankly of her partners. Two years ago, she accepted a ride to a bar with a man and was found guilty of prostitution; her case became a cause célèbre when she challenged her conviction, saying she was just going out for a beer that night, and won her appeal.

Some opponents of decriminalization call themselves abolitionists, consciously invoking the battle to end slavery as well as the one for equality. “If prostitution is legal, and men can buy women’s bodies with impunity, it’s the extreme sexualization of women,” says Yasmeen Hassan, the global executive director of Equality Now , a women’s rights group that campaigns against trafficking. “They’re sexual objects. What does that mean for how professional women are seen? And if women are sex toys you can buy, think about the impact on relationships between men and women, in marriage or otherwise.”

The United States has some of the world’s most sweeping laws against prostitution, with more than 55,000 arrests annually, more than two-thirds of which involve women. Women of color are at higher risk of arrest. (In New York City, they make up 85 percent of people who are arrested.) So are trans women, who are more likely to do sex work because of employment discrimination . The mark left by a criminal record can make it even harder to find other employment. In Louisiana five years ago, 700 people, many of them women of color and trans women, were listed on the sex-offender registry for the equivalent of a prostitution misdemeanor. Women With a Vision, Deon Haywood’s group, won a lawsuit to remove them in 2013.

Because abolitionists see these women as victims, they generally oppose arresting them. But they want to continue using the criminal law as a weapon of moral disapproval by prosecuting male customers, alongside pimps and traffickers — though this approach still tends to entangle sex workers in a legal net.

Last July, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, an abolitionist group, accused Amnesty of supporting “a system of gender apartheid,” in which some women are “set apart for consumption by men,” in a letter with 400 signatories, including Gloria Steinem, Lena Dunham, Kate Winslet and Meryl Streep. Anna Saini, the Brooklyn sex-worker activist, went from feeling betrayed by the celebrities to feeling victorious. “They threw all this fame and name recognition at us, and Amnesty is still doing what’s right,” she said. “That was super exciting.” The fight has become, Liesl Gerntholtz of Human Rights Watch says, “the most contentious and divisive issue in today’s women’s movement.”

The battle lines among American feminists over selling sex were drawn in the 1970s. On one side were radical feminists like the writer Andrea Dworkin and the lawyer and legal scholar Catherine MacKinnon. They were the early abolitionists, condemning prostitution, along with pornography and sexual violence, as the most virulent and powerful sources of women’s oppression. “I’ve tried to voice the protest against a power that is dead weight on you, fist and penis organized to keep you quiet,” wrote Dworkin, who sold sex briefly around the age of 19, when she ran out of money on a visit to Europe.

Other feminists, who called themselves “sex positive,” saw sex workers as subverters of patriarchy, not as victims. On Mother’s Day 1973, a 35-year-old former call girl named Margo St. James founded a group in San Francisco called Coyote, for “Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics.” Its goal was to decriminalize prostitution, as a feminist act. In its heyday, Coyote threw annual Hooker’s Balls, where drag queens and celebrities mixed with politicians and police. It was a party : In 1978, a crowd of 20,000 filled the city’s Cow Palace, and St. James entered riding an elephant.

By the 1980s, Dworkin’s argument condemning prostitution moved into the feminist mainstream, with the support of Gloria Steinem, who began rejecting the term “sex work.” St. James and the sex-positivists were relegated to the fringes.

The abolitionists moved into the fight against global labor trafficking in the 1990s, focusing on sex trafficking, though most estimates suggest that the majority of trafficking victims are forced into domestic, agricultural or construction work. The abolitionists wanted to erase the traditional legal distinction between forced and consensual prostitution by cracking down on all of it as trafficking. In 1998, they tried to persuade President Bill Clinton — and Hillary Clinton, who was the honorary chairwoman of the Clinton administration’s council on women — to adopt their broad definition in an international crime treaty and a federal trafficking bill. It was a striking effort to expand and stiffen criminal punishment, a strategy Elizabeth Bernstein, a Barnard sociologist who studies sex work and trafficking, termed “ carceral feminism .” Abolitionists “have relied upon strategies of incarceration as their chief tool of ‘justice,’ ” she wrote in 2007. They lost the fight to define all prostitution as trafficking during the Clinton administration. “Those were depressing years,” Donna Hughes, an abolitionist researcher and women’s studies professor at the University of Rhode Island, said in an interview in National Review in 2006.

When George W. Bush was elected in 2000, Hughes and other abolitionists formed a coalition with faith-based groups, including evangelical Republicans, to lobby the new president. The Bush administration funded Christian groups, like the International Justice Mission, to rescue girls and women abroad. I.J.M. helped to raid brothels in Cambodia, Thailand and India, working with local police officers who broke down doors while American TV cameras rolled. Donations poured in to I.J.M. from the United States.

Jade, a dominatrix in Seattle.

prostitution should be legalized essay

Endza Adair, who describes herself as an escort and a porn actress, lives in Seattle.

prostitution should be legalized essay

Kristen DiAngelo, a courtesan, escort and masseuse in Sacramento.

prostitution should be legalized essay

Monica Jones, an activist in the Southwest.

prostitution should be legalized essay

Janet Duran, an escort and companion currently ‘‘on hiatus’’ in New Jersey.

prostitution should be legalized essay

Maggie McMuffin, a pro sub (professional submissive), porn performer and stripper in Seattle.

prostitution should be legalized essay

Mistress Matisse, a professional dominatrix, writer and activist for sex-workers’ rights in Seattle.

prostitution should be legalized essay

Ceyenne, an activist and former dominatrix in New York.

prostitution should be legalized essay

Inara Byrne, an escort and companion in Seattle.

prostitution should be legalized essay

Mistress Josie, a dominatrix in New York.

prostitution should be legalized essay

Caroline McLeod, a specialist in companionship and tantra in Seattle.

prostitution should be legalized essay

Mistress Annabelle, a dominatrix in New York.

prostitution should be legalized essay

Mona Wales, a sex worker in San Francisco.

prostitution should be legalized essay

Tobi Hill-Meyer, a director and performer in pornography and erotic documentary in Seattle.

prostitution should be legalized essay

Broc Diamond, a confidant in Newark.

prostitution should be legalized essay

Maggie McNeill, a courtesan and girlfriend-experience escort in Seattle.

prostitution should be legalized essay

Sierra Cirque, an escort, B.D.S.M. professional (bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism) and porn and webcam performer in Seattle.

prostitution should be legalized essay

Lucretia X, a dominatrix in New York.

prostitution should be legalized essay

Olivia Fyre, a dominatrix and fetish-video performer and producer in Seattle.

prostitution should be legalized essay

Elliott Stacy, a sex therapist in San Francisco.

prostitution should be legalized essay

Lady Vi, a pro domme (professional dominant) in Seattle.

prostitution should be legalized essay

Heather, a former escort in Charleston, W.V.

prostitution should be legalized essay

Katherine Beasley, a professional dominant and kinky life coach in Seattle.

prostitution should be legalized essay

Savannah Sly, based in Seattle and Boston, describes herself as a jack of all trades.

But local human rights and women’s groups complained about the tactic. After some raids by police forces in India and Indonesia, girls and women were deported, detained in abusive institutions and coerced into sex with the police, according to a 2005 bulletin by the World Health Organization and the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS. Two years earlier, when I.J.M. reported that there were minors in a brothel in Thailand, the police raided it and locked the women who were working there in an orphanage. The women strung together bedsheets to escape from a second-story window.

Françoise Girard was director of the public-health program at the Open Society Foundations when she met with Gary Haugen, the leader of I.J.M., and Holly Burkhalter, a senior adviser, in 2007. “I.J.M. said, ‘If we can save one girl, it’s worth it,’ ” says Girard, who is now president of the International Women’s Health Coalition. “I said, ‘What happens to the girls?’ And they couldn’t answer.” Burkhalter says she doesn’t remember Girard’s question, but the police did not permit I.J.M. to go on the raid in Thailand. “If we had, it would have gone much better,” she says, adding that now, when I.J.M. helps with raids, “each victim has a case worker.”

The Bush administration also funded abolitionist research on the harmful effects of prostitution, prominently featuring references to that work on the State Department’s website. Hughes, the abolitionist women’s-studies professor, denounced strip clubs and lap-dancing in a 2005 report on trafficking that was funded with more than $100,000 from the State Department. Melissa Farley, a psychologist who received Bush funds, wrote in 2000 in the journal Women and Criminal Justice that any woman who claimed to have chosen prostitution was acting pathologically — “enjoyment of domination and rape are in her nature.” Non-abolitionist researchers criticized her for presenting the brutal harm of some experiences of prostitution as the near-universal reality without solid evidence.

In part as a response to lobbying by feminist abolitionists and evangelicals, in 2003 Congress barred groups that aided trafficking victims from receiving federal funds if they supported the “legalization or practice of prostitution.” The same year, President Bush committed $15 billion to the international fight against AIDS, but required all recipients of the funding to sign an anti-prostitution pledge. The result was a head-on collision between AIDS prevention and abolitionist ideas . Brazil turned down $40 million in American funds. Sangram , a public-health and human rights organization that was distributing condoms in Sangli, a red-light district in rural southern India, refused to sign the pledge and returned American funds in 2005, at a time when U.N.AIDS cited it as a trusted source on H.I.V. and human rights. “We were distributing 350,000 condoms a month,” says Meena Seshu, the director of Sangram, who has a master’s degree in social work and has published in The Lancet and won an award from Human Rights Watch. “Do you actually work with people, or do you give them morals? That was the choice.”

The Obama administration continues to fund organizations involved in rescue missions. In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the anti-prostitution pledge for groups in the United States, ruling that it violated their free-speech rights. But the decision didn’t apply to foreign groups, which still cannot receive federal funding to fight AIDS if they support the sex-workers’ rights movement.

The current debate over sex work in the United States is often framed as a choice between international legal systems. Abolitionists embrace what they call the Swedish (or Nordic) model. In 1999, at the urging of feminists, Sweden’s Parliament passed the Sex Purchase Act, making it a crime to buy sex. Prostitution itself had not been a crime, but the new law deemed it “a serious harm both to individuals and to society,” giving the legislation a moral underpinning and aiming to “flush the johns out of the Baltic,” as a media campaign declared. A decade later, Sweden announced a reduction in street prostitution by as much as 50 percent and proclaimed the law a success. Though no one had recorded data on street prostitution before the law passed, the claimed drop became the chief selling point for a system that punished men. Yet online advertising for sex increased in Sweden, leading researchers to conclude that the small market was shifting indoors. Norway and Iceland adopted the Swedish model in 2009, and in the last two years, Canada and Northern Ireland enacted modified versions.

Sex-worker activists reject this model. “People think the Swedish state criminalized clients, and not us, because they cared about us, but that was not the case,” says Pye Jakobsson, a Swedish sex worker who is the president of the Global Network of Sex Work Projects. “The law is about protecting society, and we’re seen as a threat.” Some sex workers say that criminalizing male behavior pushes them to take greater risks. “Women who worked on the street used to have safe spots where they would tell the client to drive,” Jakobsson explains. “Now clients say no, because of the police. They want to go someplace else remote. How can the woman be safe there?” In December, a Bulgarian sex worker was found brutally murdered in a deserted parking lot at the harbor in Oslo. Her friends — also migrants from the Balkan States, like many women selling sex in Sweden and Norway — looked for her when she went missing. But they did not go to the police until they found her body.

When the police investigate whether a man has bought sex, “they use it as a reason to check women’s documents,” says May-Len Skilbrei, a criminology and sociology professor at the University of Oslo. She says that these inspections can lead to deportations. Sex workers also face the possibility of losing custody of their children and being evicted. “If the police tell the landlord they think you’re escorting out of your apartment, he has to evict you, or he could be prosecuted,“ Skilbrei says. The Norwegian police called a long-running Oslo crackdown on prostitution Operation Homeless.

The Swedish government has been clear that it considers the problems the law causes for sex workers an acceptable form of deterrence, reporting in 2010 that the negative effects “must be viewed as positive from the perspective that the purpose of the law is indeed to combat prostitution.” When France adopted the Swedish model in April, the bill’s sponsor in Parliament said one goal was to “ change mentalities .” On social media, American sex workers poured out their sympathy for their French sisters, who were marching in protest.

Sweden may not be a relevant model for the United States, where the kind of hardship that often pushes people into street-level sex work is more widespread and the safety net much weaker. The difference is relevant, says Rachel Lloyd, the founder and C.E.O. of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (GEMS), based in Central Harlem, which helps about 400 girls and young women in New York annually who have been involved in prostitution. She opposes legalization, because she thinks it will increase trafficking. She visited Stockholm two years ago and found it significant that there are so many family services, that few teenagers are in foster care and that most have access to state-funded universities. “I came away thinking: In the U.S., we’re not there,” she says about adopting the Swedish model. “We don’t have the social services.” Lloyd says that not enough of the tens of millions of dollars in government funds and donations in the United States that go to fight trafficking are used for services, like housing for teenagers leaving foster care; 70 percent of GEMS members have been in that system. “When you’re trying to move forward, you need an apartment,” Lloyd says. “You need to go to school.” (In Sweden, she was also surprised to learn that men who are caught buying sex are fined rather than arrested, paying an amount that depends on their income and generally ranges from $300 to $4500, according to a news report .)

Australia has adopted a very different legal model from Sweden’s. In 1999, the Australian state of New South Wales repealed its criminal laws against prostitution, freeing consenting adults to buy and sell sex and allowing brothels to operate much like other businesses. (Other Australian states have a variety of laws.) Four years later, New Zealand implemented full decriminalization. Abolitionists predicted explosive growth of prostitution. But the number of sex workers stayed flat, at about 6,000 in New Zealand and somewhat more in New South Wales. Condom use among sex workers rose above 99 percent, according to government surveys. Sex workers in brothels in New South Wales report the same level of depression and stress as women in the general population; rates are far higher for women who work on the street, who are also often intravenous drug users. While the New Zealand government has found no evidence that sex workers are being trafficked across the country’s border, last November, the Parliament of New South Wales gave the police more power to monitor brothels, after reports that some were linked to organized crime and prosecutions for “sexual servitude” and exploitation. One involved a Thai woman who was recruited in Bangkok and told she would learn to be a hairdresser.

A couple of years ago, a Seattle dominatrix and outspoken activist who goes by the name Mistress Matisse flew to Australia for three weeks and spent a week working. “I just had to see what it was like,” she says. At home, she writes for The Stranger, Seattle’s alternative weekly, and frequently tweets about the practice and politics of sex work to her 27,000 Twitter followers.

In Australia, Matisse worked at a small brothel called the Golden Apple (small bar, six bedrooms) in Sydney, which is in New South Wales, and a larger one called Gotham City. “I thought: I won’t be Mistress Matisse. I’ll just be a girl doing full service” — intercourse — “which I hadn’t done for years,” she says. She saw three or four clients a night and then went to the beach.

Matisse contrasted working in Australia with working in a brothel in Nevada several years ago. She much preferred Australia. Nevada limits legal prostitution to a small number of brothels in rural areas, and they are subject to strict licensing requirements. “In Australia, you go home every night, and you can have a cigarette, go on a date, stay in a normal head space,” Matisse said. “In Nevada, you had to be in the brothel 24/7. It was like a cross between summer camp and a women’s prison.” Most prostitution in the state takes place illegally outside the brothels, in Las Vegas and Reno, with more freedom but also more risk.

Germany has a similar two-tiered market. The country became a growing destination for sex tourism after introducing in 2002 new regulations for the legal sex trade , with an estimated 400,000 sex workers. Migrant women working underground, some of whom are lured into crossing the border, face the same threat of deportation as in Sweden. Meanwhile, licensing requirements raised the cost of setting up brothels, favoring chains and big businesses, including a 12-story, neon-lit brothel in Cologne. “What’s strange is how industrial the brothels are,” says Skilbrei, the professor at the University of Oslo. “They control the women, for example with health checks.” That’s not the model sex workers are fighting for, because it diminishes their autonomy.

Amnesty distinguishes the laws in Germany (and the Netherlands, where sex work is legal but regulated by local authorities) from those in New Zealand and Australia, which place “greater control into the hands of sex workers to operate independently, self-organize in informal cooperatives and control their own working environments,” the human rights group states . Melissa Farley, the psychologist and abolitionist researcher, rejects all of these models. “The state functions as a pimp, collecting taxes, which I consider blood money,” she wrote in an email last December. In the most recent government research , a 2008 survey of 770 sex workers by the New Zealand government, most reported that they were not likely to report violence to the police, which the government attributed to their sense of stigma. Farley sees this as proof that “wherever prostitution exists, the harm goes with it, regardless of legal status.”

To Amnesty, the lesson is that decriminalization isn’t like flipping a switch — it takes time for attitudes to shift. There are signs that this has begun: In the 2008 New Zealand survey, 40 percent of sex workers also said they felt a sense of camaraderie and belonging, suggesting that their relationships with one another may provide an antidote to stigma. Annah Pickering, who does street outreach for the New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective, describes a more recent dynamic with the police that would be unthinkable almost anywhere else. “We used to wave the police down for help, and they’d keep driving, but now they take sex workers’ complaints seriously,” she said. She told me about an incident in South Auckland last year. “One client negotiated with a street worker; she did the act, and he refused to pay. She waved a cop down, and he told the client he had to pay and took him to the A.T.M. to get the money.”

Sixty years ago , after Gloria Steinem graduated from Smith College, she spent two years in India on a fellowship observing village-based land reform. Returning to the country in 2014, she called prostitution “commercial rape,” making headlines . Until recently, Indian feminists shared Steinem’s views of prostitution, but many have gradually shifted their thinking. In 2014, Lalitha Kumaramangalam, the chairwoman of India’s National Commission on Women, came out in favor of decriminalization, saying it would help protect sex workers from violence and improve their health care. Reaction within India was mixed . But the refusal of Americans like Steinem to rethink their broad-brush condemnation of sex work, or the wisdom of rescue tactics, angers some feminists there. “Why have you locked yourself into saving sex workers in India and not engaged with the larger women’s movement?” asked Geeta Misra, who runs the human rights group C.R.E.A. in New Delhi, which tries to build feminist leadership and expand sexual and reproductive freedom.

The debate shifted in India largely because of the role of the country’s sex-worker collectives, which are among the largest in the world, and which exert a social and political force that has no parallel in the United States. Founded in the early 1990s, the collectives first proved adept at helping to slow the spread of H.I.V. Melinda Gates went to Sonagachi, the red-light district in the city of Kolkata, in 2004 and wrote in The Seattle Times about a sex worker named Gita and her peers, who “have helped to increase condom use from zero to 70 percent in their district, and to reduce H.I.V. infection rates to 7 percent — compared with rates as high as 66 percent among sex workers elsewhere.” Gates concluded by announcing that the foundation she created with her husband, Bill Gates, would spend $200 million to fight H.I.V. in India, an amount later raised to $338 million.

The sex-worker collective in Sonagachi, the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (D.M.S.C., the “Unstoppable Women Committee”), now has 65,000 members and runs schools for the children of sex workers, who often face discrimination, and has established banks where sex workers can open accounts. In rural Sangli, 6,000 people belong to Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad (or VAMP, “Sex Workers Fight Injustice”), an offshoot of Sangram, the public-health group.

While it’s illegal to own a brothel or sell sex on the street in India, indoor prostitution is not against the law. Enforcement is uneven, and the police sometimes demand sex or bribes. Nevertheless, the relationship between the police and sex workers can approach a tenuous détente that allows the collectives to assert themselves. A project of the Gates Foundation, from 2005 until 2011, used the collective model to organize 60,000 sex workers in Karnataka. They brought in peer educators to talk to the police and lawyers to teach sex workers about their rights not to be harassed and, often, not to be arrested. As arrests dropped, so did violence by the police, pimps and clients, along with the H.I.V. rate, according to a study last year in The Journal of the International AIDS Society.

Human rights advocates, including Amnesty, think the sex-worker collectives are a far better means of preventing trafficking and under-age prostitution than brothel raids. D.M.S.C. and VAMP run screening boards in Sonagachi and Sangli, which interview women who are new to the district, asking if they’ve entered the sex trade willingly and sometimes checking birth certificates for proof that the women are at least 18 (partly out of self-interest, because older women often don’t want to compete with younger ones). It’s not a perfect system by any means. Among other shortcomings, high-end brothels in Sonagachi, run by people called agrawalis, don’t participate in the collective’s condom distribution, say researchers, including Prabha Kotiswaran, a faculty member at King’s College, London, who conducted months of field work in Sonagachi for her book “ Dangerous Sex, Invisible Labor .” “The agrawalis are a source of under-age trafficking,” Kotiswaran says. At other brothels, however, she saw D.M.S.C.’s staff trying to help girls leave and find better options than state-run protective custody, where they often wind up after raids. “That’s a nightmare, like prison,” Kotiswaran says.

Indian feminists want poor women to have alternatives for making a decent living, but they are hard to come by. Kotiswaran found that women could make roughly six times as much doing sex work in Sonagachi as they could at a garment factory. In one study in 2011 of more than 5,000 women across India, only 3 percent said they were “forced” into the sex trade, and only 10 percent said they freely chose it. The rest fell into the gray area in between, giving reasons related to poverty or issues like domestic violence or desertion.

In any other context, American feminists would celebrate tens of thousands of women organizing to improve their lives. But Steinem expresses deep suspicion of the Indian sex-worker collectives. D.M.S.C. has enabled “the sex industry to attract millions of dollars from the Gates Foundation,” creating “a big new source of income for brothel owners, pimps and traffickers,” she wrote in the newspaper The Hindu in 2012. Last fall, in an interview with Esquire, she called the foundation’s work in India a “disaster” and said there was “no evidence that women have the power to make men use condoms.” (Through a spokesman, the Gates Foundation declined to comment.) Yet studies have shown large jumps in condom use when sex workers organize, and the annual rate of new H.I.V. infections in India has fallen by half .

Steinem’s guide in Sonagachi, and during part of her 2014 trip, was Ruchira Gupta, an Indian former journalist who founded a group called Apne Aap , which tries to help women leave sex work and has helped the police raid brothels. Gupta has strong ties with American abolitionists. She received funding from the State Department during the Bush administration, won a Clinton Global Citizen Award in 2009 and is scheduled to receive an honorary degree from Smith College this month. Steinem is on Apne Aap’s advisory board . Nicholas Kristof, an opinion columnist for The New York Times who has gone on brothel raids (including one in Cambodia that he live-tweeted ), has called Gupta a “brilliant social entrepreneur.” When I asked Gupta about the Gates Foundation’s work preventing AIDS, she said: “They’re thinking about the 45-year-old man who is the client. Instead of protecting women and girls from rapists, they protect the men from AIDS.” Gupta similarly denounced Amnesty and Human Rights Watch: “They see a little girl in a brothel and think it’s fine, if we give her a condom.” Rachel Moran, author of the recent memoir “ Paid For ,” who calls herself a survivor of prostitution in Ireland, also says that “Amnesty International has taken their views directly from pimps and traffickers.” Amnesty categorically denies these accusations, explaining that it consulted sex workers along with doing extensive research. “We recognize that harm can occur in sex work, but to characterize the sex-workers’ rights movement as a front for pimps is really shocking,” Catherine Murphy of Amnesty says.

Steinem declined to talk to me. Her assistant said she would defer to Gupta as “her source on this subject.” Human rights advocates question Gupta’s approach because of the complexity of sex work in India. Many women who sell sex do so alone or in small groups, out of homes or in side streets, truck stops, parks or railway stops. Some rent rooms from women who have done or continue to do sex work. Those women are often the ones arrested on charges of brothel-keeping or trafficking, says Siddharth Dube, a public-health expert and former senior adviser at U.N.AIDS who writes extensively about sex work in India in a memoir, “ No One Else .” He adds, “And this is a disaster, because this is a helpless impoverished woman in her 40s or 50s trying to survive.”

There is another side to prostitution in India, which Dube says is far less prevalent: Small rural communities in which, for some families, prostitution is intergenerational, and women or girls are expected to enter the trade. These are some of the most difficult places in which to fight trafficking. “You must try,” Dube says. “But you’re walking into a very complex and explosive situation where you can make huge errors of judgment in identifying who is a trafficker.” Like everyone I spoke to, he opposes under-age prostitution. But to address it, “you can’t just have raids in a slipshod way or seek publicity. You have to really painstakingly try to solve these problems with the community.”

Apne Aap concentrates much of its work in these kinds of communities and has brought in the media to cover raids and intergenerational prostitution. But one TV segment, “The ‘Fallen’ Women of Perna,” which was broadcast on the TV show “India Today,” provoked beatings by some family members of some of the girls and women who appeared on the show, according to former American and European interns and Indian staff members of Apne Aap who wrote letters criticizing the organization in 2014. They sent the letters to Apne Aap’s main funder, the NoVo Foundation in New York, founded by Warren Buffett’s son Peter.

Gupta questioned whether the beatings occurred and said that if they did, “it wasn’t because of Apne Aap.” She told me she hated the show’s title, but the group promoted the segment, which included an interview with her. “Through the use of occasional media,” Gupta says, “we frighten the local authorities not to collude with the traffickers, and we frighten the traffickers to think what they’re doing will go public.”

The former Apne Aap employees also wrote that “there is a disconnect” between the organization’s head office and the “needs and voices” of the field offices and the girls and women they aim to serve. After the letters, Apne Aap ended the international intern program. It also stopped renting an expensive office and house in Delhi, far from its field work, and hired Dalberg Development Associates to assess its impact over the previous five years. Dalberg praised Apne Aap’s work bringing women together, providing legal training and, in particular, helping to place children at risk of prostitution in residential schools, but recommended that the group “reduce or delink direct involvement” in brothel rescues.

Apne Aap is halfway through receiving a two-year $700,000 grant from the NoVo Foundation. In an email, NoVo said it continued to support the organization out of concern for the “marginalized girls and women who rely on Apne Aap for essential services.” The American support, in particular by Steinem, for Apne Aap’s model saddens and frustrates Indian feminists who promote the sex-worker collectives. “Gloria Steinem was one of our icons,” says Meena Seshu of Sangram. “We really looked up to her. Why doesn’t she come and listen to the people here, with respect and dignity?”

A few years ago, VAMP, the Sangli collective, made a short film, “ Save Us From Saviors .” On camera, a leader in the collective named Shabana says: “I started doing sex work when I was 12 years old. One of my sisters was burnt to death. I might also have been killed, so I ran away.” In the next shot, dressed in a bright yellow sari, she sits with her two children, and one of them kisses her on the head. “It is only recently that I’ve started thinking it’s good that I’m in sex work,” Shabana says. “I don’t have to depend on anyone for anything.”

What would decriminalization in the United States look like, if the sex-workers’ rights movement got its way? It’s hard to apply lessons from other countries. Some activists think the best way to find out would be to start with a local experiment. “You need one place to try it,” Meg Muñoz said to me, mentioning the legalization of marijuana in Colorado. “You need the right testing environment.” It’s not clear where that would be, though; San Francisco voters rejected a decriminalization referendum by a wide margin in 2008.

The way decriminalization might play out probably lies in the unsexy details of implementation. Cities could use zoning ordinances to address concerns about the effects on residential neighborhoods by confining brothels, like strip clubs, to industrial areas and limiting their size. Trafficking and promoting under-age prostitution would remain crimes. People could work discreetly in their own homes or hotels without fear of reprisal. The sex industry could become safer, as activists hope. It’s also possible that the sex trade would grow, as abolitionists warn, especially if one area turned into a sex-tourism hot spot.

Until now, abolitionist ideas about punishing men and treating women as victims have dominated legal reform in the United States. Seattle, for example, has announced a shift toward arresting male clients and connecting sex workers with services. But sex workers I spoke to around the country, in a variety of life circumstances, raised questions about how punishing buyers would make their lives better; they would still be participating in illegal transactions and have something to hide. An older escort told me that if she didn’t dread exposure and losing her business, she would report under-age prostitution and trafficking to the police if she witnessed it.

Three years ago in New York, abolitionists encouraged the establishment of Human Trafficking Intervention Courts for people arrested on prostitution charges. Judges mandate services like counseling to address trauma and can dismiss charges against those who attend and aren’t rearrested. It’s better than having a criminal record, sex workers and their advocates say, but women who don’t comply can still end up in jail, and some of those who attend say they resent being forced into the mandated counseling. The courts also authorize pretrial detention, sending women to jail to protect them from men in their lives, if a judge deems it necessary, or simply to prevent their immediate return to prostitution. These courts are an experiment in “ penal welfare ” because they repackage criminal intervention as social services, argues Kate Mogulescu, the founder and supervising attorney of the Exploitation Intervention Project at the Legal Aid Society. A few months before the trafficking courts opened, New York State passed a “bawdy house” law, making it easier for prosecutors to institute eviction proceedings for prostitution if landlords do not.

Last spring, with support from abolitionists and conservatives (the same coalition from the days of the Bush administration), Congress passed the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, which makes the crime of buying sex from a trafficking victim equivalent to sex trafficking itself. The maximum sentence is 99 years in prison. Rachel Lloyd of GEMS thinks the emphasis of reform should be on helping girls and women, not increasing penalties for men who pay for sex. In 2008, she helped pass a safe-harbor law, which treats juveniles in prostitution as victims, rather than criminals, in New York. (More than half the states have such laws.)

Talking to sex workers across the country, in a variety of life circumstances, I heard a range of feelings about what they do. A self-described East Indian courtesan in New York said she loved “playing a role, developing a fantasy we can both walk into out of our mundane lives.” A dominatrix who lives on the Upper East Side told me she sometimes felt good about making an emotional connection. Then her tone changed. “But God, I hate putting on the strap-on.” A woman in Brooklyn said her clients meant nothing to her. “I only care about my kids,” she said. “This is about providing for them.” Mistress Matisse, the Seattle dominatrix, treats some clients as friends; one does her taxes, and another, an exterminator, checks her house for bugs. She raised thousands of dollars from clients and online donors to help a woman named Heather in West Virginia, who told me she hated sex work but was doing it to buy heroin, pay for living expenses and go into drug treatment. “If you don’t want to do this work, you shouldn’t have to,” Mistress Matisse told me. “I can see how it would bruise your heart.” Other women, sounding numb or even traumatized, said that they had to dissociate to get through their time with clients. Ceyenne, an activist who was arrested a few years ago while doing “fetish work” in New Jersey, said, “Mentally and physically, it’s a lot to carry.” She wrote a memoir, and she speaks regularly to L.G.B.T. youth groups. “When I talk to these girls coming up now, I tell them to reach for more.”

The traditional feminist argument against decriminalization is that legitimizing prostitution will harm women by leading to more sexual inequality. The human rights argument for it is that it will make people’s lives better, and safer. In this fight over whose voices to listen to, who speaks for whom and when to use the power of criminal law, the sex-workers’ rights movement is a rebellion against punishment and shame. It demands respect for a group that has rarely received it, insisting that you can only really help people if you respect them.

An article on May 8 about prostitution misstated the legal status of prostitution in the Netherlands. It is legal throughout the country — not just in Amsterdam — though subject to local regulations. The article also misidentified the academic field of Elizabeth Bernstein, a Barnard professor who studies sex work. She is a sociologist, not an anthropologist. And the article described Bulgaria incorrectly. It is a Balkan State, not a Baltic State.

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Emily Bazelon is a staff writer for the magazine and the Truman Capote fellow at Yale Law School. Holly Andres is a photographer based in Portland. Her solo show “The Fallen Fawn” can be seen at Charles A. Hartman Fine Art until May 28. Margaret Cheatham Williams is a video journalist for The Times.

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Home — Essay Samples — Law, Crime & Punishment — Prostitution — My Arguments For The Legalization Of Prostitution

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My Arguments for The Legalization of Prostitution

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Published: Sep 1, 2020

Words: 1038 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

Works Cited

  • Dalla, R. L. (2006). Legalizing prostitution: From illicit vice to lawful business. New York University Press.
  • Farley, M., & Barkan, H. (Eds.). (2013). Prostitution, Trafficking, and Traumatic Stress. Routledge.
  • Jeffreys, S. (2009). The industrial vagina: The political economy of the global sex trade. Routledge.
  • Klinger, A., & Brunovskis, A. (Eds.). (2015). Human trafficking and exploitation: Lessons from history. Springer.
  • Levine, P., & Walcott, S. (2011). Prostitution, harm, and gender inequality : Theory, research and policy. Routledge.
  • Maher, L., & Daly, G. (Eds.). (2011). Trafficking and prostitution reconsidered: New perspectives on migration, sex work, and human rights. Paradigm Publishers.
  • O'Connell Davidson, J. (Ed.). (2008). Sex, tourism and the postcolonial encounter: Landscapes of longing in Egypt. Berghahn Books.
  • Outshoorn, J. (2012). The politics of prostitution: Women's movements, democratic states, and the globalisation of sex commerce. Cambridge University Press.
  • Sanders, T. (2016). Paying for pleasure: Men who buy sex. Routledge.
  • Weitzer, R. (2009). Sociology of sex work. Annual Review of Sociology, 35, 213-234.

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prostitution should be legalized essay

Essay on Should Prostitution Be Legalized?

Arguments for Legalization

When individuals argue against the legalization of prostitution, often their concern stems from a place of morality. In most cases, they believe that the legalization of prostitution would lead many young girls to think that their bodies exist for the sole purpose of sexual exploration by men (Outshoorn 235). In other instances, they believe that the legalization of prostitution would trigger more abuse for women and would make it challenging for prostitutes to get out of the industry (Wagenaar and Altink 283). But when one looks at Europe, particularly the Netherlands, the positive benefits of legalization becomes more apparent. The Netherlands is one of the world’s known countries that has legalized prostitution; sex work in this country has been legal for over two decades (Huisman and Kleemans 218). Legalizing prostitution in the Netherlands and imposing new regulations have advanced the safety of sex workers in the country (Huisman and Kleemans 218). Brothels are required to abide by the set safety and hygiene rules to operate. Sex work becomes safer when regulated; more importantly, it weeds out the black market for prostitution, making women working in this industry even more secure.

The benefits of legalizing prostitution extend further. This act would allow brothels in the United States to operate legally, an instance that would generate substantial income for the government (Jolin 1183). The action would also empower women to receive commercial loans and insurance based on their profession. The life of women sex workers in the Netherlands has improved since the business was legislated. The rates of gender-based discrimination in business, education, and business have decreased since prostitution was legalized (Wijk and Mascini 73). Until the 1990s, women’s and men’s roles in the Netherlands were well divided down traditional lines. Women and men were pushed to the customs of marriage; the woman was also expected to look after the house, her husband, and her children. Men were expected to support their families financially. This has since changed as both women and men can support their families equally. In addition to empowering women and shifting the roles of women in the country, legalizing prostitution would reduce arrest rates (Wijk and Mascini 76); more importantly, it would decrease the cost of prosecution and incarcerations of prostitutes and brothel owners.

Furthermore, the legalization of sex work imposed compliance with labor laws on entities operating in the prostitution industry, an instance that has helped reduce the number of women at risk of coerced prostitution and human trafficking (Weitzer 17). Legalizing prostitution pushes the government to protect sex workers. In Amsterdam, the legalization of prostitution increased safety by allowing the government some level of control within the industry (Weitzer 18). Today, prostitutes work in highly secured surroundings with cameras in front of every window and corner. Police patrol areas with an increased population of prostitution (Weitzer 17). Brothels in the areas are also equipped with alarm systems that can be heard from a considerable distance. Also, women are provided with towels, and they are allowed unlimited access to free STD checks.

Arguments Against Legalization

Legalizing prostitution may have helped women in the Netherlands, and other places in the world attain their economic freedom. It may have increased safety in the brothels, but the act itself would act as a gift to sex traffickers and other criminals operating in the industry ((Huisman and Kleemans 222). Legalization of sex work would legitimize all aspects of the industry; it would convert sex clubs, massage parlors, and other prostitution sites into legal venues where commercial sexual acts are allowed to advance from restrains. Most believe that legalizing or decriminalizing sex workers would dignify and professionalize the women working in this area (Huisman and Kleemans 223). Dignifying prostitution as legal work would not dignify the women; it only dignifies the sex industry. In other words, this means that the legalization would not empower the women directly but all individuals operating in the sector, including men and third-party businessmen. It would also legitimize the action of buying women for sexual activity; men who buy women for sex would be viewed as legitimate consumers of sex.

Studies also indicate that prostitution is one of the drivers of sex trafficking (Cho et al. 75). Most people argue that legalizing prostitution would help deter sex trafficking; it would help stop the exploration of disparate immigrant women trafficked for sex work. This is the underlying argument towards the legalization of prostitution. Nevertheless, things are different in the real-life scenario; in fact, research by Seals indicates that 80 percent of women in brothels in the Netherlands are often trafficked from other countries (791). In other words, the legalization of prostitution would trigger a new form of sex slavery where women and young girls are the victims. The legalization of prostitution would create or expand the sex work market, which would increase human trafficking. Women and young girls who are often the victims would be sexually exploited through prostitution. To better understand the adverse effects of legalized prostitution on human trafficking, one should consider Germany. Germany legalized prostitution in the early 2000s, but the rates of human trafficking have not decreased ever since. Human trafficking is still a significant problem in the country.

The legalization of prostitution would not only increase sex trafficking, but it would also trigger significant health risks. Some studies indicate that the legalization of sex work would reduce the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (Sullivan 87). Nevertheless, and like many items discussed in this paper, it is true, but it would be complicated. If prostitution was to be legal, the law should provide a framework that includes or state that the use of condom should be mandatory. If this would be realized, then the transmission rates would be tamed. The challenge, in this case, is that not everyone would adhere to the rules. For instance, in India, prostitutes do not make nearly as much as sex workers who force their clients to wear a condom (Jeffreys 213). Jeffreys also found that ten percent of prostitutes do not use condoms (213). In most cases, women are threatened not to use condoms. A well-established framework should also require sex workers to get tested for HIV. This instance is seen in places like Nevada, where prostitution is legal. Sex workers in this region have to get monthly tests. The problem with conducting regular testing is that many sexually transmitted illnesses such as HIV, herpes, and syphilis do not show up until six weeks after infection. Individuals are often contagious when they are infected, an instance that could trigger an outbreak.

Works Cited

Cho, Seo-Young et al. “Does Legalized Prostitution Increase Human Trafficking?”  World Development , vol. 41, 2013, pp. 67-82.

Huisman, Wim, and Edward R. Kleemans. “The Challenges of Fighting Sex Trafficking in The Legalized Prostitution Market of the Netherlands.”  Crime, Law and Social Change , vol. 61, no. 2, 2014, pp. 215-228.

Jeffreys, S. “”Brothels Without Walls”: The Escort Sector as A Problem for The Legalization of Prostitution.”  Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society , vol. 17, no. 2, 2010, pp. 210-234.

Jolin, Annette. “Book Review: Legalizing Prostitution: From Illicit Vice to Lawful Business.”  Criminal Justice and Behavior , vol. 40, no. 10, 2013, pp. 1178-1180.

Outshoorn, Joyce. “Policy Change in Prostitution in The Netherlands: From Legalization to Strict Control.”  Sexuality Research and Social Policy , vol. 9, no. 3, 2012, pp. 233-243.

Seals, Maryann. “Worker Rights and Health Protection for Prostitutes: A Comparison of the Netherlands, Germany, And Nevada.”  Health Care for Women International , vol. 36, no. 7, 2013, pp. 784-796.

Sullivan, Barbara. “When (Some) Prostitution Is Legal: The Impact of Law Reform On Sex Work in Australia.”  Journal of Law and Society , vol. 37, no. 1, 2010, pp. 85-104.

Wagenaar, Hendrik, and Sietske Altink. “Prostitution as Morality Politics or Why It Is Exceedingly Difficult to Design and Sustain Effective Prostitution Policy.”  Sexuality Research and Social Policy , vol. 9, no. 3, 2012, pp. 279-292.

Weitzer, Ronald. “The Mythology of Prostitution: Advocacy Research and Public Policy.”  Sexuality Research and Social Policy , vol. 7, no. 1, 2010, pp. 15-29.

Wijk, Eelco, and Peter Mascini. “The Responsibilization of Entrepreneurs in Legalized Local Prostitution in The Netherlands.”  Regulation & Governance , 2019, pp. 67-86.

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Why Prostitution Should Be Legal Essay

The problem of prostitution is the consideration of the whole society. There are people who are sure that legalization of prostitution is amoral and due to this it should be punished severely. My strict opinion is that prostitution should be legalized due to several reasons: (a) a great amount of money is in a whirl of shady economy and the state does not get the taxes from it, (b) prostitutes are under the constant pressure of their souteneurs and the legalization may help them to find protection, (c) the constitution of every country guarantees the freedom of choice and opinion, and if being a prostitute is somebody’s choice why is should be forbidden.

Prostitution brings a huge income and, as the business is not legalized, the state does not get its part, the state budget is not fulfilled with the financial injection from prostitution business. The participants of the legalized business, prostitution in our case, participate in state economical affairs. If they pay taxes, they are eager to use social guarantees (such as unemployment insurance, health insurance, old-aged pension). In its turn, the government may provide some inspection and supervision under the work conditions of the prostitutes and help in some cases to improve them (Nathanson & Young, 2006).

Prostitutes are under the constant pressure of the souteneurs and the legalization of this king of business may allow prostitutes to turn to police for protection. Prostitutes also suffer from clients’ cruelty and beating. They know that there is no way out as nobody can help them as they are out of law, they do not have any rights. The legalization of the business may solve this problem. Taking into consideration Germany and the Netherlands, the prostitution legalization allowed protecting the rights of women who are in the business already and to those who just want to start (Malarek, 2004).

Every person has the right for freedom: freedom of thinking, freedom of speaking, freedom of choice, and also the freedom to use one’s body. Person’s choice whether to have sex or not, whether to take money for this or not can never be legal or illegal. It is a choice. We are not talking about human trafficking as it is the crime. We are talking about free personal choice. Some people clean streets, they may like their jobs or not but they are paid for this. Comparing with street cleaning, prostitution is the same job, where people get sexual satisfaction and a good salary for their job.

So, prostitution must be legalized because of several reasons. The state budget will increase as the prostitution business operates with huge sum of money. The prostitution exists and it is impossible to cancel it, so the government should at least protect prostitutes from pressure and violence. Every person is free in his/her actions in reference to his/her body. If woman want to have sex for money, let her do this, it is her choice and her body, so it is impossible to forbid.

Reference List

  • Malarek, V. (2004). The Natashas: inside the new global sex trade . Arcade Publishing.
  • Nathanson, P. & Young K. K. (2006). Legalizing misandry: from public shame to systemic discrimination against men . McGill-Queen’s Press – MQUP.
  • Prostitution and Freedom. (2003). The Wilson Quarterly , 27.
  • Chicago (A-D)
  • Chicago (N-B)

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Home / Essay Samples / Crime / Prostitution / Social Dilemma: Should Prostitution Be Legalized

Social Dilemma: Should Prostitution Be Legalized

  • Category: Social Issues , Life , Crime
  • Topic: Controversial Issue , Ethical Dilemma , Prostitution

Pages: 6 (2546 words)

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Introduction

Definition of key concepts, the decriminalization of prostitution in south africa, why decriminalization should not take place, the consequences of prostitution, the criminogenic nature of prostitution, the moral threat to marriage and family, concerns relating to public nuisance, bibliography.

  • Cathi Albertyn, 2019. The long road to legal sex work in SA winds on. The Citizen. 2 August. Available at: http://www.google.com/amp/s/citizen.co.za/talking-point/2162894/the-road-to-legal-sex-work-in-sa-winds-on/amp/
  • Christen Torres, 2018. Legalising Prostitution a Tough Issue. The Southern Cross. 12 October. Available at: https://www.scross.co.za/2018/10/legalising-prostitution-a-tough-issue/
  • Anon. 2017. Crime Typologies. [custom textbook]. Pretoria, Muckleneuk

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