...Prostitution; An Abolitionist Perspective We can learn a great deal about women and prostitution by studying the construction of prostitution as a « Social problem ». Two dominant questions oppose each other when it comes to prostition, One of them wich advocates abolition, and the other claiming its recognition as a full time job. These two positions appear to be largely balanced despite their opposition to the extent that they mobilize the same arguments, that is to say moral. But throughout his work, his analysis shows that prostitution is a widely heterogeneous universe, crossed by numerous divisions and whose participants are located mainly in the same position in the economic and social field. The first chapter explains the construction of prostitution and claims that it only creates misery and populism, as often when it comes to socially subordinate groups. In both cases, there is a certain essentialist representation of the prostitute - because often we forget men who engage in commercial sex, and the blurred boundaries of genders that include transvestites and transsexuals. More worryingly, it shows that some sociologists use their scientific legitimacy to defend highly ideological positions (in this case abolitionists). To get out of these preconceptions of considering prostitution not in only in the terms of sexuality – just like the idea of taboo in our society, but as a means of economical “subsistence” for individuals who practice it. This is often led...
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...Legalization of Prostitution: Its effects on sex trafficking and society Prostitution and sex trafficking is a persistent issue around the world. Neighborhoods are plagued with women whom are scantily dressed, having sex in open and public places. Sex trafficking is directly affected by prostitution; legalizing prostitution would reduce the amount of women abducted and forced into prostitution or forced into becoming sex slaves. Legalizing prostitution would also allow women to be able to make their own decision whether prostitution is a morally acceptable profession for them or not. Prostitution should be a decision made by an individual and not by the government. The government should not be able to decide what is morally acceptable and what is not; State and religion are meant to be separate because every individual has the right to make their own decisions regarding their own life. There are many positive outcomes to making prostitution legal; crime would be reduced, the economy would benefit tremendously, prostitutes would be safer as well as removing the social stigma attached to prostitution. By legalizing prostitution the numbers of people trafficked would be reduced by eliminating the demand for sex trafficking. With the many successful legal prostitution establishments commonly known as brothels, it is clear that legal prostitution can work in today’s society....
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...King May 13, 2013 Prostitution Should prostitution be legalized? Prostitution is known as one of the world’s oldest professions. Prostitution is a risky industry filled with women and men being paid to please the opposite sex sexually. Prostitution is risky because the sex workers are easily exposed to abuse and drugs. An estimate shows there are over 100,000 prostitutes in the U.S, but it is impossible to count them all. Nick Kristof, an expert on human trafficking from New York Times studies show that about 2/3 of prostitutes have been sexually abused/raped , while other studies show 60 to 90 percent are abused. This shows almost all female prostitutes get abused. Statistics show that female prostitutes have it really bad, yet why do they still continue to sell sex? According to Norma Ramos from the New York Times, “Vast majority of prostitution results from conditions like childhood sexual abuse, gender inequality, poverty, racism, etc.” Prostitution and drugs go hand and hand. Most prostitutes use drugs to numb themselves in order to continue working from all the physical and mental pain. Others turn to prostitution as a last resort to score drug and money for an ongoing drug habit. While prostitution is still a choice, troubled women find it is an easy path to escape to. Prostitution should not be legalized because it promotes domestic abuse and drugs associated with the profession. Legalization will bring more power to the predators. Brothels are an example of legal...
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...The problem with prostitution Over the past two decades, Canada's prostitution laws have faced a number of challenges. Soon they will face another. By The Vancouver Sun August 27, 2007 Over the past two decades, Canada's prostitution laws have faced a number of challenges. Soon they will face another. A group of Vancouver lawyers and sex workers have initiated a Charter challenge arguing that our present laws violate their right to life, liberty, security, equality and free expression. Our laws don't actually prohibit prostitution per se. They just ban any mechanism of engaging in it -- from soliciting for the purposes of prostitution to operating a common bawdy house. Those bringing the challenge argue that the laws do more harm than good. They argue that our criminal laws expose sex workers to significant harm: Physical and sexual violence, lack of access to police protection, social stigma, inequality, exploitation and murder. Their solution? Strike down the laws and institute a regulatory scheme to help make being a prostitute safer. There is something fundamentally wrong with this vision. Prostitution laws don't expose sex workers to an increased risk of physical and sexual violence, psychological injury, kidnapping and death. Prostitution does that. Should drug dealers challenge laws banning the selling of drugs because those laws force them to sell drugs in alleys and deal with shady individuals in their business? No. They should stop selling drugs...
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...Prostitution may be the world's oldest profession, and laws prohibiting prostitution may well be the oldest example of government regulation and government sex discrimination. In a free society, however, all such laws are inappropriate because they violate the basic rights and liberties of the individuals involved. Recent research indicates that “over one million women in the United States earn their living by full-time prostitution. Furthermore, roughly one in every six American men has been a willing client of a prostitute within the past five years (cite1).” This shows that many people, buyers and sellers, are a part of the prostitution profession, so for the United States government to ban prostitution for only a moral reason, and spend millions of tax payers’ dollars on trying to fight a never ending battle with prostitution seems ludicrous. In a free society in which we live in, it makes no sense for the government to be telling people that they cannot charge a fee for harmless services they otherwise are at liberty to give away. This is why Prostitution should be legal. Instead of spending billions on illegalizing prostitution, “the city of Los Angeles alone spends close to 100 million dollars annually dealing with illegal prostitution (cite4)”; the United States government should legalize prostitution. For more reasons than one, prostitution thrives in areas that have a very high crime rate, because of this, police officers and courtrooms are overburdened with these...
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...common consent; out of all these questions prostitution is the darkest, the knottiest, and saddest” (Gilfoyle:0). The geography of prostitution is based on the area of social trends and acceptance. The most visible evidence of this is the rapid rise in the number of brothels and “bawdy houses” in New York during the 1820’s. Prostitution became increasingly more involved in urban life even though being criminalized by law. Yet the people who decide the legislation on prostitution were some of its most loyal and profitable customers. Prostitution is an un-harmful act and should be legalized, regardless of society’s uneducated opinion on the matter. Prostitution should be legalized for the facts that it would generate a substantial amount of income for the federal government as a means of taxation; legalization would suppress the spread of venereal and it would also reduce the amount of crime along with physical violence which occurs in the commercial sex trade. In the majority of states, prostitution is suppressed to illegal activity and many believe it to be a form of immoral actions. But in Nevada, the state became famous by grasping and promoting the un-popular commercial sex trade, which was banned elsewhere in other states. Prostitution has become a legitimate cash crop. Nevada began legalizing prostitution during the early 1970s; since then, they have been gaining multiple benefits economically from many different prostitution-related sources. Some of these revenues were...
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...on pimps instead of the women, it neglects the fact that prostitution can be a legitimate career. Instead of fighting against the industry, feminists should be fighting against the misogyny of governments, made of mostly men, that do nothing to protect the women or perpetrate the violent clients but instead restricts and shuns prostitution. Brothel owner Dennis Hof claims, “I’m all about women’s rights....
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...2012 Decriminalization of Prostitution The question that I am exploring is should society allow individuals sell sex for money? This question is important because taxpayer money is being spent on Vice Police Units who patrol known prostitution locations and go under cover. It’s also important because through out history social policy and public law has changed back and forth on the issue of prostitution. I am interested on this issue because recently my hometown of Ottawa, Ohio, has had a scandal involving our town mayor being arrested for solicitation of prostitution, causing the loss of his job and embarrassment for our town. My first source was a documentary series on the History channel called “Sex in the Ancient World” specifically the episode I watched was “Pompeii”. “Sex in the Ancient World” is written and directed by Kurt Sayenga. Kurt Sayenga got his start with his magazine “Greed” which covered punk rock culture and quickly rose to stardom trough his multiple documentaries and his feature films like “The Day the Earth Stood Still”. His experience shows he is a very creditable source because he has blockbuster movies and is a respected by all of the film community. In this documentary the core issue was sex in Pompeii in ancient times. Pompeii was small Roman city of 6,000 when Mount Vesuvius erupted in the year 76 AD and sealed the city in volcanic ash like a time capsule. Pompeii is the first definite proof of the occupation of prostitution. According to “Sex in the...
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...PROSTITUTION IS NOT A CHOICE LEARN A BOUT TH E TRA FFI CKING OF WOMEN AND GIRLS WORLDWIDE, AND FIND OUT WHAT CAN BE DONE TO END THIS WID ESPR EAD PROBLEM … Soroptimist International of the Americas-1709 Spruce Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 - 215 893 9000 - www.soroptimist.org SOROPTIMIST WHITE PAPER Prostitution is Not a Choice I think so much about what has happened to me. Why these men did what they did to me. Old, disgusting men. It was horrible. They knew I did not want to be there, but they paid their money. They used me. I was their property for the night. They destroyed me. (14-year-old girl at Casa Hogar, a shelter in Costa Rica for children rescued from the country’s sex trade1) OVERVIEW Prostitution has been called the world’s oldest “profession.” In reality, it is the world’s oldest “oppression” and continues to be one of the most overlooked human rights abuses of women on the planet today. 2 Prostitution of women is a particularly lethal form of violence against women, and a violation of a woman’s most basic human rights. While society attempts to normalize prostitution on a variety of levels (discussed later in this paper), prostituted women are subjected to violence and abuse at the hands of paying “clients.” For the vast majority of prostituted women, “prostitution is the experience of being hunted, dominated, harassed, assaulted and battered.” 3 It is “sexual terrorism against women at the hands of men and little is being done to stop the carnage...
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...Against Legalizing Prostitution in Country like Indonesia There is an ongoing and intense debate surrounding decriminalizing prostitution. Some countries, such as The Netherlands, Canada and Australia have legalized Prostitution. They argue that the legalization of prostitution brings more good than harm, and so far people see that good things such as an increase in country’s gross domestic product and economic output from those country is happening. But, that’s just a glance of external view out of a lot of things that really happened inside of the country that legalize prostitution itself, such as morale issue and women trafficking. This writing will boldly show and explains the arguments against legalizing prostitution and why a country like Indonesia should not legalize prostitution. Some people, whom agree to legalize prostitution, come up with arguments that from their point of view will bring more goods than bad. First, they argue that legalizing prostitution will decrease the number of sexual harassment and rape. They believe that by the legalization of prostitution, it will reduce the number of unwanted sex since it is now woman’s choice to get in to the business of prostitution or not and it will not be called as rape if both parties are willing to have sex. Second, It will be better and safer for sex-workers if prostitution was legalized and regulated. This point argue that if prostitution was legalized then there will be less crimes against (un-legalized) prostitutes...
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...reluctant to call the cops since what they're doing is illegal. Sex workers in licensed brothels, on the other hand, can have somebody to back them up, according to a paper by Barbara Brents and Kathryn Hausbeck of the University of Nevada. Brents and Hausbeck interviewed brothel owners and made these observations… The study concluded that "brothels offer the safest environment available for women to sell consensual sex acts for money (Fuchs)”. Sex workers now are prone to not call police during an emergency, due to the fact that there could be serious consequences even for the victim. However, if legal,...
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...Exploitation of Women in Prostitution Submitted by: 9 Nadine Bo 27 Isabella Manuel III-Katarungan Submitted to: Miss Josel Cruz March 11, 2013 I. Introduction Many of today’s social issues have been around for hundreds of years. Social issues can be likened to a cancer; a cancer that grows inside but can be fully removed with proper treatment. This includes corruption, poverty, war crimes, racism and human trafficking. Human trafficking has gone far from being unnoticed in its many forms such as prostitution of women and even children. As early as 18th century BC, prostitution has been recognized as a profession. It was a sign of hospitality for the ancient Sumerians, for others it was obligatory for their beliefs and religion. However, man has gone far from the ways of the old. Now, the world is at that point in history where everyone should have learned from ancestors’ accomplishments and failures alike. Prostitution, commonly referred to as “the world’s oldest profession”, must have been solved as a social issue long ago, but similar to other issues it hasn’t been fully eliminated because it is a social problem. Social problems are deeply rooted in the nature of humans and society. As long as there are people willing to understand and work with these women towards social equity, there is a solution. There are efforts to remove prostitution and most of all the exploitation, harassment and abuse of those involved such as legal measures and private organizations...
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...violence, and sexually transmitted diseases. The current system of prosecuting and jailing these women has been ineffective in reducing the illegal activities. These issues can be addressed by legalizing and regulating the prostitution industry. By using Nevada where brothels are legal as a model for the rest of the country enforcing strict regulations can better protect those victimized by the industry. Legalization of Prostitution Prostitution is often referred to as the world’s oldest profession. According to a survey conducted by ABC News Prime time 15% of all American men have paid for sex and 30% of single men over the age of 30 have paid for sex ("POLL: American Sex Survey - ABC News", 2004). The sex industry is one that affects many American citizens. The National Task Force on Prostitution suggests that over one million people in the US have worked as prostitutes in the United States, or about 1% of American women" (Prostitution in The United States - The Statistics, 2007). Currently prostitution is illegal by Federal law Title 18 Part I Ch.117 Sec. 2422 under “Coercion and Enticement” and can carry up to a 20 year prison sentence ("Title 18 United States Code Crimes and Criminal Procedure", n.d.). There are several arguments as to why prostitution should remain illegal. The three most prominent being that sex work increases violence and crime, spreads communicable diseases like STDs and AIDs, and that sex for money is immoral. However, by legalizing and regulating...
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...Finally the third adjudicated law enacted to criminalize prostitution was called the Federal Mann Act. This Act, which was also known as the White Slave Traffic Act, made prostitution a felony to engage in the transport of any female for the purpose of prostitution posed by the immorality of the act. This Act criminalized the sexual behavior between consenting adults. This Act can be found under 18 U.S.C. §2421, and defends all human trafficking throughout the United States. After addressing two legislative decisions for prostitution and one on criminalizing prostitution, I want to give three examples of this “victimless crime.” Before I jump into my first topic on escort services, I want to define the terms of prostitution and escort service....
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...Prostitution. An age-old profession or an age-old problem begetting more problems? The United Kingdom is in the process of determining if and how to update or change its current laws regarding prostitution. In the midst of this determination, questions abound. Prostitution is no easy matter. In the age of women’s rights and the women’s movement, prostitution is a dividing factor. On the one end, it is the epitome of patriarchal abuse throughout centuries and perfected in our culture today. On the other end, it is a form of empowerment. And in between is the common person with his or her own take on prostitution as either abuse, a profession, or something a little of both. Alongside this culture of moral, cultural and legal uncertainty and to confound the problem is prostitution’s purported connection to international human trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation. Therefore, on the one hand, prostitution’s reason for being illegal due to immorality may be obsolete, but should it remain somewhat illegal or banned altogether because it is linked to another crime that transcends borders and cultures? The following is a discussion on the same, and in the end, it is hoped that some clarity may be revealed from a puddle of obscurity. First, a brief introduction will be given about prostitution and human trafficking. Second, the laws of the United Kingdom and international law will be reviewed and analyzed. Third, a comparative review of current legal systems and...
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