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Prostitution Should Not Be Legalized Prostitution and Sex Trafficking, 2006

"Legalization of prostitution sends the message to new generations of men and boys that women are sexual commodities and that prostitution is harmless fun."

In the following viewpoint Janice G. Raymond lists the reasons why she believes that prostitution should not be legalized. Legalization does not dignify prostitution, she argues; it dignifies the degradation of women. Moreover, Raymond asserts, legalization will not improve women's health or protect women from violence at the hands of pimps and johns. Indeed, she maintains, legalization promotes sex trafficking, increases child prostitution, and further exploits women whose circumstances force them into a life of prostitution. Raymond, professor of women's studies and medical ethics at the University of Massachusetts, is co- executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women.

As you read, consider the following questions:

In Raymond's view, why is it important to advocate for the decriminalization of prostitutes?1.

According to the author, by what percentage has the sex industry increased in the2. Netherlands since it legalized prostitution?

In the author's opinion, why does it make no sense to mandate health examinations for3. prostitutes and not customers?

What does legalization of prostitution or decriminalization of the sex industry mean? In the Netherlands, legalization amounts to sanctioning all aspects of the sex industry: the women themselves, the buyers, and the pimps who, under the regime of legalization, are transformed into third party businessmen and legitimate sexual entrepreneurs. Legalization/decriminalization of the sex industry also converts brothels, sex clubs, massage parlors and other sites of prostitution activities into legitimate venues where commercial sexual acts are allowed to flourish legally with few restraints.

Dignifying the Sex Industry

Some people believe that, in calling for legalization or decriminalization of prostitution, they dignify and professionalize the women in prostitution. But dignifying prostitution as work doesn't dignify the women, it simply dignifies the sex industry. People often don't realize that decriminalization means decriminalization of the whole sex industry, not just the women in it. And they haven't thought through the consequences of legalizing pimps as legitimate sex entrepreneurs or third party businessmen, or the fact that men who buy women for sexual activity are now accepted as legitimate consumers of sex.

In countries where women are criminalized for prostitution activities, it is crucial to advocate for the decriminalization of the women in prostitution. No woman should be punished for her own exploitation. But States should never decriminalize pimps, buyers, procurers, brothels or other sex establishments.

Promoting Sex Trafficking

Legalized or decriminalized prostitution industries are one of the root causes of sex trafficking. One argument for legalizing prostitution in the Netherlands was that legalization would help to end the exploitation of desperate immigrant women who had been trafficked there for prostitution. However, one report found that 80% of women in the brothels of the Netherlands were trafficked from other countries. In 1994, the International Organization of Migration (IOM) stated that in the Netherlands alone, "nearly 70% of trafficked women were from CEEC [Central and Eastern European Countries]."

The government of the Netherlands presents itself as a champion of anti-trafficking policies and programs, yet it has removed every legal impediment to pimping, procuring and brothels. In the year 2000, the Dutch Ministry of Justice argued in favor of a legal quota of foreign "sex workers," because the Dutch prostitution market demanded a variety of "bodies." Also in 2000, the Dutch government sought and received a judgment from the European Court recognizing prostitution as an economic activity, thereby enabling women from the European Union and former Soviet bloc countries to obtain working permits as "sex workers" in the Dutch sex industry if they could prove that they are self employed. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Europe report that traffickers use the work permits to bring foreign women into the Dutch prostitution industry, masking the fact that women have been trafficked, by coaching them to describe themselves as independent "migrant sex workers."

In the year since lifting the ban on brothels in the Netherlands, eight Dutch victim support organizations reported an increase in the number of victims of trafficking, and twelve victim support organizations reported that the number of victims from other countries has not diminished. Forty-three of the 348 municipalities (12%) in the Netherlands choose to follow a no-brothel policy, but the Minister of Justice has indicated that the complete banning of prostitution within any municipality could conflict with the federally guaranteed "right to free choice of work."...

Expanding the Sex Industry

Contrary to claims that legalization and decriminalization would control the expansion of the sex industry, prostitution now accounts for 5% of the Netherlands economy. Over the last decade, as pimping was legalized, and brothels decriminalized in the year 2000, the sex industry increased by 25% in the Netherlands. At any hour of the day, women of all ages and races, dressed in hardly anything, are put on display in the notorious windows of Dutch brothels and sex clubs and offered for sale. Most of them are women from other countries who were probably trafficked into the Netherlands. ...

Australia's Experience

Legalization of prostitution in the State of Victoria, Australia, resulted in massive expansion of the sex industry. Along with legalization of prostitution, other forms of sexual exploitation, such as tabletop

dancing, bondage and discipline centers, peep shows, phone sex, and pornography, have all developed in much more profitable ways than before legalization. Prostitution has become an integral part of the tourism and casino boom in Victoria with government-sponsored casinos authorizing the redeeming of casino chips at local brothels. ...

One goal of legalized prostitution was to move prostituted women indoors into brothels and clubs where they would be allegedly less vulnerable than in street prostitution. However, many women are in street prostitution because they want to avoid being controlled and exploited by pimps (transformed in legalized systems into sex businessmen). Other women do not want to register or submit to health checks, as required by law in some countries where prostitution is legalized. Thus, legalization may actually drive some women into street prostitution. Arguing against an Italian proposal for legalized prostitution, Esohe Aghatise has suggested that brothels actually deprive women of what little protection they may have on the street, confining women to closed spaces where they have little chance of meeting outreach workers or others who might help them exit prostitution.

In the Netherlands, women in prostitution point out that legalization or decriminalization of the sex industry does not erase the stigma of prostitution. Because they must register and lose their anonymity, women are more vulnerable to being stigmatized as "whores," and this identity follows them everyplace. Thus, the majority of women in prostitution still operate illegally and underground. Some members of Parliament who originally supported the legalization of brothels on the grounds that this would liberate women are now seeing that legalization actually reinforces the oppression of

women. ...

The argument that legalization was supposed to take the criminal elements out of sex businesses by strict regulation of the industry has failed. The real growth in prostitution in Australia since legalization took effect has been in the illegal sector. Over a period of 12 months from 1998-1999, unlicensed brothels in Victoria tripled in number and still operate with impunity. In New South Wales where brothels were decriminalized in 1995, the number of brothels in Sydney had tripled to 400-500 by 1999, with the vast majority having no license to advertise or operate. In response to widespread police corruption, control of illegal prostitution was removed from police jurisdiction and placed under the control of local councils and planning regulators. However, the local councils do not have the resources to investigate illegal brothel operators.

Increasing Child Prostitution

Another argument for legalizing prostitution in the Netherlands was that it would help end child prostitution. Yet child prostitution in the Netherlands has increased dramatically during the 1990s. The Amsterdam-based ChildRight organization estimates that the number of children in prostitution has increased by more than 300% between 1996-2001, going from 4,000 children in 1996 to 15,000 in 2001. ChildRight estimates that at least 5,000 of these children in Dutch prostitution are trafficked from other countries, with a large segment being Nigerian girls.

Child prostitution has increased dramatically in the state of Victoria compared to other Australian states where prostitution has not been legalized. Of all the states and territories in Australia, the highest number of reported incidences of child prostitution came from Victoria. In a 1998 study undertaken by ECPAT (End Child Prostitution and Trafficking), who conducted research for the Australian National Inquiry on Child Prostitution, there was increased evidence of organized commercial exploitation of children.

Prostitutes Are Not Protected

In two studies in which 186 victims of commercial sexual exploitation were interviewed, women consistently indicated that prostitution establishments did little to protect them, regardless of whether the establishments were legal or illegal. One woman said, "The only time they protect anyone is to protect the customers."

One of these studies interviewed 146 victims of trafficking in 5 countries. Eighty percent of the women interviewed had suffered physical violence from pimps and buyers and endured similar and multiple health effects from the violence and sexual exploitation, regardless of whether the women were trafficked internationally or were in local prostitution.

A second study of women trafficked for prostitution in the United States yielded the following

statements. Women who reported that sex businesses gave them some protection qualified it by pointing out that no "protector" was ever in the room with them. One woman who was in out-call prostitution stated: "The driver functioned as a bodyguard. You're supposed to call when you get in, to ascertain that everything was OK. But they are not standing outside the door while you're in there, so anything could happen". ...

Making Women into Commodities

With the advent of legalization in countries that have decriminalized the sex industry, many men who previously would not have risked buying women for sex now see prostitution as acceptable. When legal barriers disappear, so too do the social and ethical barriers to treating women as sexual merchandise. Legalization of prostitution sends the message to new generations of men and boys that women are sexual commodities and that prostitution is harmless fun.

As men have a plethora of "sexual services" offered to them in prostitution, women must compete by engaging in anal sex, sex without condoms, bondage and domination and other acts demanded by buyers. Once prostitution is legalized, for example, women's reproductive capacities are sellable products. Some buyers find pregnancy a turn-on and demand breast milk in their sexual encounters with pregnant women.

In the State of Victoria in Australia, specialty brothels are provided for disabled men. State-employed caretakers (who are mostly women) must take these men to the brothels if they wish to go and literally facilitate their physical sexual acts. Advertisements line the highways of Victoria offering women as objects for sexual use. Businessmen are encouraged to hold their corporate meetings in clubs where owners supply naked women on the table at tea breaks and lunchtime. A Melbourne brothel owner stated that the client base was "well educated professional men, who visit during the day and then go home to their families." Women in relationships with men find that often the men in their lives are visiting the brothels and sex clubs.

Legalization Does Not Promote Women's Health

A legalized system of prostitution often mandates health checks and certification, but only for women and not for male buyers. Health examinations or tests for women but not men make no public health sense because monitoring prostituted women does not protect them from HIV/AIDS or STDs. This is

not to advocate that both women in prostitution and male buyers should be checked. It is simply to point out the duplicity of a policy that implies, "We'll have safer sex and HIV/AIDS control if we examine the women under a regulated or decriminalized system of prostitution." Male buyers can and do originally transmit disease to the women they purchase.

It has been argued that legalized brothels or other "controlled" prostitution establishments protect women through enforceable condom policies. In one study, 47% of women in U.S. prostitution stated that men expected sex without a condom; 73% reported that men offered to pay more for sex without a condom; and 45% of women said that men became abusive if they insisted that men use condoms. Although certain sex businesses had rules that required men to wear condoms, men nonetheless attempted to have sex without condoms. One woman stated: "It's 'regulation' to wear a condom at the sauna, but negotiable between parties on the side. Most guys expected blow jobs without a condom." ...

"Safety policies" in brothels did not protect women from harm. Where brothels allegedly monitored the buyers and employed "bouncers," women stated that they were injured by buyers and, at times, by brothel owners and their friends. Even when someone intervened to momentarily control buyers' abuse, women lived in a climate of fear. Although 60% of women reported that buyers had sometimes been prevented from abusing them, half of those same women answered that, nonetheless, they thought that they might be killed by one of their buyers.

Legalization Does Not Enhance Women's Choice

Most women in prostitution did not make a rational choice to enter prostitution from among a range of other options. They did not sit down one day and decide that they wanted to be prostitutes. They did not have other real options such as medicine, law, nursing or politics. Instead, their "options" were more in the realm of how to feed themselves and their children. Such choices are better termed survival strategies.

Rather than consenting to prostitution, a prostituted woman more accurately complies with the extremely limited options available to her. Her compliance is required by the fact of having to adapt to conditions of inequality that are set by the customer who pays her to do what he wants her to do. ...

Finally, rather than cashing in on the economic profits of the sex industry by taxing it, governments could seize assets of sex businesses and then use these funds to provide real alternatives for women in prostitution. Measures to prevent trafficking and prostitution, or to prosecute traffickers, recruiters, pimps and buyers, will be inadequate unless governments invest in the futures of prostituted women by providing economic resources that enable women to improve their lives.