Legalizing and regulating prostitution will make life safer for sex workers and help crush the pimps and trafficking gangs they exploit. Traffickers thrive because the sex trade is driven underground. Legalize it, and they will disappear. Prostitutes will feel safer when they no longer fear prosecution. Police will be able to focus their resources on fighting the real bad guys – the criminal gangs that exploit sex workers. The experiences of countries such as Nevada, Switzerland and New Zealand show that legalized and regulated prostitution works. It seems highly unlikely that anyone can currently say beyond a shadow of a doubt whether the State Department`s preferred approach to combating the demand for or the legalized prostitution route is the policy that best reduces sex trafficking. However, it seems clear that there are reasons to be concerned about the effectiveness of legalization. Despite all its theoretical complaints, it ultimately cannot function as intended. As a possible alternative to sex trafficking, the legalization of prostitution has obvious appeal. It is believed that legalization is not only a desirable policy for many who engage in prostitution on a consensual basis, but also helps the market displace violent clients, abusive pimps and evil traffickers. Proponents argue that legalizing the sale of sexual services increases the supply of consensual prostitution, while legalizing the purchase of sexual services attracts higher consumers, which should make the commercial sex market less exploitative.
This reasoning makes sense and it is also what basic economic theory would predict. What I have found in researching campaigns to legalise or decriminalise prostitution in the Netherlands, Ireland and the UK is that sex industry bosses have an influential voice in such campaigns and often provide funds; And that groups that claim to represent “sex workers” are just as likely to be a voice for pimps as they are for women who make a living selling sex. As Cornell law professor Sherry Colb wrote, “Prostitution should not be a crime. Prostitutes do not commit an inherently harmful act. Although the spread of disease and other disadvantages are possible in the practice of prostitution, criminalization is a sure way to exacerbate these effects rather than combat them. Countries like New Zealand, which have decriminalized all acts of prostitution, seem to have better luck in terms of the well-being of sex workers, perhaps because they have focused on creating laws that “protect the human rights of sex workers and protect them from exploitation.” Ask the question, “What should we do about prostitution?” anywhere in the world, and you`re more and more likely to get the answer: “Legalize it.” This view is based on the belief that there will always be men who pay for sex and women who sell it. Decriminalizing all aspects of prostitution – including owning brothels and buying sex – will, according to this argument, make life safer for these women and also facilitate the eradication of abuse. If prostitution is presented as work, it goes without saying that workers demand rights. The problem is that the term “sex worker,” coined in the 1980s and increasingly used by police, health care workers and the media, includes pornographers, strippers and pimps, as well as those who sell sex directly. The oldest profession in the world is just that, a profession like any other. Authorities have been trying to ban sex trafficking for millennia, but prostitution thrives in the internet age. It`s time to face the reality that sex work isn`t going away.
If we treat it like another service industry, sex workers – male or female, gay or straight – can come out of the shadows and start to shake off the stigma of crime. What consenting adults do behind closed doors, whether they pay for it or not, is none of the state`s business. People, especially women, sell their bodies daily for financial gain in a legalized way. Pornography is legal, as are exotic dances. It is common for people to have sex with wealthier partners in order to enjoy their wealth, whether through the search for wealthy life partners or through the less formal but increasingly common phenomenon known as sugar dating. It`s also common for people to stay in unhappy relationships because they don`t want to lose financial stability or spend money on a divorce. However, the legalization of prostitution has had positive benefits for sex workers across Europe. The best-known country that has legalized prostitution is the Netherlands, where sex work has been legal for nearly two decades.
Taking the industry out of the black market and imposing strict regulations has improved the safety of sex workers. Brothels must obtain and renew safety and health licenses to operate, and street prostitution is legal and highly regulated in places like the Red Light District. Not only does sex work become safer when regulated, but legalization also helps eliminate the black market in prostitution and make women safer overall. In addition, sex workers are not labeled criminals, so they have better access to the legal system and are encouraged to report behaviours that pose a danger to themselves and other women in the industry. Finally, the legalization of sex work will bring many other positive externalities, including tax revenues, the reduction of sexually transmitted diseases, and the redistribution of law enforcement resources. Amnesty International has also advocated for the decriminalisation of prostitution, saying that sex workers must not only push for policies that protect sex workers from harm and coercion, but also “sex workers must have a say in making laws that affect their lives and safety. But without decriminalization, they cannot expect equal treatment before the law to achieve these goals. There will always be lonely or kinky men in America who will pay for sex, and there will always be women willing to praise their bodies. As anthropologist Patty Kelly wrote in the Los Angeles Times, prostitution has become “a part of our culture” in the United States. Meanwhile, the links between organized crime, violence and prostitution in New Zealand have not been broken. Opinions differ as to whether decriminalization has improved or worsened the situation.
A report released five years after decriminalization claimed that it had little impact on the number of people working in sex trafficking, but provided some protections for children and others. But the personal testimonies of women who have been prostituted prove that brothel owners and sellers have benefited more than women. Let`s forget about “happy” fantasies. Most women are forced into prostitution by coercion or economic hardship. The work often boils down to bought rape. Prostitution is, by definition, humiliating for women. It reduces them to goods that can be bought, sold and misused. Given that the vast majority of prostitutes are women, legalization would reinforce their oppression by male-dominated societies and be a clear affront to the concept of gender equality. The removal of legal barriers will send a message to new generations of men that women are mere sexual commodities.
Prostitution does not allow the general public to take advantage of these pretexts. On the contrary, the industry is honest about how sex and money are directly related. And for many people, it`s an uncomfortable idea. It is even more uncomfortable for some people to believe that women should have control over their bodies that would allow them to voluntarily engage in prostitution; You cannot afford to believe that women would choose such a profession.