4 Reasons To Decriminalize Prostitution
What does the legalization of prostitution refer to? In some countries like the Netherlands, legalization refers to sanctioning all the aspects that relate to the sex industry: women, the pimps who are turned into third-party businessmen as well as legitimate sexual entrepreneurs.
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Decriminalization Promotes Sex Pimps and Traffickers
Legalization or decriminalization of the sex industry converts sex clubs, brothels massage parlours and other prostitution sites into legal venues where prostitution can flourish legally with few or no restraints.
Ordinary people believe that decriminalization of prostitution means signifying prostitution since work doesn’t dignify women and signifies the sex industry. Most people don’t realize that legalization means decriminalization of the entire sex industry and not only the women.
They also don’t consider the consequences of legalizing pimps as third-party businessmen or sex entrepreneurs. Men who buy women for sexual activity are accepted as legitimate sex consumers.
Legalization of Prostitution Increases Illegal Street Prostitution
The legalization of prostitution was supposed to get all prostitutes off the street. This is because most people don’t want to undergo health checks like in most countries that legalize prostitution. Many women choose street prostitution because they don’t want to be controlled and exploited by the new sex “businessmen”.
Prostitutes in the Netherlands point out that decriminalization of the sex industry cannot erase the stigma that comes with prostitution but makes women more vulnerable to abuse because they must lose anonymity. Therefore, most women in prostitution choose to operate underground and illegally.
Decriminalization of Prostitution doesn’t Protect Prostitutes
The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women International (CATW) performed two major studies on prostitution and sex trafficking. After interviewing about 200 victims of commercial sexual exploitation. Women in prostitution indicated that prostitution establishments didn’t do much to protect them regardless of whether the establishments were legal or illegal. “The only time they protect anyone is to protect the customers.”
In a CATW 5-country study that interviewed 146 victims of international trafficking and local prostitution, 80% of all women interviewed suffered physical violence from pimps and buyers) and endured similar and multiple health effects from the violence and sexual exploitation (Raymond et al: 2002).
Decriminalization of Prostitution Doesn’t Improve Women’s Choices
Most women in prostitution didn’t make a rational choice to join prostitution. These women didn’t decide one day to be prostitutes rather the choice was a survival strategy. Rather than consent, a prostitute complies with the only option that she has. A prostitute complies due to the fact that she has to adapt to conditions of inequality that her clients pay her to do what she does.
In a specific study, 67% of the law enforcement officials who were interviewed by the CATW were of the opinion that women in prostitution did not join it voluntarily. 72% of the people interviewed by the CATW did not believe that women chose to enter the sex industry voluntarily (Raymond and Hughes: 2001).
READ ALSO: Prostitution Laws In Countries Where Sex Work is Legal
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