Posted by Tamar on November 18, 2005, at 19:21:26
In reply to Re: no girlfriend so I turned to prostition » Tamar, posted by TexasChic on November 17, 2005, at 19:57:06
Hi TexasChic,
Thanks for raising an interesting question. It’s one I struggle with.
Would legalizing prostitution make things better for the women who work in it? Certainly I agree that criminalization of prostitution drives it underground, and that can be harmful for the women.
However, prostitution is legal in the Netherlands, and therefore women are brought to Amsterdam from other places (Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe…) simply because there’s a legal market.
Many of the women who have been trafficked from outside the Netherlands have been forced into prostitution in their home countries and then brought to a place where prostitution is decriminalised. So legalising it doesn’t necessarily improve conditions for women.
I was in Amsterdam 18 months ago and I was a bit shocked when I saw women behind huge windows, rather like mannequins in department store windows… They seemed to be arranged to appeal to various fantasies. There was an African woman behind one window; a Chinese woman behind another window; blonde women and brunette women behind other windows. Apparently men could go ‘window shopping’ and decide which woman they wanted.
I found it strange to be confronted with prostitution in such an overt manner. But although it wasn’t what I’m used to seeing, I wondered whether life is significantly better for those women even though they’re working legally.
My personal belief is that if women had better choices, most of them wouldn’t choose prostitution. Prostitution is incredibly risky: from what I’ve read, I think probably all prostitutes have been victims of violence at some point in their working lives. Even more chilling is the statistic that various studies have confirmed: between 75% and 95% of women working in the sex industry (from strip clubs to brothels) have been sexually abused as children. To me, that seems to detract from the idea that these women are making an entirely free choice to engage in prostitution. It looks as if girls who are abused in childhood are much more likely to end up selling their bodies than women who haven’t been abused. What does that say about their sense of themselves?
And yet… are they better off where prostitution is legal, or where it’s illegal? Would a better solution be to criminalize the men who are their clients (as can happen in Scandinavia, if I remember correctly)?
I honestly believe that prostitution could only be safe for women in a world where all men respect women as people and don’t judge them according to their sexual behaviour; where men could value prostitutes as good, kind, decent people and not as b*tches or wh*res. We don’t live in that world… yet. I hope one day we will.
Just my two cents.
Tamar
poster:Tamar
thread:579342
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/relate/20051031/msgs/580211.html