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Let's Talk About Prostitution
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So, Let's Talk About Prostitution....
 
       Following every prostitution round up I can tell you with certainty that at least some of the women involved become despondent about the course their lives have taken. They may even be on the verge of suicide.
       National figures bear me out. In a major study by Melissa Farley, called “Prostitution: Fact Sheet on Human Rights Violations” it's reported that 75 percent of women engaged in prostitution have tried to kill themselves.
       Dr. Farley follows up with a lot of other numbers in a lot of other dreadful categories. Bottom line: A majority of prostitutes report they were victims of incest or child sex abuse, have been violently raped on the job, physically assaulted with weapons, struggled with hunger and homelessness, drug and alcohol abuse and diseases like HIV. Most meet the criteria for post traumatic stress disorder. The average age of entry for a prostitute is 14 to 16 years old and most spend more than a decade selling their bodies.
       In other words, these women don't go into this line of work because they think it will be a good, long-term career move. They go into it because they know no other way to survive. I don't imagine there was ever a well-adjusted little girl who declared, “I want to grow up to be a call girl!”
       Most chilling is the murder rate among prostitutes. According to a Johns Hopkins study, the workplace homicide rate for a woman who sells sex is about seven times higher than that of a person in other high-risk occupations.
       It doesn't sound to me as though prostitutes can be considered happy-go-lucky ladies of the evening. It seems clear they have been and continue to be victimized on several fronts, often by their own bad judgment.
      I can understand why police arrest the women. They're breaking the law. But aren't the male customers breaking the law, too? Why are the clients so rarely charged?
       Case in point: Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the Madame of a high-priced service in Washington, D.C., catered to the powerful, including Republican Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana. Once exposed for being a Palfrey client, the senator publicly apologized to his wife and constituents and promptly went back to work making the laws of the land.
       Palfrey, on the other hand, was convicted and about to be sentenced to several years in prison when she was found dead, hanging in a shed on her mother's property. Two suicide notes were found.
       In January 2007, one of Palfrey's “girls,” a former college professor named Brandy Britton, also hanged herself on the eve of trial. It was learned that the  single-mother of two had been facing foreclosure on her home and had lived through a history of domestic abuse. She had lost her teaching job at the University of Maryland-Baltimore after filing a sex discrimination suit against the school and had turned to selling herself to pay the bills.
       They say if you bite off the head of a snake it dies. But where exactly is the head of the prostitution problem? Is it the women who sell themselves? The pimps who arrange the liaisons? Or is it the men who buy the sexual services?
       We arrest people who buy and sell illegal drugs. We convict people who buy and sell illegal child pornography. So why don't we go after men who buy illegal sex? Why is there a different standard when it comes to prostitution? If laws are being broken aren't both the women and the men equally guilty?
       
Comment HERE
 
David M from Albuquerque writes ....

Some people see the issue differently than others, I've found.  I don't know exactly how it see it, unconditionally, because sometimes prostitution is more of a victimless crime than other times.  It would be a better use of the legal system to concentrate on big-time robbers and meanies, probably.  As far as solutions are concerned, I guess it's the same old thing but same good thing, the genders loving each other, respecting each other, and LIKING each other.

Jim H. from Georgia writes ...

Prostitution is a socio/economic issue. Becasue prostitution is against the law in most places it's a crime. But regardless of whether it's a crime or not they are victims. They were victims before and after the act. Based on experience from a pastor's stand point the persons usually were victims of child abuse or incest and are in need of acceptance, love, and self-esteem. They want to feel needed and loved. They want to feel important. Those who pursue prostitution are victims of males who feel the need to control. Money for sex makes a john feel empowered over the prostitute thus fulfilling a desire of importance. This is a type of bondage which gives a john a particular fulfillment.
Prostitutes come from a background, not always, of lack. It's quick money and in most cases not small profits until one figures in the blood tests and risk of HIV and the toll that familiy and life experiences.
Still, it's a crime and there are victims on each side.
 
Russell B from Albuquerque writes ...
     Sweden experimented in 1999 with a radically different approach that many now regard as much more successful: it decriminalized the sale of sex but made it a crime to buy sex. In effect, the policy was to arrest customers, but not the prostitutes.
     Some Swedish prostitutes have complained that the policy reduced demand and thus lowered prices, while forcing sex work underground. But the evidence is strong that the new approach reduced trafficking in Sweden, and opinion polls show that Swedes regard the experiment as a considerable success. 

Don D. from Tijeras, New Mexico writes...

     I'd even go a little further and say that not only should the men be punished, you could make a case for harsher punishment for the men than the women.  The law of supply and demand, if there were no demand (men) for paid sexual services from women there would be no prostitution.  I think it is disgusting that people like Charlie Sheen (who I note has just gotten married again) and Hugh Grant can visit hookers and soon, after a little humor from the celebrity dazed media, the attitude of "boys will be boys" takes over and it is all forgotten and Sheen and Grant continue to get high paying contracts in Hollywood.  They should be shut out of the business.  
 

 

 

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