Regulated Prostitution: The Commercialization of Victimization

"Legalization means empowerment" ?!?!?!?!

Those who claim that consensual prostitution has no harms, to put it bluntly, are ill informed liberal morons. This group so happens to call me a religious nut because I believe in shrinking the prostitution industry because of its harms while protecting prostitutes themselves to the highest degree. All this disgusts me for prostitution is no simpler than the commercialization of the victimization of females. Fact is, I care deeply about women and it my desire that they are protecting within society. The practice itself is exceedingly exploitative and degrading simply because it is conducted on the premise that, "Woman are lumps of meat that are bought and sold for the sexual gratification of men." It is one of the reasons why we don't we that many male prostitutes around. Melissa Farley PhD, a clinical psychologist explains, "In prostitution, men remove women's humanity. Buying a woman in prostitution gives men the power to turn women into a living, breathing, masturbation fantasy. He removes her self and those qualities that define her as an individual, and for him she becomes sexualized body parts. She acts the part of the thing he wants her to be."

I support the Swedish model in which after its own experimentation with decriminalization failed, decided in 1999 to attack prostitution by punishing those who use prostitutes and those who manage, not the victim, therefor offering the victims a way out.  This policy is rooted in a stripe of feminism that believes prostitution whether voluntary or not results in serious harms against women and society and should be marginalized, and never normalized. The results, street prostitution has been cut in half, crime & organized trafficking are down, police say the sex trade has not gone underground, and many women with the sympathetic assistance of police and social workers have found other lines of work. Seventy per cent of Swedes support the law. Iceland, Norway, and France have also adopted similar polices towards prostitution.

While the harms of prostitution to women and society makes it undeniably undesirable, I myself am aware of the harms of complete full criminalization of prostitution, as seen in modern day China where prostitutes are afraid to get assistance from authorities when they become subject to abuse, so I believe the focus of the debate should be on whether or not it should be made illegal to purchase sexual services, but not sell it. And whether or not pimping, procuring, and operating a brothel should be illegal. To save time, I will be referring to the complete legalization and regulation of prostitution by government as "full legalization". Below are three arguments that support my claims. Feel free to borrow freely from it if you are ever asked to debate this topic against a liberal, Trudeau like, imbecile.

1. Inherent Harms
I was told today that there is nothing wrong with prostitution. "What's wrong with someone selling their body for sex as long as the prostitute agrees. It's a win win situation. The male get's pleasure and the female get's money," they claimed. Yet when I asked them whether or not they would feel comfortable if their mother or sister were involved in prostitution, they said no for the work is, and I quote, "degrading". Let's for a second not take into account the very small minority of high class call girls along with male prostitutes for that is another issue and focus on the majority. Those who choose engage in prostitution do not choose it as a legitimate career choice. Often it is due to poverty, drug addictions, a lack of education, and other incredibly sad factors of life. They are then pushed to the bottom rung of society where the only way they can earn money is through selling there bodies. This is proved by Dr.Benjamin Perrin of the University of British Columbia's Faculty of Law, the author of Invisible Chains, documents how 85 to 95% of Canadians in prostitution want out of sex work but need help. When customers start buying "body parts" of someone else, the human aspect competently disappears. Friends, we need to keep in mind we are dealing with a living human being. With rare exceptions, all women leave prostitution early in life scared forever psychologically, emotionally, and often physically. This is were pimps and drugs come in to stop women from leaving the industry even when they really want to, but that's another problem. What we conclude with, is that prostitutes are victims.

2. Counter-Productiveness of Full Legalization
What not trying to limit the amount of prostitution that happens is a gift to pimps, traffickers, and the sex industry. While I could use logic, the best way to prove this is to look at countries who have fully legalized prostitution and examine the outcomes after years of a policy of full legalization. Prostitution became legal in Germany in 2002. Those who supported it aimed to, "Strengthen women's rights and turn prostitution into a normal profession." And how is the plan doing today? Time magazine writes that Germany has become "the cut rate prostitution capital of the world. Migrant sex workers lured from villages in Bulgaria and Romania have been turned into almost sex slaves in Germany's 3,000 legal brothels. For the same reason, police are most of the time powerless to help them. The number of prostitutes that increased up to about 200,000, and prices, incredibly low. An investigation into the sex trade by Der Spiegel found that tourists can get flat-rate deals - all the sex they want - for less than $100. Those who supported full legalization thought that it would turn prostitutes into independent agents and put them on a equal footing with customers. Instead, it has become legalized exploitation on an unprecedented level. Might be just luck? Let's take a look at another example, the Netherlands.  After prostitution was legalized in 2000, the idealist supporters believed that prostitutes would join unions and that brothels would be regulated, inspected, and taxed. Sadly, even after so many years, most of the sex trade still operates outside the regulations. Not only that, it has expanded the market allowing the spread of brothels all over the country. The famous Amsterdam red-light district has become a haven for money laundering, drugs, and most notably, sex tourism which I will expand on later. Not lying, the Dutch National Police issued a report in 2008 saying, "The idea that a clean, normal business sector has emerged is an illusion." Additionally, a study from the London School of Economics found that human trafficking goes hand-in-hand with legalization, because legalization encourages sex tourism and vastly increases the demand for paid sex. One Dutch study concluded that, 60% of woman in legal prostitution were physically assaulted, 70% threatened with physical assault, 40% experienced sexual violence, and 40% had been coerced into legal prostitution.

3. Role of Government
We can now agree that prostitution, even when consensual, is incredibly harmful to woman and society so therefore undesirable. Also that legalization will only further harm woman, how should the government react? But before that, my reply to those who say the government should not be restricting this freedom for prostitution is a personal choice the female makes and should not be stopped as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. Firstly, that by itself is completely not true first because prostitution harms other individuals involved and society as a whole. Second, assuming it isn't, yes, the government has a role to protect even when someone chooses to do something that is only harmful to themselves, but not necessarily others. Louis LeBel, a well respected supreme court justice, voiced in his probe to Terri-Jean Bedford's lawyer, "Are moral concerns not part of forming criminal law?" In a similar way, the government makes it illegal for me to take hard drugs such as crystal meth even if it do it in private without hurting or annoying anyone because by voting it in, citizens have given it a mandate to protect all. Now back to the topic of the role of government. Writing for a unanimous court, Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin opined that, "Parliament has the power to regulate against nuisances, but not at the cost of the health, safety and lives of prostitutes. While her decision was not one I competently support, this idea is central. Full legalization is going to cost the health, safety and lives of prostitutes, so is complete criminalization. We need to stop the problem at it's root. That is, men wanted to have casual sex relationships with someone other than their partner due mostly in part to human nature. By instituting the Swedish model, this can be done. Passing this law will put pressure on men not to find prostitutes, and we all know less demand means less supply. It will slowly shrink the prostitution industry leading to less woman being victimized. At the same time, because prostitution per say is legal, prostitutes can get help from authorities with out fear of prosecution.