Legalized Prostitution: Apparently Not So Great for Women

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It's not uncommon for feminists and other folks interested in womens rights to argue that prostitution might be a shittier and less dangerous job if it were legal. But a new book, reviewed in this weekend's Guardian, suggests otherwise.
During a two-year investigation, the author, Melissa Farley, visited eight legal brothels in Nevada, interviewing 45 women and a number of brothel owners. Far from enjoying better conditions than those who work illegally, the prostitutes she spoke to are often subject to slave-like conditions.

Described as "pussy penitentiaries" by one interviewee, the brothels tend to be in the middle of nowhere. . . . The brothel prostitutes often live in prison-like conditions, locked in or forbidden to leave.
....
Then there is the fact that legal prostitutes seem to lose the rights ordinary citizens enjoy. From 1987, prostitutes in Nevada have been legally required to be tested once a week for sexually transmitted diseases and monthly for HIV. Customers are not required to be tested. The women must present their medical clearance to the police station and be finger-printed, even though such registration is detrimental: if a woman is known to work as a prostitute, she may be refused health insurance, face discrimination in housing or future employment, or endure accusations of unfit motherhood.
....
Farley found a "shocking" lack of services for women in Nevada wishing to leave prostitution. "When prostitution is considered a legal job instead of a human rights violation," says Farley, "Why should the state offer services for escape?" More than 80% of those interviewed told Farley they wanted to leave prostitution.

The effect of all this on the women in the brothels is "negative and profound," according to Farley. "Many were suffering what I'd describe as the traumatic effects of ongoing sexual assaults, and those that had been in the brothels for some time were institutionalized. That is, they were passive, timid, compliant, and deeply resigned."

"No one really enjoys getting sold," says Angie, who Farley interviewed. "It's like you sign a contract to be raped."
I've made the pro-legalization argument myself in the past. But further thought, and a little bit of experience, has made me think that while women prostituting themselves should be decriminalized--that is, prostitutes, who are usually pretty desperate women, shouldn't be arrested simply because they are trying to make money by selling sex--soliciting prostitutes, whether as a pimp, madam, or john, should be more heavily criminalized than it currently is. Not only for moral reasons, though it's obviously appalling to profit or derive sexual pleasure from someone else's desperation, but also for practical ones. Soliciting prostitutes clearly endangers and exploits women; it presents a public health hazard, not only through disease but also through violence and abuse; and I think it's undeniable that commercializing sex is dehumanizing; it effectively turns the women (and occasionally men) who provide it into objects themselves, to be traded and sold.
Farley found evidence, for example, that the existence of state-sanctioned brothels can have a direct effect on attitudes to women and sexual violence. Her survey of 131 young men at the University of Nevada found the majority viewed prostitution as normal, assumed that it was not possible to rape a prostitute, and were more likely than young men in other states to use women in both legal and illegal prostitution.

What do you guys think?

Bitch_PhD thinks that it's important to consider the actual effects of things as they are, rather than simply hypothsizing about how prostitution (or any other thing) might theoretically be okay in some imaginary world.

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