Faina Pensy

Ms. Russell

CAP 10 Interdisciplinary

3 June 2019

Prostitution: Oppression Disguised as Freedom

Introduction

For those in favor of legalizing sex work, prostitution is blindly interpreted as a

fundamental right of a woman. It is seen as something that is empowering and freeing,

something that allows a woman to take a hold of her sexuality and use it to support herself

financially. However, is it really all it is made out to be? Prostitution as a career is objectifying,

degrading; and dangerous, and does more harm than good to those seeking to enter the so called

profession, along with women around the world. Legalization efforts around the world have

gained much ground, with Amnesty International publishing its policy which “makes several

calls on governments for them to ensure protection from harm, exploitation and coercion; the

participation of sex workers in the development of laws that affect their lives and safety”

(Amnesty International). However, this is not where the solution to protecting women lies; it lies

in the strengthening of the illegalization of prostitution. Sex work must remain illegal in the state

of Maryland because it degrades, objectifies, and endangers women by calcifying a toxic culture.

In relation to that toxic culture, it perpetuates false notions of consent, and almost like a cherry

on top of a morbid, rotten cake, it contributes to human trafficking.

The Degradation, Objectification, and Endangerment of Women

Degredation and Objectification

As mentioned earlier, the ideas surrounding prostitution have evolved to showcase a

glitzy, pampered lifestyle, something one might see in ​Pretty Woman​. However, this couldnt be

farther from the truth. Rachel Moran, a former sex worker and the founder of ​Space

International​, an advocacy group for abolition of the sex trade, wrote an opinion piece in the

New York Times, writing “I cringe when I hear the words ‘sex work.’ Selling my body wasn’t a

livelihood. There was no resemblance to ordinary employment in the ritual degradation of

strangers’ using my body to satiate their urges. I was doubly exploited — by those who pimped

me and those who bought me” (Moran). Not only are prostitutes exploited, but they are reduced

to be viewed as mere objects, almost like dolls and nothing more, as if they don’t have the same

value as someone who is not a sex worker. Women in the sex trade are viewed as ​“intrinsically

different from other women and as morally deficient. Sex buyers justify prostitution by telling us

that she’s getting rich or that she’s simply doing an unpleasant but necessary job like factory

work” (Farley). This alone should be cause enough to ensure that prostitution remains illegal.

Germany serves as prime example of the conditions sex workers face. From twelve-story

mega-brothels, to road side ‘sex stops’, to virtual prostitution, there’s quite an assortment

present. Herbert Krauleidis, the owner of Gesext.de (also known as EBay for sex) was featured

in an article in the Telegraph. He describes his new plan for ​“ a new mobile app... called ​Touch

& Sex.​ ‘So you check into a hotel and look at your smart phone, you choose a woman,’ – ‘like a

pizza,’ Krauleidis interrupts, absent-mindedly scrolling through his emails” (Liu). Under no

circumstances should a woman’s body be compared to or viewed the same way as a piece of
pizza. They are not prizes to be won or commodities to be bought, they are human beings, and

prostitution is a direct violation of their basic right to be treated as such.

Endangerment of Women

As if it wasn’t enough for sex workers to be treated with the same amount of respect as a

Happy Meal, they are also put at risk of great physical danger. In an auto-biographic piece in

BBC​, a former unwilling sex worker named Brenda Myers-Powell remarks “the johns - the

clients - are violent. I've been shot five times, stabbed 13 times. I don't know why those men

attacked me, all I know is that society made it comfortable for them to do so” (Myers-Powell). It

is quite difficult to comprehend that there is a way for this violence to be put to a stop, all that is

needed is a firmer stance against sex work, and countless assault cases could be prevented. The

case of Brenda Myers-Powell is not an isolated incident. A mid-1990s study on 130 prostitutes

located in San-Francisco found that “of those who had been physically assualted… 88% had

been physically threatened while in prostitution, and 83% had been physically threatened with a

weapon. 68% reported having been raped since entering prostitution, 48% had been raped more

than five times” (Lowen). The physical and mental trauma that sex workers endure far outweighs

any cry for legalization.

The Calcification of a Toxic Culture

All of the aforementioned facts and statistics are alike in the sense that every single one

of these acts performed against the prostitutes is permissible. Brenda Myers-Powell wrote: “I

don’t know why these men attacked me, all I know is that society made it comfortable for them

to do so.” If prostitution was legalized, this type of ‘permission’ would be set into law. Citizens

of Maryland would be plunged into a society where women are viewed as nothing more than
objects who can be bought and sold, where physical and sexual abuse of these women is not only

normalized but not frowned upon. Men and women alike must ask themselves the question: is

this really worth it? Is paying for a physical act that in itself is meant to be a respectful, intimate

interaction between a man and a woman worth the degredation, the abuse, and the

objectification? No, it is not. Hypothetically, one could argue that legalization would allow room

for regulation, which would in turn put a stop to the acts of violence. That’s all fine and dandy,

but that doesn’t mean that women want to be looked at like a bag of Cheetos. And even ​with ​the

prospect of regulation, sex workers are still in danger of being attacked, no law will stop that.

The now widely spread sentiment is that “This harmful cultural practice is one aspect of the

oppression of women and a form of men’s violence that has to be brought to an end” (Jeffreys).

Perpetuating False Notions of Consent

Consent to Violation Is Not Consent At All

According to Boston University, proponents of legalization assume that most paid sexual

encounters are entirely consensual, and in association with that, they problematically accept the

argument that people in dire poverty who sell sex with no other option have given their full

consent (“Decriminalizing Prostitution Won’t Solve Social, Ethical Problems”). The issue of

consent plays a crucial role in the sex work debate, but unfortunately, the term has been falsely

interpreted on an ​incredibly​ wide scale, in turn incorrectly contributing to the argument that

prostitution should be legalized. Under this argument, it is assumed that the sex worker gives

their full consent when engaging with a client. However, it must be realized that “Prostitution

occurs because the person being consumed as product would not consent to sex with the buyer

unless he paid for it” (Farley). In her paper outlining the risks of prostitution, Melissa Farley says
that “... It’s like someone jumping from a burning building- you could say they made their choice

to jump, but you could also say they had no choice.” (Farley) By this more accurate standard, it’s

easy to see just how deadly prositution is to the concept of consent, and that “consent to violation

is a fact of oppression.” (Jeffreys)

Victims of Sexual Abuse Entering the Sex Work Industry

Another startlingly horrifying fact related to prostitution is the imminent correlation

between sex workers and a childhood history of sex abuse. Brenda Myers-Powell serves as an

example. Starting at the age of 4, Myers-Powell was molested, and by the age of 14 she had had

two daughters. She said that “I became the kind of girl that didn’t know how to say no- if the

little boys in the community said that they liked me or treated me nice, they could basically have

their way with me…” When talking about the first time she learned what a prostitute was,

Myers-Powell remarked that “One day I asked my grandmother what the women were doing and

she said, ‘Those women take their panties off and men give them money.’ And I remember

saying to myself, ‘I'll probably do that’ because men had already been taking my panties off.”

This is only one example of how women who are sexually abused as children, in time, drift into

the sex work industry, because they never learned what consent really looks like as a result of

their trauma. Referring back to the study conducted on the San Francisco prostitutes, 57%

reported a childhood history of sexual abuse, and 49% reported that they had been hit or beaten

by a caregiver until they had bruises or were injured in some way. To the question regarding

childhood sexual abuse, one woman (whose history was known to one of the interviewers) said

“Because there was no force, and besides, I didn’t even know what it was then- I didn’t know it

was sex” (Lowen). Based on this statistic, more than half of women in the prostitution industry
faced sexual abuse as a child, and then went on to have sex work as a career. The linkage is as

clear as it is damaging. To legalize the sex work industry would be to acknowledge and affirm

the influx of sexually abused women into the industry, which is immoral and destructive.

Victims of sexual abuse have already been through trauma, and for the trauma then to continue

in a different form of endangerment and objectification is inhumane. Briefly going back to Ms.

Myers-Powell, this section will end in a question, which is “Under what circumstances would a

woman turn to prostitution? What ideas does a woman have to have about her body and her

ability to consent to turn to that profession?” (Myers-Powell).

Human Trafficking

The final outstanding reason as to why prostitution should remain illegal in the state of

Maryland is its contribution to human trafficking, “the problem of trafficking of women into debt

bondage, a modern form of slavery, segues seamlessly into prostitution” (Jeffreys). Trafficking is

more likely and more prominent in countries where prostitution is legal, since “for a trafficker

it’s much easier to go to a country where it’s legal to have brothels and it’s legal to manage

people in prostitution. It’s just a more attractive environment” (Dilia). To legalize prostitution

would be to make it easier for traffickers to sneak their victims in under the radar, since selling

and buying sex would be legal. The argument has been made that by legalizing prostitution, a

crackdown could be issued on human trafficking through regulations and bylaws. However, in a

2012 study published in ​World Development,​ a multi-disciplinary monthly journal of

development studies, “Countries with legalized prostitution are associated with higher human

trafficking inflows than countries where prostitution is prohibited. The scale effect of legalizing

prostitution, i.e. expansion of the market, outweighs the substitution effect, where legal sex
workers are favored over illegal workers. On average, countries with legalized prostitution report

a greater incidence of human trafficking inflows” and “The effect of legal prostitution on human

trafficking inflows is stronger in high-income countries than middle-income countries. Because

trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation requires that clients in a potential destination

country have sufficient purchasing power, domestic supply acts as a constraint” (Harvard Law

School). The United States is a wealthy country, and according to Business Insider, Maryland is

well within the top ten for the U.S.’s wealthiest states (Kiersz). Combining the knowledge of

Maryland’s wealth with the information provided by Harvard Law School, it is clear that if

prostitution was made legal here in this particular state, the effects on human trafficking would

be dastardly, especially in places like Baltimore, or even D.C., which lies right next to Maryland.

Examples of Countries that Have Legalized Prostitution

Going back to the issue of human trafficking, Denmark and Spain are prime examples of

why prostitution should remain illegal. 90% of the 50,000 prostituted women in Madrid alone are

immigrants, and 70% of those women are trafficked (Dilia). That is 31,500 women, taken from

the comfort and security of their homes and forced into violent, nonconsensual sexual

interactions. In regards to Denmark, the country decriminalized prostitution in 1999, which is

“the same year Sweden made the purchase of sex illegal- [and now] has four times the number of

trafficking victims than [Sweden] having around half the population” (Dilia). In addition to

amplifying human trafficking, legalizing prostitution in other countries has also brought down

the value of areas where prostitution becomes common. “Amsterdam (who legalized prostitution

in 2000) is now shutting down much of its red light district in an attempt to make working

conditions better for those who aren’t sex workers, who are being abused and ‘gawped’ by
tourists, and to change the face of the city, which is now infamous for it’s cannabis distribution

and sex industry… ‘legal attracts illegal’” (Moran). Maryland does not the same reputation as the

red light district. Said reputation lead to the deterioration of a once famous area, now rotted away

because of prostitution.

Legalization Allows for Regulation

As mentioned earlier, proponents of legalization are adamant that by legalizing

prostitution, lawmakers have the chance to regulate it, making it safer for the workers. However,

there are multiple reasons why this argument is incorrect. First and foremost, in this scenario,

objectification cannot be regulated. In Germany, there is an ​app b​ eing made which allows men to

choose women “like a pizza” (Dilia). The only reason that things like this are happening are

because in places like Germany have made it legal. The United States has a long, in depth history

with gender inequity, and to legalize prostitution would be to take a major step backwards in

reversing all the damage and violence that has occurred against women. Lawmakers must not let

Maryland policy allow the state’s social standards to slide back into the 1950’s. Women are not

property. On the topic of property, it will be reiterated for a final time: legalizing prostitution

strengthens the human trafficking industry, which is currently worth $32 billion, second only to

illicit drugs, and currently has a span of 27 million victims. The issue is large enough as it is, and

Maryland should not play any role in aggrandizing it. It is also assured that no one (besides

traffickers) wants sex trafficking to flourish in their state.

Legalizing Sex Work Empowers Women

Nothing about gender-based violence and degredation is empowering. Saying that sex

work empowers women is nothing more than a facade, the truth lying beyond its guilded
appearance. From a glance, it would seem that prostitution is all about a woman’s right to choose

what she would like to do with her body, and that she should have the power to make that

decision for herself. In a perfect world, this would be the case. But unfortunately, that isn’t even

near the truth. Sex work runs so much deeper than that, it is irreversibly tied to so many harmful

issues that to legalize it would bring all those other issues to the surface, allowing them to take a

firm hold over the state of Maryland.

Conclusion

Because the legalization and decriminalization of sex work would provide a new form of

objectification and endangerment for women, perpetuate a toxic culture, and amplify human

trafficking, prostitution laws in Maryland should remain as they are and be enforced with a

higher degree of strictness. Because prostitution already goes on illegally, there needs to be a

stricter enforcement of anti-sex work laws, targeting the pimps and the clients instead of the

prostitutes, which is not where the problem lies. Such vile acts against women cannot be allowed

to proceed, and it is in the best interest of men and women alike to keep it illegal. If one stands

for the rights of a woman, if one truly believes that women do not deserve to be degraded or

looked down upon as nothing more than an object, one cannot stand in favor of prostitution.
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