The media did a horrible injustice by glamorizing this so-called profession by claiming it was a lifestyle choice. Well, it isn't; human rights violations never are.
Snip:
One response would be: Prostitution is inevitable, so we might as well legalize and regulate it. That's a pragmatic argument that I used to find persuasive. If brothels were legalized and inspected, I believed, then we could uproot child prostitution and reduce AIDS and sexually transmitted infections.
I changed my mind after looking at the experiences of other countries. The Netherlands formally adopted the legalization model in 2000, and there were modest public health benefits for the licensed prostitutes. But legalization nurtured a large sex industry and criminal gangs that trafficked underage girls, and so trafficking, violence and child prostitution flourished rather than dying out.
As a result, the Netherlands is now backtracking on its legalization model by closing some brothels, and other countries, like Bulgaria, are backing away from that approach.
In contrast, 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. And the bottom line is that if you want to rape a 13-year-old girl imported from Eastern Europe, you'll have a much easier time in Amsterdam than in Stockholm.
This piece came out several months ago about Nevada's legal brothels, where the women live in almost slave-like conditions.
Farley's not making it up, either, for political ends. My landlord and I were talking about this article, and we knew somebody who rented a room from him years ago when he had a guest house who worked as a prostitute in one of the legal brothels. What she told my landlord backs up this article. She was also a drug user because she felt she had to take drugs in order for the "work" to be bearable.
And people glamorize this, make people like Joe Conforte folk heroes for exploiting and abusing women.
Disgusting.
Edit: This post by an ex-prostitute is good.
