Prostitution is often referred to as “the worlds oldest profession”. It is a branch of the sex market that has a revenue of roughly $186 billion dollars worldwide. Recently, more people have begun to feel less comfortable about the sex trade, or prostitution, being illegal. Amnesty International is proposing that we should decriminalize the sex trade. They claim that sex workers can be harassed, beaten, and sometimes have their issues ignored by police. They seem, at first glance, to not be given the basic human rights that they deserve.
Amnesty International claims that legalizing sex work will lower violence towards prostitutes. They state that if we legalize prostitution, the violence on prostitutes will go down because they will no longer be treated like criminals so women will feel more open to going to the police when a crime is committed to them. However, many people are concerned that if we legalize the sex trade the demand for prostitutes will be raised, resulting in more victims of human trafficking. Decriminalizing the sex trade may fix some problems but it has the potential of leading to countless more. One of the many problems with prostitution is that it degrades women and makes them appear as objects available for men to buy, use, and then discard. I am against the decriminalization of the sex because of the message that it sends about our society and about where woman stand with men.
A popular claim made about this subject is that if prostitution was no longer a crime, the amount of rapes would go down. Using an example from our own country we can see that this is not entirely true. Prostitution in Nevada is currently legal inside of a licensed brothel. Even though this is a legal place provided for prostitutes to work, the state of Nevada is number 36 on a list for the most rapes in the country. (50 being the worst)
I do not think that the government should get further involved in this business. Prostituting yourself is not a job and I think that us, as a nation, need to treat it like the crime that it is.
I completely agree with the post on Azure’s blog about prostitution. I find it ridiculous that people are becoming uncomfortable with the fact that prostitution is illegal. Azure’s post mentioned how Amnesty International claims that sex workers are often harassed and beaten and that because of this, the sex trade should be decriminalized. However, although they may be victims of harassment, many of these workers are aware that this is a risk of what they choose to do for a living.
ReplyDeleteThe post also mentioned how Amnesty International believes that decriminalizing the sex trade would decrease violence towards prostitutes and make it easier to reach out to the police if a crime is committed on one of them. This may be true, but the only reason prostitutes aren’t willing to reach out to the police is because they know they are committing a crime as well. It is also true that these people probably wouldn’t be harassed in the first place if they didn’t choose a “job” with such risks. I agree that although decriminalizing the sex trade may fix one or two problems, it definitely has the potential to lead to many more issues, including the perception of women. Overall, I too believe that the government should leave the debate over prostitution alone and treat it like a crime because it is one.