Legal Prostitution

You say that it should be a woman's choice. And yes, it should be, but that's overwhelmingly not the case.In a study submitted at trial with 854 women in 9 countries, including Canada, 89% of women interviewed said they wanted out of prostitution.http://www.feminisms.org...And no, prostitution is not better than a McDonald's job.As adults in prostitution, 82% had been physically assaulted; 83% had been threatened with a weapon; 68% had been raped while working as prostitutes; and 84% reported current or past homelessness.Of the 130 people interviewed, 68% met DSM III-R criteria for a diagnosis of PTSD. Eighty-eight percent of these respondents stated that they wanted to leave prostitution.http://www.arte-sana.com...Here's another tidbit from the first link:Women who gave affidavits of their experience in prostitution said that prostituting indoors is not safe. Some of the women said they preferred prostitution on the street because they had more control and they got to keep more of their earnings. Prostituting indoors means the brothel owner negotiates with johns. This person, whether they are called pimp, manager, or agency owner, has a vested economic interest in women pleasing johns, and is more likely to agree to johns’ demands to have sex without condoms and to engage in sexual acts women themselves wouldn’t agree to.One of the applicants, Amy Lebovtich, reported in her affidavit that when she was working in a brothel a john tied her up and raped her. No one intervened and she was left tied up for nearly half an hour until someone found her. Another woman who gave an affidavit had this to say: “I have been raped and sodomized by johns while working in massage parlours, and was too scared and embarrassed to make any noise, and wouldn’t have even known who to call. Sometimes I would hear other girls screaming or crying and I didn’t know if it was part of an act or real. I never intervened…Screams in the house were frequent and no one ever got involved.” It isn’t exactly good business to report a violent “customer” to the police, even in a legalized regime.Finally, there was ample evidence on the trial record that legal brothels in decriminalized countries serve as covers for child prostitution, trafficking in women and links to organized crime. In the Netherlands and Australia, the illegal sector comprises more than half of the prostitution industry. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women reported that in 2004 alone, 405 cases of trafficking in women were discovered in the Netherlands. The Dutch expert reported that there have been at least 50 documented murders of prostituted women in the Netherlands between 1992 and 2004 – several of these women were, “murdered in a brothel or ‘window’, and a few of them were murdered at home by their pimp.” She summarized her findings by saying, “…the new prostitution legislation of 2000 has not meant that prostitutes are now more safe. The ability to work indoors, the decriminalization of organizing prostitution and the legalization of sex work have not removed the risk of being beaten, abused or coerced…In short, the new legislation’s goals of reducing the violence against women and the exploitation of women have not been met.”Here is an image showing describing a harrowing impact.http://40.media.tumblr.com...;More information can be found here: http://casac.ca...From these facts, I don't believe total legalization is the solution to this awful unethical industry. I support the Nordic model--where people who pay prostitutes are criminalized whereas the prostituted people themselves are not. Just because something will generate plenty of tax revenue and "still happen" does not mean that people who engage in it are exempt from criminalization.