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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
TinaS1
Published Letters: 780 Editor's Choice: 21
where prostitution is legal. Like the Netherlands? Finland?
Come on guys, have you?
I have lived five years in Europe. Legalization, sex worker unions, health checkups...all existed where I lived.
Helped nothing.
Didn't end trafficking of foreign girls, esp. from Africa and at the end of my time there, Iraq (yes, that's right).
Look, I don't know why, all those measures looked like good ideas on paper. But they did not work.
Part of the reason may have been that the girls were too marginalized and had too many issues to keep their shit together no matter what was done for them.
But a big part of the reason, I think, was that a large percentage of the johns were violent sociopaths who used prostitutes because no normal woman would put up with the way they liked to treat women. So, danger was always inherent in the job, union or no union.
I saw these women at work. Some sat out by the road, and others sat in their cars by the big wholesale vegetable market (truck driver territory). It was night, and no sensible woman would be walking the streets at that hour because it was too dangerous. So what do you suppose happens to them? And when something does, do you think having a union helps?
Some women worked out of rooms/hotels but these women were more likely to have pimps than others (somebody has to rent the real estate). The ones in their cars were the most likely to be self-employed, and the ones at the train station were most likely to be foreigners and outright trafficking victims.
There is something inherently exploitative and underhanded about prostitution that legalization just cannot fix. Legalization does not address the motivation of pimps and gangsters to profit from stables of girls. Legalization of drugs may end the criminals' control over the drug market, although this is debateable, and we haven't really tried it yet (I'd be willing to). But it does not end the trafficking of girls.
Prostitution will always be in the shadows...nobody wants to tell their girlfriends/wives/moms where they are going. As such, it will always be secretive and dangerous for the prostitutes as well, always at night, always exposed to violent pervs and whatever else is on the street. If you are going to ask for a major overhaul of public opinion and perceptions of morality, instead of arguing that this disgusting treatment of women be accepted, why not argue that men be taught to respect women enough not to buy them? Would that be any less difficult? And it would make a lot more sense.
men who are very successful with women may also solicit prostitutes, esp. if they have sociopathic tendencies. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
