Prostitution is the “choice” of the choice-less, it preys on vulnerable populations.
Prostitution is a lack of choice, and typically is the last resort for those with the fewest of options.[1] A survey of those in prostitution found that 89% wanted to leave prostitution but felt like they had no viable alternative.[2] In a world where so many homeless persons, sexual abuse victims, foster care children, immigrant and indigenous women, refugees, persons of color, learning disabled, and transgender person already suffer from lives of political, social, and economic marginalization, it is a travesty of justice to decriminalize those who take pleasure in and literally profit from their sexual exploitation. The legalization and full decriminalization of prostitution assents to the sexual exploitation and trafficking of marginalized persons.
Systems of prostitution are not a “social security” substitute for the poor and disenfranchised. No one should ever be expected to give men access to their bodily orifices- mouth, vagina, and rectum in order to obtain shelter, healthcare, social services or to feed themselves and their children. Our society needs to invest in fixing the problems with healthcare, social services, homelessness, the foster care system, and more, instead of acquiescing to them and sanctioning that individuals should have to accept strangers sexually penetrating them in order to gain access to basic human needs.
Further, to the extent that prostitution is every truly a choice, and for most of the people it is not, it is a choice filled with inherent dangers.[3] This “choice” of danger includes physical and sexual violent traumas of rape, gang-rape, stabbings, beatings, and torture.[4] Prostitution is not a choice that any caring society would endorse as healthy and normative given the violence and harm within it.
[1] Catherine A. MacKinnon, Trafficking, Prostitution, and Inequality, 46 HARV. C.R.-C.L. L. REV. 271 (2011).
[2] Farley, M., Cotton, A. et al. (2003). Prostitution and Trafficking in Nine Countries: An Update on Violence and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Journal of Trauma Practice, 2(3/4), 33-74.
[3] NCOSE. Bright Light on the Red Light: The Truth About Prostitution. https://endsexualexploitation.org/prostitution/
[4] Ibid