NLGRev 68-2[1].indd - National Lawyers Guild

74 national lawyers guild review
position. 66 In other words, if prostitution is legal, even those in charge of educating
children cannot be prohibited from it. In Germany and New Zealand,
where prostitution is decriminalized, women fear that they will be denied
unemployment benefits if they do not “consent” to work as prostitutes. In
2005, a German woman who was a qualified information-technology worker
was threatened by a government agency that her unemployment benefits
would be terminated if she did not take a job at a legalized brothel. 67
Another likely paradox of legalization is the shrinkage of resources for
women to actually improve their lives due to the belief that prostitution is a
legitimate way out of poverty. This paradox becomes more pronounced as
the prostitution market grows and is legitimized. For instance, women and
girls are commoditized as products for sale to such an extreme that one can
now access “consumer guides” to buy women on the web. The men who
frequent such websites “consider themselves connoisseurs of fine women,”
like fine wine or fine chocolates. 68 Women are forced to do as the men who
buy them want because the buyers have the power to post a bad review—a
kind of complaint process if their “products” dissatisfy them.
This market push and pull puts prostituted women in an impossible
quandary. “It’s a double-edged sword,” said Helen, a $350-an-hour escort
in a Western state, who said she was in the business to make enough money
to “go to graduate school so she could teach.” 69 Helen’s remark begs the
vital question: so long as there is prostitution, why should the State provide
women students support to finish their education? Robyn Few, a former
prostitute who lobbies to decriminalize prostitution as executive director of
the Sex Workers Outreach Project in San Francisco, responds to “consumer
guides” on a personal level, saying plainly —“I hate it”—and that it facilitates
women “being reviewed and rated like some subhuman.” 70 However, if
prostitution is legalized, market forces will make it difficult for many women
to improve their lives, while at the same time, exposing them to even more
abuse, violence, and danger.
Acceptance of prostitution justifies violence against women. The men
who engage in it have more discriminatory attitudes against women and are
more accepting of prostitution and rape myths as well as being more violent
themselves. 71 A thriving sex industry increases child prostitution and other
sex crimes. 72 In other words, there is no way to improve a fundamentally
discriminatory practice.
The intimate connection between prostitution and human trafficking
While there is a great global outcry against trafficking, the majority of sex
trafficking would not exist if prostitution did not exist. Even the Netherlands