WUNRN
PROSTITUTION CANNOT BE SQUARED WITH HUMAN RIGHTS OR THE
EQUALITY OF WOMEN
Dianne Post - December 6, 2013
Prostitution exists because inequality exists. At the same time,
prostitution embeds into society the very inequality it feeds on; thus
perpetuating the subordination of women.
For prostitution to exist as a monetary exchange, women must be
commodified as products in the stream of commerce. In commercial terms, I
have a problem with both supply (too many women live in poverty) and demand
(too many men believe they have a right to sexual access). Both facts
require that women be subordinate. That is why the radical feminist
position on prostitution is abolition. Abolition is the only way to
address the root cause of prostitution i.e. personal and structural inequality.
We must both improve the lives of women around the world so that they can
truly exercise choice and independence and teach men to understand that sexual
access is not a right.
In an ideal world, where everyone has equal power to negotiate,
people could work out their desires and needs themselves. But no such
world exists. No country in the world has ensured equality for all its
citizens, especially women and minorities. Therefore, it remains the task
of societal and governmental institutions to put into place structures that
ameliorate and ultimately prevent that imbalance in power.
Almost half of the world’s population lives in conditions of
extreme poverty or on less than $1 per day. Of these individuals, seventy
percent are women. Many women are forced into prostitution for economic, and
indeed sheer survival, reasons; this does not constitute “consent.” The
practice of prostitution brands all women as something that can be bought and
sold; and therefore, just like slaves, less than full humans who deserve the
complete panoply of human rights.
The answer to the poverty of women cannot be prostitution but
must be the fair distribution of power and resources. Maintaining
prostitution as the last refuge for poverty stricken women is exploitation and
cannot lead to gender equality. So long as prostitution remains an “option” for
poor women, there is no incentive to develop educational opportunities, job
programs, or economic policies that could uplift the poor. Prostitution is also
often the gateway for entry into sex trafficking.
Human rights or liberties never exist in a vacuum. One
person’s right to swing their arm ends where another person’s nose begins. We
do not live on an island; no right is absolute. Men do not have a “right”
to sexual access because that act involves another person who also has rights
that are just as important and must be balanced.
Women have encountered this “rights” argument before and
feminists have had to name it time and time again. Husbands no longer
have the “right” to beat their wives; husbands no longer have the “right” to
have sex with their wives over objection (in most states); parents no longer
have the “right” to beat their children, employers have no “right” to ask
sexual favors from their employees, and men have no “right” to have sex with
their date regardless of the price of dinner. Just like the movements
that named domestic abuse, marital rape, child abuse, sexual harassment and
date rape for what they are – violence against women – we must likewise name
prostitution as violence.
The radical feminist stance
against prostitution is based on the lived realities of women, something often
missing in the pro-prostitution narrative. To find out what those lives
really are, you must ask the women. Much evidence shows that the vast majority
(89%) of prostituted women want out if they had an exit path. The
evidence also shows that women in prostitution have the highest rates of rape
and homicide (50%) of any group of women ever studied, and that they will
suffer injury equivalent to victims of state-sponsored torture.[1]
The average age of death for prostituted persons is thirty-four;
the practice has a “workplace” homicide rate nearly seven times higher than
that of the next most vulnerable group – male taxi drivers. Research
indicates that pimps typically take all or most of the money and, far from
protecting or managing their “stable” of girls, they force women and children
to earn nightly monetary quotas to avoid beatings. Pimps even “brand” those
under their control with tattoos of their names or symbols such as bar codes to
demonstrate “ownership” of the girls they control.
In the United States, nearly
eighty percent of prostituted women report a history of child abuse, and twelve
to fourteen is the average age at which children are first used in commercial
sex. At that age, a child cannot legally quit school, marry, sign a
contract, or drive a car. Nor can she give “consent” to enter prostitution.[2]
Legalizing prostitution has a
harmful impact on every indicator of violence against women. A thriving
sex industry increases child prostitution and other sex crimes[3] and has a negative
effect on how women are regarded by men.[4] The men who engage
in it have more discriminatory attitudes toward women and are more accepting of
prostitution and rape myths as well as being more violent themselves.[5] Violence against
women and children increases when prostitution increases because acceptance or
normalization of prostitution sets up the image of women as suitable targets of
violence.
The United Nations Special
Rapporteur on Trafficking pointed out in her 2005 report that under the UN
Trafficking Protocol[6] consent is logically
impossible. “Power and vulnerability in this context must be understood to
include power disparities based on gender, race, ethnicity and poverty.
Put simply, the road to prostitution and life within ‘the life’ is rarely one
marked by empowerment or adequate options.”
Consent is more than the absence
of force[7] but also
requires the presence of sexual autonomy. Sexual autonomy is violated
whenever the person has not freely agreed or is otherwise not a voluntary
participant.[8] The
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia concluded that the
definition of rape meant more than just body parts but also includes
intimidation, degradation, humiliation, discrimination, punishment, control or
destruction of a person.[9]
Allegedly, legalization and
decriminalization will help women by making the environment safer. But
experiments in legalization have failed.[10] Amsterdam Mayor Job
Cohen said, “Almost five years after the lifting of the brothel ban, we have to
acknowledge that the aims of the law have not been reached. Lately we’ve
received more and more signals that abuse still continues.” According to the
Amsterdam police, “We are in the midst of modern slavery.”
The New Zealand decriminalization
also failed. A July 2005 report by Manukau city council said the nuisance
factor escalated and street workers quadrupled despite bylaws regulating the
location of brothels. “It was widely expected that the outcome of
legalizing prostitution would be that sex trade workers would generally operate
from safe, regulated and legal brothels. In Manukau, that has not been the
case.” New Zealand police, meanwhile, say organized crime groups
are involved in many aspects of prostitution.[11]
In the Netherlands, the sex
industry increased by twenty-five percent after legalization. In Victoria,
Australia, the number of legal brothels doubled, and illegal brothels increased
by 300%. A 200% to 400% increase in street prostitution has been reported in
Auckland, New Zealand since prostitution was decriminalized.[12]
Further, wherever prostitution is
legalized, sex trafficking in the region increases. A 2012 study by Cho,
Dreher, and Newmayer, corroborated by comparing figures in Sweden, Denmark, and
Germany, concluded that “Legalizing prostitution will therefore almost
invariably increase demand for prostitution” and “on average countries where
prostitution is legal, experience larger reported human trafficking inflows.”[13]
By contrast, in Sweden when the
buyers were criminalized, rather than the prostituted women, trafficking significantly decreased. In
its 2004 report, the National Criminal Investigation Department estimated
that roughly 400 to 600 women are trafficked into Sweden each year, compared
with the 10,000 to 15,000 women trafficked into Finland. Norway adopted the
Nordic Model in 2009 and has seen a 20% decrease in street prostitution, a 16%
decrease in indoor prostitution, and a 60% decrease in advertisements for
sexual activities.
The Nordic Model of targeting
demand has proven thus far to be the only successful
tool to decrease prostitution and sex trafficking. The effect of the Swedish
law has been dramatic. With a population of nine million,
Sweden has only one-tenth the number of street prostitutes than that of
neighboring Denmark, which has half the population. Of Denmark’s street
prostitutes, 50% are estimated to be trafficked.
Prostitution has extremely negative legal and practical
consequences for women and women’s rights. A society where full gender equality
exists cannot at the same time support the idea that women are commodities that
can be bought, sold, and sexually exploited. Prostitution is not only
discrimination, exploitation and abuse by an individual man or men, but also a
structure reflecting and maintaining inequality between men and women, north
and south, white and non-white. Prostitution is the sexualization of power
based on gender, class, and ethnicity and negatively impacts society’s view of
women. Abolition is the only solution.
Notes
[4] http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/uncategorized/international_law/ekberg_articlevaw_updated0504271.authcheckdam.pdf
[6] PROTOCOL TO PREVENT, SUPPRESS AND PUNISH TRAFFICKING IN
PERSONS, ESPECIALLY WOMEN AND CHILDREN, SUPPLEMENTING THE UNITED NATIONS
CONVENTION AGAINST TRANSNATIONAL ORGANIZED CRIME http://www.osce.org/odihr/19223
[7] International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia, Prosecutor v. Dragoljub Kunarac, Radomire Kovac
and Zoran Vukovich (2001) ICTY 2 (22 February 2001)
[8] International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia,
Prosecutor v. Dragoljub, supra … paragraph 456.
[9] European Court of Human Rights, Reports of Judgments and
Decisions, Eur. Ct. of H.R. September 1997, Aydin v. Turkey, 23178/94 (1997)
ECHR 75 (25 September 1997); Fernando and Raquel Mejia v. Peru (Decision of 1
March 12996 ( Report No. 5/96, case no 10,970, in Annual Report of the
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights 1995 OEA/Ser.L/V/II.91, pp.
182-188.
[10] Sullivan , M.L. (2007) Making Sex Work:
A Failed Experiment with Legalized Prostitution. Spinifex: North
Melbourne.
[11] By Jo McKenzie-McClean, 18 April 2006, Prostitution
law change ‘a disaster,’ http://www.stuff.co.nz/.