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Legalization the 'profession' would sanction the abuse
Insight on the News, Feb 27, 1995 by Anastasia Volkonsky
Globally, a pending U.N. Convention Against All Forms of Sexual Exploitation would address the modern forms of prostitution with mechanisms that target pimps and johns and that hold governments accountable for their policies.
Hunter supports the use of civil as well as criminal sanctions against johns, modeled after sexual harassment lawsuits. "People will change their behavior because of economics," she points out, using recent changes in governmental and corporate policy toward sexual harassment as an example of how the fear of lawsuits and financial loss can create social change.
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At the heart of the matter, prostitution is buying the right to use a woman's body The "profession" of prostitution means bearing the infliction of repeated, unwanted sexual acts in order to keep one's "job." It is forced sex as a condition of employment, the vary definition of rape and sexual harassment. Cecilie Hoigard and Liv Finstad, who authored the 1992 book Backstreets, chronicling 15 years of research on prostitution survivors, stress that it is not any individual act, but the buildup of sexual and emotional violation as a daily occurrence, that determines the trauma of prostitution.
Cleaning up the surrounding conditions won't mask the ugliness of a trade in human beings.
COPYRIGHT 1995 News World Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
