Prostitution for profit in Jamaica?

4 July 2008 in Opinion Comment, Prostitution, South America, Trafficking, Violence Against Women

Dear Reader,

There is one thing that is becoming abundantly clear about the Golding administration and its surrogate-managers – they are obviously prepared to fund the budget by any means necessary, even in the face of the glaring contradictions between fiscal propriety and moral bankruptcy. As if enough damage is not being done to the social fabric of the country with the legalisation of casino gambling, there are some people who are now talking about the legalisation of prostitution.

Just in case there is any of us who may be unclear about the factual implications of the legalisation of prostitution – it is that the buying and selling of sex would move from a personal and individual level to becoming a state-sponsored enterprise.

Though I am not at all surprised at anything that comes out of the mouths of politicians and their technocrats, I am nevertheless appalled by the shallow and unbalanced arguments that are being advanced. The issue of prostitution and public health is only one facet of a broad spectrum of problems that beset the “profession”, the foremost among them being the very serious problem of violence against prostitutes and the persistent problem of social and economic inequities.

Studies from almost every part of the world confirm the grim reality of how dangerous the life of a prostitute is. Even while prostitute murders are often undercounted because they are embedded in the general homicide statistics, the trajectory in almost every major country shows that the murder of prostitutes in on the increase, including murder by serial killers.

Violence against prostitutes is alarming. In a study conducted in the United States a few years ago, it was revealed that 82 per cent of prostitutes were physically assaulted after they entered the trade, and of that figure, 55 per cent had been assaulted by customers. In the same study, 83 per cent of the women had been physically threatened with a weapon, and 68 per cent reported having been raped since entering prostitution. Forty-eight per cent had been raped more than five times, and 46 per cent of those who reported rapes stated that they had been raped by customers.

It is widely concluded that prostitutes are anywhere from 6 to 100 times more likely to be murdered than non-prostitutes, and of prostitutes murdered in the United States, the majority were young women under the age of 35.

The personal backgrounds as well as the “push” factors are equally disturbing. In one study in the state of Ohio in the US, it was discovered that between 75 per cent and 95 per cent of all prostitutes were sexually abused as children, and that many had been high school dropouts from poor and abusive homes. A large percentage of prostitutes are drug addicts, and in one report, between 65 per cent and 75 per cent of prostituted women were found to be victims of long-term incest.

A report from the Council for Prostitution Alternatives in Portland, Oregon, USA, stated that 78 per cent of the women who sought their help had attempted suicide at some point, and in the US state of Arizona, a study revealed that prostitutes were subjected to repeated beatings from their pimps, and had been likely to have been coerced into pornography, topless dancing or prostitution, or both, in order to support the pimp’s drug habit.

One of the gravest risks faced by prostitutes and other sex workers is human trafficking. The phenomenon , described as “modern-day slavery”, now stands at a figure of close to 27 million trafficked victims, and is largely associated with young women, even children, many of them recruited or coerced as a result of their exposure to prostitution and the sex trade.

Somebody needs to point the Jamaican authorities to the growing body of evidence against the legalisation (decriminalisation) of prostitution. It is reported that Sweden, a country that has had legalised prostitution for some time, is now realising that it is not working. As a result, Sweden is now trying a new approach in which it is illegal to buy sexual services, but legal to sell them. The assumption is that prostitution is primarily a form of violence against women.

Men become the offenders liable to prosecution, and women are regarded as victims who need to be helped.

Prostitution is more than a public health hazard, and the idea of collecting taxes through the buying and selling of sex is vulgar at best. To suggest that we might as well tax it, since we can’t stop it, seems a convenient excuse, particularly when those sentiments are expressed by males. In the words of one writer, “Instead of accepting prostitution as an inevitability, we shift the focus from the women to the men who buy and sell them. Until we shift the stigma and shame of prostitution on to the pimps and the customers, women will face insurmountable barriers to leaving the industry. Let’s ensure that next year we begin to accept that far from being the oldest profession, prostitution is the oldest oppression.”

A professor and chair in women’s studies at the University of Rhode Island, Donna M Hughes, PhD, puts it this way,

“Prostitution is an extreme form of gender discrimination. Legalisation of this violence to women restricts women’s freedom and citizenship rights. If women are allowed to become a legitimate commodity, they are consigned to second-class citizenship. Democracy is subverted.”

With love
Betty Ann Blaine

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/html/20080623T200000-0500_137036_OBS_PROSTITUTION_FOR_PROFIT_.asp

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See Tax sex workers and the Government could rake in $3 billion a year from prostitution in Jamaica