Should Prostitution be Considered a Job?

Ending Sexploitation

Popular media portrays those involved in prostitution as typically glamorized or empowered individuals. However, the research reveals that this is not the experience of the vast majority of those involved in the sex trade.

Typically, positive portrayals of prostitution as voluntary work are coming from a place of privilege. The vast majority of prostituted people are not engaging in paid sex because it's fulfilling, or to fund their Ivy League education. The vast majority of prostituted people are engaging in prostitution out of a need to survive.

Some have claimed that poor women should have the option of voluntary "sex work." However, we've always had laws in our society regulating what is acceptable work in order to protect the poor from being exploited, for example, child labor laws or laws limiting the acceptable numbers of hours worked.

Further, any laws against sexual harassment in the work place are inherently void when it comes to prostitution. Prostitution creates a lower class of women (and men and transgendered) who are deemed unworthy of these basic protections, and instead act as vessels to receive acts of sexual violence and degradation that most citizens are protected from by law.

Melissa Farley's research found:

"Across countries, 73 percent reported physical assault in prostitution, 62 percent reported having been raped since entering prostitution, 67 percent met criteria for a diagnosis of PTSD. On average, 92 percent stated that they wanted to leave prostitution."

http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/ProstitutioninFiveCountries01182013.pdf

It is important to speak up about the harms of prostitution, and to push back against the rising trend of normalization. Sexploitation is nobody's job.

Call to Action. Read and share this blog: http://endsexualexploitation.org/articles/sexual-exploitation-is-nobodys-job/