Prostitution

2004-03-25 at 10:36 p.m.

I feel like I'm going to go to sleep at the moment. Which is weird, because I didn't feel tired at all yesterday - got four hours sleep, energetic as anything, today, I get twelve hours sleep and feel really tired. Life is perverse.

Hmmm, anyway.

I was reading an entry by insanegerbil about prostitution. Specifically, she was asking whats wrong with wanting to be a prostitute. I don't think there is anything wrong with it. I was really pleased when, last year sometime, they had a TV series called "The Laws Don't Work", about prostitution, and why we should legalise it. There is a great woman in London who is the head of the English Collective of Prostitutes. She managed to get the GMB to accept her! That is just amazing - the GMB (General and Municipal Boilerworkers or maybe Boilermakers, I can't remember) is an old trade union, mainly made up of respectable working-class men. Who accepted a union of prostitutes as a sister union! Apparently this woman (I don't know her name) is a good speaker. She'd have to be, to convince the old farts at the GMB to accept her.

I think we should legalise prostitution. They say it is the oldest profession on earth - and there is not one culture that has managed to get rid of it. Even in the most oppressive regimes, even in religious states - there have always been prostitutes.

I mean, it beats me why a guy would want to pay for sex, but evidently they do, and in large enough numbers to maintain an industry. Fair enough, if thats what they want, its a straight business arrangement and I have no problems with it.

The only problem I personally have with prostitution is forced prostitution - when a girl or woman is forced by blackmail, physical threats, drug addiction or poverty into doing something she does not want to do. On the poverty side of things - the state should be providing enough that people do not need to go into prostitution in order to support themselves - of course if they want to go into it to get more money than the state provides, that is their business.

The main reason that I would like to see prostitution legalised is simply to remove the danger. Get the pimps out, the drugs and the violence, make it so the Yorkshire Ripper and other people who attack, rape and kill prostitutes would have a hard time doing so. Have legalised brothels, which would be actually nice places for the women to work in. No more street-walking. Nobody taking their earnings. No drugs. Proper health care, wages, even pension plans. The state would benefit - think of the tax revenue! The women would benefit from the increased safety and they would probably get more business than before because there would be no risk of getting arrested.

I don't see any reason why we should not legalise prostitution. In fact, I hear that parliament is now considering legalising it - just on the basic premise that if you can't stop it, you can at least stop abuses in it and make sure that all prostitutes are prostitutes because they want to be, and not for any other reason.

Anyway, rant over. But it is something I feel fairly strongly about. People should have free choice - and where two consenting adults (who consent to the payment as well as the sex itself) are involved, I don't think that should be a crime.

In other news...I am going to go and see the Passion next week, I think. Though the critics have been saying it is basically a snuff film, still everyone is talking about it and so I ought to go and see it, then I can give an informed opinion. Plus I fancy being able to hear people speaking Aramaic - I've not heard it very often, only from a couple of specialists at university.

See you later.

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