PROSTITUTION LEGALIZATION PRIMER

(A Public Service Announcement from Suburra Publishing.)

Myth #5

Most prostitutes do not want to be prostitutes.

This myth was debunked in the mid-1800s when reformers put up half-way houses for released female prisoners, many of whom were prostitutes. The reformers assumed that if given the chance to leave the city and become honest domestic servants they would surely do so. However, as Boston reformers noted it was “extremely difficult to persuade inmates of brothels to forsake their road to ruin.” By and large, the prostitutes did not consider themselves fallen women, nor did they want to adopt the middle-class’s frigid sexual culture.
 

One woman said she was “tired of drudgery as a servant ... I’d rather do this than be kicked around like a dog in a kitchen by some woman who calls herself a lady.” Another said, “there is more money and pleasure in being a sport.”

The informed decision by intelligent women to become prostitutes is still denied to this day. Moralists take advantage of street prostitutes' visibility to stereotype all sex workers. Desperate women driven to prostitution for its easy money are frequently street prostitutes. Many of these women are destitute drug addicts that have already lost control over their lives. Often these women do not want to be street prostitutes, but neither do they want to be destitute drug addicts. Despite being a small minority of American sex workers, these troubled women are usually the ones willing to risk arrest plying their trade on the street, and therefore form the general public’s image of prostitution.

The vast majority of prostitutes are call girls who choose the profession. Many are educated women who enjoy their work, and feel that the criminalization of prostitution is wrong. The fact that call girls are paid $300 tax free per hour compared to the $10 per hour in alternate fields is a powerful incentive, however, just because it is lucrative does not mean its practitioners are forced into it.

Information taken from You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos, Book I  by Robert R. Arthur. Detailed documentation of sources can be found therein.

Page last modified August 29, 2007.