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Decriminalize
Prostitution Now Coalition Your Tax Dollars Are Being Wasted Ruining Citizens Lives Instead of fighting real crime |
Overcoming the bad image of prostitutionOnly Applies to Street Hookers, not Private Consenting Adult SexworkersOn http://www.recordnet.com which is a Stockton, California news site, David Hall responds to Michael Fitzgerald Columnist Friday, January 9, 2004: Street smart Michael Fitzgerald says: Sexologist David Hall disagrees with something I wrote about prostitution. I wrote, "One argument against prostitution police don't make, but I do, is that prostitution destroys women." I didn't elaborate. I was drawing on my experience as a cop reporter. I observed most prostitutes were addicted to drugs; many were psychologically dominated by abusive pimps; and all were prey to abusive, even psychotic Johns. To support that, it seemed, was to contribute to a woman's destruction. "But that only applies to street prostitution," Hall objected. A professor of human sexuality at the Institute for Advanced Study for Human Sexuality in San Francisco, Hall said there are upscale prostitutes who work privately, for a select clientele they reach through ads, referrals or agencies. These ladies do quite well, Hall said. "The ones I talk to, the ones I have come speak to my classes, they say they like what they do," he attested. "They say they make a good living at it." So the problem is not prostitution but the poverty that drives desperate women into street life, said Hall. He thinks society should help poor women off the street. And decriminalize the kinder, gentler kind of prostitution. That way, "They're doing what the Supreme Court says: that adults can chose for themselves what their sex lives are behind closed doors." |