Decriminalize
Prostitution Now Coalition
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Instead of fighting real crime
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Overcoming the bad image of prostitution - Only Applies to Street Hookers, not
Private Consenting Adult Sexworkers
On 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."