A Report on Medical History, Law, Prostitution, and Public Health

Claire E. Sterk, the author of the article of “Fieldwork on Prostitution in the Era of Aids”

Prostitution, also referred to as “the oldest profession,” has always been a controversial and challenging social issue. It is practiced in many different forms including: call girls, convention prostitutes, apartment prostitutes, hotel prostitutes, house prostitutes, bar girls, streetwalkers, and parking lot lizards (). Civilizations such as the Samarians, and countries including Morocco and parts of India engaged in a form of prostitution known as temple prostitution. Temple prostitution is based on the belief that “generative activity of human beings possessed a mysterious and sacred influence in promoting the fertility of nature” (Clarkson). In other civilizations, such as the Roman and Byzantine Empires, prostitution was looked upon as less of a religious ceremony, and more of a sin practiced by “women of evil life” (ProCon.org). Today those differentiating view are still present in modern society, but there are also new ideologies surrounding the everlasting presence of prostitution. This Essay will use the Symbolic Interactionism Theory to identify those new ideologies, and evaluate the meaning of prostitution within three relationship: the husband and wife, the Call girl and client, and the Pimp and the sex trafficking victim.

Abel, Gillian, et al. Taking the crime out of sex work: New Zealand sex workers fight for decriminalisation. Policy Press, 2010. Part two: Implementation and impact of the Prostitution Reform Act (2003): the first five years: Review of the PRA

Public humiliation has been around for years. It was always a controversial and terrible thing to do to a person. Being outlawed in the states during the 19th century there is a reason why this was banned. Public humiliation destroys a person emotionally.

From a health standpoint, prostitution is more victimless than drug use, and also better integrated within a productive and sustainable North American economic climate. Prostitution comes in many different shapes and sizes and because of this, threatens to evade

Throughout history, prostitution has been an issue of intense debates in the US and the larger global society. Many countries legally prohibit prostitution and associated activates. Except Nevada, the United States also illegalizes prostitution. However, the benefit of legalizing prostitution in the US would not only be for the workers but also for the economy as well. It is high time that prostitution be legalized for various reasons.

People may not believe that there is a positive outcome of prostitution when first thought of. In fact, there are multiple ways that prostitution can benefit the sex workers, society, and even the economy. A quantitative and qualitative study was made by Lutnik and Cohan in San Francisco on prostitutes in the area. Although the sex workers that were interviewed are not part of the Canadian society, the United States is also part of the Western Civilization and the results reflect those of Canada as well. In the study, women spoke about the beneficial factors of having “police protection, the ability to build community with other sex worker, and obtaining rights as workers” upon the legalization of prostitution (Lutnik and Cohan, 2009: 41). Overall, the prostitutes that were surveyed preferred the “removal of statutes that criminalize sex work in order to facilitate a social and political environment where they had legal rights and could seek help when they are victims of violence.” (Lutnik and Cohan, 2009: 39). This research provides evidence that majority of people in the sex worker industry would like to feel safer as they are working as every person is entitles to feel safe when they go to work. Considering the health of the sex workers, a study was presented at the International AIDS Conference in Australia which showed results of the transmittal of HIV/AIDS among sex workers would decrease by 33-46% if prostitution is either legalized, or at least decriminalized (Listland, 2014). Another factor that is considered regarding sex workers and the legalization is the diminishing of violence and sex crimes. In the same research study conducted by Lutnik and Cohan, it was found that 91% of prostitutes desired laws that protected their rights in specific, and they also wanted more police protection, create safe houses, and would be safest under a regulated system (Lutnik and Cohan, 2009: 41, 43). Lastly, a

It is rather odd to think that prostitution, which is considered to be the world’s oldest profession, would be illegal and harmful in nature. The issue of legalizing prostitution has entered public conversation around the world, which is severely divided. Many, like myself, consider prostitution to be a victimless crime. Despite such opposition to legalizing prostitution, many argue that legalizing it would result in decreased morality issues, increase the economic activity in the United States, and help decrease the number of sexually transmitted diseases among both prostitutes and those who patronize them,

Prostitution is illegal in the United States and the laws keeping it illegal are causing more problems than they are solving. Because there are no regulations or laws protecting sex workers in the United States, and everything is run underground, there is nothing stopping the mistreatment and abuse of sex workers in the United States. The only way to protect sex workers is to legalize prostitution. In the following paper, I will attempt to prove that prostitution is a victimless crime and the laws against prostitution are hurting prostitutes more than they are helping them. If we want prostitutes to remain safe while earning a living, the only way to achieve this is to legalize prostitution.

To start off, although many people are aware that Sexually Transmitted Diseases and Sexually Transmitted Infections are real most of them forget about the protection needed against any. The women and men involved in prostitution do not get to worry about that kind of protection. The health risks involved are brutal and dangerous. “Sex-work communities around the world are in dire need of HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment services” (Doyle 1). It is not unheard of that, the current prostitution rings do not care about these diseases, in fact “a meeting of sex workers held at the International AIDS Conference heard that the criminalization of the profession was fueling secretive transactions and unsafe sex practices, putting people at risk of HIV and

Prostitution has underlyingly lingered in the history of the United States from the beginning of English settlements. In the industrial times, five percent of the population of women working were prostitutes. During the migration to the West, prostitutes were the majority- if not the only women in boom towns. Not until 1875, were there any laws officially banning prostitution. The Page law was created when Chinese immigrant women become prostitutes or second wives to European men. The law banned immigrant women from immoral purposes. Moving further in time, in 1949, a United Nations convention met in the purpose for the decriminalization of prostitution. Forty-eight countries decided to endorse it, the United States voted against it.

In his book Love For Sale, Nils Johan Ringdal wrote, “If nobody wants to sell sex, it is a crime to force anyone to do so. But when men or women do want to sell their bodies, they should have that full right without encountering punishment or discrimination.” Prostitution, often described as the world’s oldest profession is a legitimate criminal offence in 109 countries of the world today (“Human Trafficking Statistics”). Laws on prostitution vary considerably from country to country: in some countries it is punishable by death penalty ("Iran - Facts on Trafficking”), in some it is a crime punishable by prison sentence, while in other jurisdictions, it is a lesser administrative offense punishable only with a fine ("The Sentencing and

Out of the various suggestions to eliminate “social evils”, men and women created local organizations which gradually merged into two national bodies, the American Vigilance Association,which sought to repress prostitution and the American Federation for Sex Hygiene, which spread education regarding sex and the venereal diseases in America. In 1913, a joint meeting between the two was held to establish a union under the name “social hygiene”. Key figures in the initial organization of the American Social Hygiene Association (ASHA) included John D. Rockefeller Jr., the original financial contributor; Charles Eliot, president of Harvard University; Jane Addams of Chicago’s Hull House; and many others.

The legal definition of prostitution has recently expanded in many Australian jurisdictions to encompass voyeuristic practices as well as non-monetary exchanges. Prostitution laws now make inclusions for massage parlours, phone sex and computer sex. Sullivan’s study into the politics of the sex industry in Australia since 1945, found that due to the shifts in sexual culture there have been discursive changes in society’s’ view of what constitutes as prostitution and what signifies as deviant sexual behaviour. Post war culture accentuated sexuality as the source of individual uniqueness, later progressing into the ideals of equality and mutuality between the sexes thus producing our sexual culture, as we know it today.

In terms of sociology, Prostitution is a way for an individual to maximize their monetary intake or in other words “benefits” by selling the thing that they have readily, their bodies. In other words, it is the act or practice of participating in promiscuous sexual activity especially for money. Prostitution has been in existence for ages, going back to the Byzantine, Roman, Greek, and Egyptian Empires. Ironically, the ancient religions of those eras dealt with the needs of the group and consequently developed protocols for dealing with sexual relations that have propagated throughout time to the modern era. As a result, prostitution is not about to disappear anytime soon, despite relatively recent local laws. Also throughout centuries,