Prosecution or Persecution?
Perspective on Prostitution
By Gloria Allred and Lisa Bloom
Free
Heidi Fleiss(and all other women incarcerated for prostitution-related
offenses)!
1
Fleiss is the latest victim of a legal system that
primarily punishes women for acts committed equally by men and women. We can
remedy this inequality by legalizing prostitution, regulating and taxing sex
workers, and restricting law enforcement to real sex crimes with real victims
like rape and sexual abuse of children.
2
We can no longer accept the rampant sexism in prostitution
prosecutions. Women do not commit the
acts of prostitution alone any more than women get pregnant alone. Our law enforcement system chooses to ignore
the fact that most prostitution consists of private, consensual sexual activity
between two persons, usually a man and a woman.
But in every state where prostitution is a crime it is overwhelmingly
women, not men who are rounded up like sheep, demeaned, jailed and fined-and
then released to continue turning tricks.
Meanwhile, the men, who engaged in illegal acts just as much as the
women, are free to patronize other prostitutes.
3
One answer may be the equal enforcement of the law against
customers rather than the continued enforcement of a double standard replete
with blatant gender bias. But there is
an even better solution: Legalize and regulate the sex industry.
4
Prostitution isn’t immoral, hurting women is. Prostitution is simple and direct. Man(almost always) pays women(usually) for
sex; man gets sexual pleasure for money, woman gets money for her labor. It is as simple a transaction as selling
blood or the use of a uterus for nine months by surrogate mothers. What is wrong is the hypocrisy of the
criminal-justice system’s distinction between legal and illegal sex workers and
the painful, disproportionate suffering heaped upon real women as a
result. Why is it immoral to be paid for
an act that is perfectly legal if done for free?
5
The lines that our society has drawn in the name of
marality have become absurd. A woman may
agree to sexual acts with men she doesn’t love as long as she does not directly
charge them for sex. She may legally
pose nude for money, genitalia displayed, for photographers. She may dance nude, as provocatively as the
customer likes, for money. She may
engage in sexual acts with men she does not know, or like, in erotic films,
magazines, or before a live audience.
She may sell her voice for “phone sex” with strange men. She may give a naked man an erotic massage.
She may marry a man she does not love and have sex in return for his financial
support for the rest of her married life.
Yet the sale of direct sexual acts remains illegal.
6
The argument that prostitution hurts women cannot justify
criminalizing its victims. To the contrary. The problems with prostitution area direct
result of its illegality. Sexually
transmitted diseases and drug abuse would be decreased if sex workers were
licensed, screened, tested and treated rather than being driven
underground. Unprotected, uninsured sex
workers are the real victims who deserve legal status and an end to
government-funded harassment.
7
The reality of prostitution is that most women do not
consider it a true “choice”, but only because they cannot support themselves
and their children any other way. It is
the sad truth that in our culture the only occupations in which women earn more
than men as a group are prostitution and nude modeling.
8
Ultimately, why is Heidi Fleiss going to jail? (Pandering
carries a sentence of mandatory prison time in California) It is because she is
a businesswoman who brought men together who desired to pay women for sex. Do you think that’s immoral? Then don’t do it yourself, but don’t ask for
our tax dollars to support the vast system devoted to arresting, prosecuting,
convicting, incarcerating and monitoring prostitutes.
Gloria Allred is an attorney in Los Angeles. Lisa Bloom is an as associate with the law
firm of Allred, Maroko and Goldber.
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