Why Legalizing Prostitution Is Necessary

I'm somewhat disappointed in myself for slacking off on the blog. While I enjoy adding the new music posts, they are somewhat of a cop-out for the more personal creative enterprises such as my own photos or writings that I had intended to fill these electronic pages.

This post actually came from my comments on a friend's blog (see This Must Be The Place). The issue isn't exactly foreign to me as I've been discoursing (at some length) on it for the past year or so. The event that generated my line of reason was the discovery of the Pickton murder victims in Port Coquitlam, BC and his subsequent trial.

To frame the discussion, my perspective comes between two positions that dominate the discourse on 'solving' prostitution. The first and perhaps outwardly more feminist position is that it should be made completely illegal and that a crackdown on male users and pimps will suffice to eliminate prostitution. This view insists upon the moral bankruptcy of prostitution. It also structures the relationship into a solidly dichotomous antagonism between (active) predator and (passive) victim. Perhaps most importantly, in my estimation, is that despite this arguments solid moral principles, it lacks little if any historical, social or political analysis. In this sense, it is the least strategic and most idealistic of the perspectives forwarded.

The alternative and more "liberal" (approaching on "libertarian") perspective is that of outright legalization. This opinion, often espousing the practical models operating in European countries, and seems to operate on an almost completely different plane than the previous one. Whereas the "feminist" approach is based solidly upon moral and ontological evaluations, the "liberal/libertarian" approach utilizes a completely pragmatic logic. Adherents of this position avoid the moral or ontological categories. Prostitution is as neutral a position as baker and the women that engage in it are rational-agents seeking to take advantage of the largely (benign and natural) male demand. Despite its innocent leanings, it clearly adopts a perspective on both men and women and it channels this ideology from liberal-capitalism. Like the "feminist" approach, the pragmatic perspective ignores the historical, social and political web that interpellates prostitute, john and voyeur. This position emphasizes its strategic or pragmatic sensibilities but at the expense of any trajectory. It simply seeks to capitalize (as institutionalize; in the sense of bringing within the domain of capitalism and its norms and values) a 'profession' which is intricately tied to prevailing power relationships.

My position seeks to provide both a strategic and idealistic solution. Here begins a copy of my comments from This Must Be The Place in response to a post citing Rape Relief's denunciation of the legalization of prostitution.

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I'm for the legalization of prostitution personally. Unfortunately I do not see any good options put forward by groups such as Rape Relief, etc. Making it completely illegal simply pushes it further underground. Have our marijuana laws and other drugs laws made drug use disappear?

Prostitution as it is now = rampant capitalism with no regulation. Legalizing it will not prevent rampant capitalism but will regulate it.

A better step will be legalization and state-control. No private brothels.

That way it can be properly regulated and plenty of support can be made available for those women who would like to leave the industry.

This method both provides prostitutes with dignity of not being told what they should or shouldn't be doing by self-righteous men & women and eliminating pimps (as individuals or as brothel owners).

I think an equivalent of the Vancouver safe-injection site could be a first step.

Furthermore, (sorry for being so verbose) government legalization would have the benefit of allowing complete criminalization of prostitution outside government channels. Currently, prostitutes are not criminalized and 'johns' are. This makes protection of prostituted women extremely difficult because they actively seek to avoid the police in order to make money in an activity that is illegal. This is the equivalent of charging police to protect drug-dealers although they are mandated to arrest drug users. Obviously, the prostitutes do not want anything to do with the police despite not being criminals per se and this ultimately leads to risks to their lives.

By government legalization, prostitution outside of this channel would be illegal and the women could be arrested. This would be beneficial namely because women operating outside the government system would likely be operating in a state of coercion (pimped). The women could then be offered ways out of the 'business' or work at the government brothel. Again, instead of morally-denouncing women they are offered the dignity of a choice freed of coercion.

Obviously, welfare policy must be modified to prevent abuses (such as those in Europe that insist women engage in prostitution if they cannot find employment elsewhere). Prostitution could be handled strictly as a means to ending it through government assistance.

This approach has the obvious downside of dirtying the hands of government and consequently the public. I'd much rather have that responsibility on my shoulders than the airs of purity that come with evangelical positions of eliminating prostitution with a wave of the (legislative) hand or simple and self-righteous denunciation strategies of certain feminist groups.