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Willow Edge
Professor Allison Russell
June 2, 2017
The Dangers of Legalising Prostitution

The world’s oldest profession it may be, but prostitution is also the world’s filthiest.

According to an FBI audit report, the estimated average age of entry into the industry for girls is

about twelve years old, some starting as young as nine (OIG Audit). These are children entering

a world of drugs, sex, and violence. Most education systems don’t teach sex education until at

least age thirteen, if at all. These young girls are entering an industry they have no preparation

for, and no understanding of the dangers in it. 80% of women in prostitution have reported

having been raped (Silbert). By decriminalising or even legalising their profession, the US

government would be endorsing such a dangerous underworld and bringing it to the public.

Currently, an estimated 7% of sexually transmitted disease cases are related to prostitutes.

Sex workers are actively damaging the public health by spreading disease throughout the

community. The lack of safe habits in the industry furthers this: about 50% of prostitutes have

HIV, and the average prostitute has unprotected sex 300 times a year (Sex Crimes). This,

combined with the fact that one in ten men has purchased sexual acts from a prostitute, means

that sex workers are rapidly infecting the global population and risking the health of future

generations.

Despite its classification as the oldest profession, prostitution also clashes with some of

the oldest and most fundamental views on morality. The concept of prostitution violates

principles stemming from many types of philosophy, from Kantian to Foucaultian to most major

religions. We as humans are defined by our views on morality and the meaning of the human

body.
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That the United States government allows prostitution to stay in its current form in the

country says a great deal. Prostitution as a profession is detrimental to our society’s safety,

health, and moral values, and there is no way to regulate it that would bring it into alignment

with our country’s ideals; the US needs to increase the penalty to discourage joining the

occupation.

While sex work is often depicted as exciting in the media, the reality is much less

glamourous. In one study, 68% of prostitutes were shown to have prevalent PTSD. This rate is

comparable to the PTSD rates of survivors of state-sponsored torture. The lack of education

surrounding the profession, about what horrific things occur, means that prostitution is a much

more popular industry than it should be. By raising the penalty, the severity of the situation will

be clearer to the public.

In 1986, the Australian Victorian Labour party believed that legalising brothels would

eliminate crime and significantly decrease the safety risks for both prostitutes and the public.

Instead, the number of people with STDs such as AIDS increased drastically (Conway). The

system that was implemented had medical authorities only examining one of the partners.

Favourable results also gave participants a sense of security that caused many to feel less need

for safety precautions.

Even if the US government tested prostitutes every week for HIV in an effort to prevent

spreading of this fatal disease, an infected person will return a negative for at least the first 4-6

weeks and sometimes up to the first twelve weeks after infection. One prostitute reported in an

interview that “On busy Friday and Saturday nights [she] probably can have between seven to

nine clients in six hours,” (Maloney). Even if the infection was caught in the minimum four

weeks, she has the potential to spread HIV to over thirty people without realizing it.
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Realistically, the government cannot create a system to regulate prostitution that will

protect prostitutes or their customers. Instead, attempts to do so will open up an extensive grey

area in the law that will cause many people to go without justice. The vagaries of such work and

the need many clients have to remain anonymous create significant legal issues.

Consider a situation where a client requests a form of bondage, a particular subcategory

of activity sometimes available from a prostitute that usually involves violence. Sometimes this

can leave a mark or a bruise. If the client requested this and then the following day claimed the

prostitute assaulted him, there is no legal record to help a jury. Legal documentation towards

prostitution is equally vague and worrying in the event that some aspect of a contract is not

fulfilled. The special requests that would have to be written into the print of such an agreement

are so many and varied that the attempt would be futile. Attempting to regulate such a personal

area of people’s lives is difficult in the abstract sense, but trying to write specific regulation is

nearly impossible.

After the legal grey areas are patched, there is still no reason to believe the legalisation of

prostitution would have the desired effects on society. In addition to the pitfalls illustrated by the

Australian attempt to legalise brothels, look at prostitution from a business standpoint. It is

frequently argued that the sex trafficking industry is very profitable and should be taxed, but

there are significant trends from the ivory trade that set good precedent to believe neither

taxation nor regulation will be a safe bet. Legalisation changes the nature of supply and demand

in an industry. “If illegal supplies can masquerade as legal” they have reduced production costs

and become the most likely source of the product to the public (Kelly). In the ivory trade, this

manifested itself in illegal hunters selling ivory without having to jump all the legal hurdles, but
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they were still able to pass themselves off as legal. The majority of buyers ended up switching to

this illegal supplier for cheaper costs (Kelly).

In legalising prostitution, it also encourages more people to join the industry instead of

helping people get out. In the ivory trade, the “legalisation reduced the stigma associated with

consumption of the banned good” thus making the demand increase by a large enough magnitude

that “part of the void will be will be filled by an increase in illicit supply,” (Kelly). This suggests

that in any industry as illegal turns legal, the demand will go up, and as a result something will

rise to meet that demand. Either new citizens will join the community, or an underground system

for shadier supply will rise up. Many of the flaws in the ivory trade were apparent to the public,

but the problems with legalising prostitution are subtler.

One of the driving forces in culture, from politics to day to day actions, they’re all

dictated by each individual’s perception of right and wrong. This perception is referred to as

morality, and whether or not prostitution is even moral. The general consensus is that it

absolutely is not.

A prostitute’s consent to engage in sexual relations doesn’t necessarily express her

personal sentiments, but her job relies on convincing the client otherwise. The prostitute is

therefore a willing slave in the encounter, as she is required to conceal her sexual individuality in

the name of her client’s pleasure. As she omits her own desires from the acts she performs, she

detaches her personality from her career, furthering splintering her life.

The concept of prostitution also violates the fundamental “principle of humanity” of

Kantian philosophy. The act of partaking in prostitution reflects a disrespectful nonchalance

towards the human body as a mere means to achieve pleasure. The human body is a thing to be
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worshipped and respected to retain one’s humanity, but prostitution fundamentally destroy such

beliefs.

Similarly, Foucault’s philosophy as presented in his famous works “The History of

Sexuality,” describes prostitution as removing the participants from conventional morality. They

live in a world of discourse and disrespect between each other to acquire what they crave.

Ultimately though, what dictates modern society’s actions significantly is religious

affiliation. In a report of the “everyday man,” Beau Harmon did an analysis on each major

religion’s take on the morality of prostitution. In his research he found every religion he studied

to find the practice immoral. Each for its own reasons, but the morality of prostitution is not

under much dispute. It’s commonly believed to be simply wrong (Harmon).

Many men, women, and children are driven to prostitution for the sake of survival. They

need help and a way out of whatever situation drove them towards such a profession. However, it

is important to recognize that validating this dangerous path is not the way to help these people.

Telling those in need that it’s viable to live a life of disease and violence as long as they can get

by on their own through it is not a message this country wants to send. Prostitution cannot be

safely or realistically regulated and therefore should not be legalised. Instead, America needs to

raise its penalty for those convicted of sex work, to try and avoid people seeing the profession as

a reasonable way to live.

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Works Cited

Collins, Kelly-Anne “The Prostitution Bill 1999” Research Note no 6., Research Publications

and Resources Section, Queensland Parliamentary Library, Australia, December 1999.

Web. 26 May 2016.

Dorfman, Rosalee Sylvia. "A Foucauldian Analysis of Power and Prostitution: Comparing Sex

Tourism and Sex Work Migration." Rosalee Sylvia Dorfman, A Foucauldian Analysis of

Power and Prostitution: Comparing Sex Tourism and Sex Work Migration - PhilPapers.

N.p., 01 Jan. 1970. Web. 26 May 2017.

Harmon, Beau. "Religious Views on Legalizing Prostitution." Our Everyday Life. N.p., n.d.

Web. 26 May 2017.

Kelly, Morgan. "After Legal-ivory Experiment, Black Markets Thrive from Greater Demand,

Less Risk." Princeton University. The Trustees of Princeton University, 14 June 2016.

Web. 26 May 2017.

Maloney, Alison. "Prostitute Who Earns £2,000 a Week Reveals All" The Sun. The Sun,

26 Apr. 2016. Web. 02 June 2017.

OIG Audit Report 09-08. Web. 26 May 2017.

New Zealand, Ministry of Justice. "Report of the Prostitution Law Review Committee."

Policy. Ministry of Justice, May 2008. Web. 16 Mar. 2016

“Sex Crimes." Prostitution Statistics. Laws, n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2016.

Silbert, “Compounding factors in the rape of street prostitutes,” in A.W. Burgess, ed., Rape and

Sexual Assault II, Garland Publishing, 1988; Melissa Farley and Howard Barkan,

“Prostitution, Violence, and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder,” 1998, Women & Health.