Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Legalize?
As apparently many people are interested in the subject, I will write few words about the legalization of prostitution.
First, I would only like to point out that I will here explain my own personal point of view, so Ermes may disagree and he will in case explain his point of view.
The discussion I guess born because of the new law made by the italian minister (check out the previous post) that apparently condemn to jail the prostitute and the guest. This is actually not true, in Italy, after this law, nothing will change for both the prostitute and the guest, so actually there is nothing to talk about. But, as people somehow tends to believe what the italian government says (only this government, maybe because it looks so commited) I will spend few words about it.
So, do we like prostitution? No. I guess that the point everywhere is to find a solution to this, not to incentivate it. I will start from this assumption, if people like prostitution, well, there is not much to say, right? The approaches that the various governments did are all aimed to take out prostitution from the road. Like our minister said, it is not nice to see, and look at her, where she's now, paying attention not to stay on the street. The actual reason why the other countries wants to put it out from the streets is because together with prostituition normally you get for free also a good quantity of drugs, wepons and human traffic. So, having some places to put the prostitutes may help to keep in control these problems. Does it work? Well, no.
In Amsterdam, 80% of prostitutes are foreigners, and 70% have no immigration papers, suggesting that they were trafficked.
The Netherlands is a primary country of destination for victims of human trafficking. Many of these are led to believe by organized criminals that they are being offered work in hotels or restaurants or in child care and are forced into prostitution with the threat or actual use of violence. Estimates of the number of victims vary from 1000 to 7000 on a yearly basis.Most police investigations on human trafficking concern legal sex businesses. All sectors of prostitution are well represented in these investigations, but particularly the window brothels are overrepresented.
With this, also drugs trafficking is still strictly connected with the sex market.
Apparently, only the 7% of the prostitutes in the Netherlands are HIV positive, but most of these checking are not completely significants as health and social services are readily available, but people who work in the sex industry are not required to register or undergo mandatory health checks.
Windows prostitution is not the only form in the Netherlands. Only the 20% are actually working in this form. The 15% in escort services, 5% on the streets and 5% in their own homes. An estimated 10% works in other types of prostitution, and 45% works in sex clubs and private houses.
Several cities have even instituted a so-called tippelzones for street prostitution, as even here was impossible to take prostitutes away from the streets. Anyway, for example the one of Amsterdam has been closed in 2003 because of an uncontrolled deal of weapons and drug and exploitation of illegal foreigners.
Ok, is making prostitution completely illegal a better choice?
No.
Legalizing it allow anyway a major control from the state, both from health and social point of view, guarantee an income in form of taxes that are regularly paid by the prostitutes and the room holder. It is clearly impossible to put into jail all the prostitutes and the guests, as they will fill alone all the jails, not leaving any more space for more serious crimes. It is also a very difficult crime to prove.
So, what to do?
Well, my idea is to educate people. We should start to think that even though it is quite natural on a biological level for males and females to host desires and have intimate relations with many partners, it would probably be a very unproductive line of reasoning when considering the legalization of prostitution. Humankind no longer succumbs to animal behavior and has built infrastructures that depend on us expunging primitive mannerisms. Unlike the animal kingdom, we deal with sexuality without force.
In Holland only the 5% of prostitutes are male. And they only have homosexual guests. That means that in the Netherlands no women feel the need to pay for sex. I am pretty sure that similar statistics may apply to all the other countries. So, I would say that prostitution has clearly nothing to do with the physical needs of men (or women), but is only a manifestation of the different social positions of men and women in the modern (and old) society.
For me the solution is to educate people, both men and women about respecting each other, and in case they don't learn fast, starting sending the pictures of the couple prostitute-guest, directly to the family of the men. This solution was proposed and to me was the only serious one.
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8 commenti:
It's not clear to me if you think it's better to keep the prostitutes doing their job illegally or to make prostitution legal, while we're trying to educate people.
Personally I'm for a temporarily legalization of prostitution meant to organize and control better the problem while trying to integrate exploited people into the society.
I think the problems are mainly two: demand and supply.
As long as we live in a sexist society there will be sex demand (as you said), which I think it's impossible to forbid. The only possibility I see is to start a slow process of civilization (again, as you said) assisted with some "public blame" such as public pictures or home-delivered fines (about this, I may think that the Dutch way is a sort of "make it clear and public" so it's not so bad from this point of view).
The second aspect is the supply of sex. The girls from undeveloped Countries that come to Europe to get the citizenship by selling sex (and this is what's happening in The Netherlands: they get a job => they get the citizenship => they can stay, you can imagine the dirty business is under this fact) are victims.
And as victims, the society (the government, the Country) has to protect them.
What's the best way to do so?
I think first: know where they are (legalization and organization in brothels?), second: try to ensure them civil right and health care (again: this cannot be done if prostitution is illegal), third: try to help them to get a normal job (as they are trying to do in Denmark).
(Of course this is starting from the idea they are victims, if someone wants so get paid for sex anyway I'm fine with it as long I'm sure she/he does it without any constrictions).
So at the end, I'm pretty much against putting the prostitution illegal (not talking about this shitty, just for appearance, law they are discussing in Italy).
On the other side I think legalization is just the first step, after which other and more effective steps has to be done ("integration").
This means that I agree that the Dutch solution is not the definitive one. They are kind of hypocritical in this: they assume that legalizing it they can stop thinking anymore on the problem because "only the people that wants to be prostitutes are allowed to be". Which is bullshit of course, since most of them are coming from eastern Countries, or most of them has drugs-related problems.
Still I think this is the way we should look at, and this is the first step we should think to take in order to start trying to solve the problem also in Italy.
E comunque, in Giappone la prostituzione vaginale e` illegale, tuttavia e` permessa la (il?) fellatio, perche` non e` considerata prostituzione!
Il che salverebbe la nostra ministra e il nostro caro Silvio da accuse infamanti...
Well, in Holland only the 20% are in known places. And it doesn't seem to me like a temporary solution, they are just getting a hell of a money out of trash tourism out of it. Some countries attract tourist with the Louvre, the Tour Eiffel, some with San Pietro, some with seaside and nice weather.... Holland with drug and prostitution. I'm not saying that dutch people like it, actually they probably don't, but when they are in front of so much money, probably they just don't know how to say no....
Well, no. 20% of them work on the windows, but also most of the others are regularized (and the government knows where they are).
And then I agree: in The Netherlands legalization is not a temporary solution. That's why I don't agree with this (the effort to move over is not enough here). But I'd like to have it, and to have it as a temporary solution (in contrast with them).
secondo mi i problemi principali sè:
-do we like prostitution? No.
se per "we" intendemo "people", metter fine alla prostitusion non saria un problema.
-Humankind no longer succumbs to animal behavior
penso sia "tecnicamente" impossibile per i prossimi millenni a venir... (e alla fine non so se sia neanche una prospettiva positiva, ma stemo andando sul speculativo)
-e soprattutto l'idea de base che el governo/stato (qua sto parlando dell'italia ma alla fine tutto el mondo sia paese) voie effettivamente combatter el fenomeno e non sia in realtà in collusion coi stessi sfruttatori...
el vizio italiano sè combatter i sintomi (la prostituzion intesa come fenomeno de per se stesso) invece che le cause che porta una persona a prostituirse o andar a prostitute...
ad es.:tutti quei che se prostituisi che altra fonte de guadagno gavessi a aver? chi va a puttane da cosa sè spinto? che estrazion gà?
detto questo son d'accordon con l'idea de alzar el livello de istruzion delle popolazioni, senza per forza piegarse al moralismo -esagerando un po se podessi dir che sè una delle poche "rivoluzion" che podessi funzionar...
ma anche qua evidentemente ghe sè un veto non scritto a livello de chi ga in man le leve del potere...
mz (30% più sconclusionà del solito)
credo che la Carfagna "abbia in mano le leve del potere"
ma le battute maschiliste sulla Carfagna denotano maschilismo da parte mia o per lei si fa un'eccezione?
Più che in mano direi in bocca....
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