‘False Equality for Swept-Up Johns’

Alan Dershowitz’ article (Editorial Pages, Jan. 23), “False Equality for Swept-Up Johns,” certainly calls for a reply from this feminist. Neither I nor my feminist friends are cheering loudly about track star Edwin Moses’ misfortune. He is a hero in the eyes of this country and in my eyes also. (It also appears from the media reports that he is not guilty.)

Dershowitz’ reasoning seems to be that since feminists call for the arrest of “johns” instead of prostitutes, they are therefore happy to see this turn of events. The basis of this reasoning is faulty. Feminists I know do not wish the johns to be arrested instead of the prostitutes. Rather, this victimless crime (except in this case, where the only victim is Edwin Moses) should be eliminated from the books.

Were prostitution decriminalized, all of the real crimes to society that arise because of it would diminish: pimps who prey on young, homeless girls, literally turning them into slaves, using abuse and even murder to control their “employees,” the robbings and beatings of customers for even more money, and other minor and serious crimes, which will always go along with prostitution as long as it is a crime.

Feminists probably as a group do feel that if the prostitutes are to be arrested, why not the customers? One of the basic aims of equal rights proponents is to have those laws that apply discriminately to women removed from the books or corrected to apply equally.

And what, Mr. Dershowitz, is the “enormous difference” between the arrest of a professional prostitute and the arrest of “an otherwise law-abiding citizen who occasionally seeks to taste the forbidden fruit of sex for hire”? May this be called the most thoughtless inequality. At least, the prostitute is being honest. But the citizen is sneaking out, usually on his wife, to cheat, to break the law, which he probably loudly supports in public, to be a total hypocrite. Is this the more honorable of the two acts?

If, indeed, the otherwise law-abiding citizen risks a ruined marriage, destroyed reputation, scarred children and terminated career for a “bimonthly trip to his local Fantasy Street to get his jollies,” should he not redefine his priorities? Perhaps he should be honest instead, and argue for the repeal of the law that he is breaking.

Prostitution laws should be repealed. But, as long as they are not, reasonable people should agree that the customers should be arrested, not instead of the prostitutes, but certainly along with them, for this “crime” which most decidedly takes two to commit.

JEANNE HUNTER

Long Beach

Speaking of bum raps, Dershowtiz’ leap in logic that puts the blame for Edwin Moses’ arrest on feminists and civil libertarians, compounds the felony.

Entrapment “feels” wrong to me. As for prostitution, I’m afraid we are all trapped in hypocrisy. I don’t know the way out, but I’m sure Dershowitz’ attack is poorly aimed.

I feel terribly sorry for Edwin Moses and his family and wish, somehow, his arrest could be undone. I also support the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Organization for Woman, which, according to Dershowitz, makes me a likely candidate for the “vindictive,” “feminist fringe.” I think Dershowitz has “feminist friends” like bigots have black friends.

I grade his column “A” in inflammatory writing, “D” in contributions to problem solving.

JULIET GOULD-THOMAS

Manhattan Beach

Dershowitz’s piece is a troublesome example of the type of male-first reasoning that is responsible for so much of today’s institutionalized misogyny (woman-hating). To advocate that if a male and a female commit a crime only the woman should be punished is misogyny in its purest form.

As Dershowitz well knows, the ACLU has long advocated a policy of decriminalization of prostitution. We are attempting to provide some protection for prostitutes by challenging the use of public nuisance statutes by the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to “sweep” prostitutes off the streets of Los Angeles. But our primary goal in the area of prostitution has been to assure that no one be arrested for consenting acts of sex between adults, even where money changes hands.

However, prostitution is criminal in California and most other states. Given this reality, feminists, and in particular ACLU feminists, have stood with restrained rage and watched the hundreds, no, thousands, of johns with sirenic dollars stretched from their fingers roll over the Hollywood Hills from the Valley onto Sunset Boulevard and other Los Angeles streets for “breakfast call” and other hors d’oeuvres.

These dollars are offered to a community of women who have foremost in common the fact that most of them were or are teen-age runaways from homes where they were taught their trade as victims of inter-familial incest abuse and who, at present, are in all probability, under the “protection” of pimps who are taking 80% or more of their earnings to provide “protection.”

Thus, in the hierarchy of morality, which Dershowitz so cavalierly invokes on behalf of the “otherwise law-abiding citizen” who occasionally seeks to taste the “forbidden fruit” of sex for hire, mitigating circumstances favor the prostitutes, not the johns. The irony of Dershowtiz’s “forbidden fruit” imagery should not be overlooked. Since Adam and Eve men have blamed women for tempting males to sin.

Highlighting the fundamental misogyny underlying Dershowitz’s article is his flip comment to the effect that the jailing, harassing and fining of a prostitute is “just a cost of doing business”; whereas the injury to a john (man), particularly an important john, can ruin a marriage, destroy a reputation, scar his children and even terminate a career. Aside from the obvious inference that no mere “whore” would have any of these attributes, one has to wonder with amazement why Dershowitz feels the loss of hours, days, perhaps weeks of time and wages caused by jailing a woman who earns a living for herself and in some instances for her children, is of lesser value. Unless of course, as Dershowitz seems to assume, men are more important than women. Since they are not, it is important that laws on prostitution be enforced in an even-handed, non-sexist, manner.

RAMONA RIPSTON

SUSAN D. McGREIVY

JOAN W. HOWARTH

Ripston is executive director of the ACLU of Southern California; McGreivy is an ACLU women’s rights attorney, and Howarth is an ACLU police practices attorney.

Dershowitz inadvertently brought out the important reason why men as well as women caught in a web of prostitution should be held responsible. Quote: “It can ruin a marriage, destroy a reputation, scar his children, terminate a career.” Should not the john think about these possibilities of disasters--aside from his chances of being arrested--before he goes out to “get his jollies”?

The long-standing male premise that a roll in the hay never really means anything or hurts anybody is a fallacy. Many marriages has been destroyed by this attitude. A man, who philosophically believes that it is not what he does but that getting caught is the real crime, has more problems than a prostitute can solve.

JANET JONES

Palos Verdes Estates

If there were no female prostitutes, the world would have to invent them. For whose benefit? For the benefit of men, of course. Dershowitz should be ashamed of his hackneyed sexist argument. Many “happily married men” (multitudes of professions as well as “accountants”) frequent “Fantasy Street” for the diversion they have felt their right for centuries.

To explain prostitution by way of “unhappily married men” is to reveal that even Harvard law professors wear blinders when convenient for their male dogma.

BERNICE ROTHMAN HASIN

Newport Beach