PERSPECTIVE ON PROSTITUTION : Prosecution or Persecution? : Heidi Fleiss’ trial showed the hypocrisy in making a common transaction a ‘serious’ sex crime.
Free Heidi Fleiss (and all other women incarcerated for prostitution-related offenses)!
Fleiss is the latest prominent victim of a legal system that primarily punishes women for acts committed equally by women and men. We can remedy this inequity by legalizing prostitution, regulating and taxing sex workers and redirecting law enforcement to real sex crimes with real victims, like rape and sexual abuse of children.
We can no longer accept the rampant sexism in prostitution prosecutions. Women do not commit 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 woman and a man. 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.
One answer may be equal enforcement of the law against customers rather than continued enforcement of a double standard replete with blatant gender bias. But there’s an even better solution: Legalize and regulate the sex industry.
Prostitution isn’t immoral; hurting women is. Prostitution is simple and direct: Man (almost always) pays woman (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?
The lines that our society has drawn in the name of morality 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 for money 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.
The argument that prostitution hurts women cannot justify criminalizing its victims. To the contrary. The problems with prostitution are a 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.
The reality of prostitution is that most women do it not as a true “choice,” but only because they cannot support themselves and their children any other way. It is a sad truth that in our culture, the only occupations in which women as a group earn more than men as a group are prostitution and nude modeling.
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 together men who desired to pay women for sex and women who desired to get paid 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.