Why Is Prostitution A Blessing Or A Curse?

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Unit 2 essay option Two

There is sex-positive prostitution and sex-negative prostitution; therefore, prostitution can be a blessing or a curse. From an empowering point of view, women may pursue a “career” in prostitution, making enormous sums of money. However, there is a much darker side where women are promised golden opportunities in more opportunistic areas and upon their arrival, they are forced into a billion-dollar sex trade, where they become sexual slaves (Jeffreys 4). In a very sexualized and gendered world, women are often viewed as sex objects, regarded primarily for their “assets.” Ultimately, prostitution can benefit women, such as in the Netherlands, yet it is harmful in many more areas of the world where women are

Yet, such an issue of forced servitude is not isolated in the Global South, but is a global issue that has been perpetuated by globalization. For example, in the Trafficking in Persons Report of July 2015, Cara, a girl originally from the United Kingdom, was persuaded to stay with a man named Max whom she met on her trip to Greece. Quickly the relationship went south when Max began to force her to have sex for money and “threatened to kill her mother,” until finally, she was given away like an object to another individual. Cara’s story shows that not only women in the Global South are convinced on false premises into servitude (25). Globally, women are viewed as inferior to

Sheila Jeffreys agrees when she writes, “[t]hose who seek to make distinctions generally subscribe to the notion that there is a free and respectable kind of prostitution for adults which can be seen as ordinary work and legalized, a form of prostitution for the rational, choosing individual, based upon equality and contract. [Yet,] the vast majority of prostitution fits this image very badly indeed but it is the necessary fiction that underlies the normalization and legalization of the industry” (9). Prostitution is the “most profitable sector [of] organized crime” (Jeffreys 2). Jeffreys describes that the normalization of terms that refer to the sex industry has led people to “accept it” (Jeffrey 8). For instance, Jeffreys writes, “[a]s a corollary of this position the men who buy women are now commonly referred to as ‘clients,’ which normalizes their practice as just another form of consumer activity” (8). Furthermore, as depicted in the Trafficking in Persons Report, globalization has created a transnational sex trade where individuals are often promised opportunities in other countries and then are forced into the sex trade once they arrive (Trafficking in Persons