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Decriminalize Prostitution!

Regarding Craigslist Killers Constant Danger for Erotic Service Providers

While it is nice to see attention being paid to violence against sex workers to the extent that it may encourage law enforcement and criminal justice officials to take the issue more seriously and go after the real criminals, this opinion piece irresponsibly makes it sound like prostitution itself encourages violence. That assumption is offensive to sex workers like myself, as is the assumption that we are all hooked on drugs. It is blaming the victim in the case of those who are victimized, and toward the rest of us who are not victims (except at the hands of the law!) it is disempowering.

The reality is that it is not sex work itself which attracts violence, but the *criminalization* of sex work, just as criminalization of alcohol attracted violence during Prohibition, and the criminalization of other drugs attracts violence to the sale of other banned substances today. After alcohol was legalized, the violence around the sale of alcohol largely went away, and much the same would happen if government officials removed their heads from you-know-where and prostitution were completely decriminalized.

Another reality this piece fails to recognize is that many of us thoroughly enjoy our work, and those who do not greatly enjoy it, find it preferable to their other present job options. If you took a job satisfaction survey, I suspect you'd find a much higher percentage of people working as sex workers who want to be doing the same work in five years, than you would people in minimum wage jobs at places like McDonalds who want to be doing the same work in five years.

The stereotyping of our clients as predominantly unattractive and/or sexual predators, and calling them by the derogatory slang term "johns," is also offensive. Again the reality is that most clients are decent, honest men (and some female clients and couples!), who are not in my experience significantly any less or more attractive on average than anyone else you might see in your office or social group.

I don't know whether Martha Rosenberg had a strong bias against sex work to begin with, or whether she's simply been listening mainly to those who do, but if she plans to write any further on this topic, I strongly encourage her to do some more research and get the other side of the story so that she will be prepared to write a more sensitive and less (inadvertently?) biased piece next time. She might start by talking with some people from groups like the Sex Workers Outreach Project, Erotic Service Providers Union, Desiree Alliance, COYOTE, Spread Magazine, Bayswan, etc., all of which can easily be found via web searches.

Starchild,
Sex worker and Outreach Director,
Libertarian Party of San Francisco