Politics And Prostitution

The government is carrying out a review of the laws about prostitution and Harriet Harman has said that selling sex should be made illegal.

It seems somewhat hypocritical that politicians should be concerned about prostitution. Politics is, perhaps, the second oldest profession and they prostitute themselves at every election. Another similarity is that once the act, either the sex or the voting, has taken place they have little further interest in the ‘customer’.

There is no doubt that curb crawlers cause distress to women going about their normal daily activities and ways should be found to prevent this. Nor is there any doubt that foreign women are forced into prostitution by being misled into thinking they are being brought into the country to work as bar and hotel staff. Nobody should be forced into this trade against their will but it is already illegal to kidnap women in this way.

Women have always used sex to obtain money and wealth. Business continues to use sex to sell anything from newspapers to cars by using implied sex in pictures relating to their products. Politics is perhaps the only exception to this practice but it is common to most industries.

The suggestion that you can make it illegal to pay for sex seems rather ridiculous. If you pay me to use my brain to make you money or you pay me to use my hands to make you a pair of shoes is that really so different from somone paying me to use my talents as a sex worker?

I’m not about to offer my services for that but nor would I want to be a boxer or a politician but freedom of the individual surely includes the opportunity to use your talents as you see fit. We should be enabling people to become sex workers just as much as we allow people to do any other job but we should offer them the full protection of the law and prevent their activities affecting others.

How many marriages have their been that offered sex in return for security, wealth or power? There are more than likely several in the Houses of Parliament just as there are in many other walks of life. Would those marriages have to be ended if selling sex were made illegal? There are probably many divorced ex-husbands who feel they were unwittingly made to pay for sex.