PROSTITUTION : The oldest profession or the oldest oppression?
Everyone around is a fan of big and valuable numbers. So let’s just start with recalling some. 40-42 million. 1 million. 3 million. 1.2 million. And finally $4 billion. As soon as you see these figures, your brain starts to work and you start getting some ideas to where these numbers fit. Maybe some scam reports? Black money? Underworld? Corruption? Or how about these numbers being nothing but some statistics on prostitution, prostitutes and the business related to it? Yes. Decoding it, there are 40-42 million prostitutes in the world. Three quarters of them belong to the age group 13-25 years and 80% of them are female. Out of these 40-42 million prostitutes, 1 million prostitutes are estimated to be living in the US. And India is the home to 3 million prostitutes and among them 1.2 million sex workers is under the age of 18. The human trafficking industry in India is estimated to generate $4 Billion a year.
Prostitution is one of the oldest professions, but there is still very little agreement on the social and moral legitimacy of commercial sex. It comes as a shock to me that , people all over the world are still confused about whether prostitution is legitimate or not. I mean from where does the question of commercial sex being legitimate come from? It is just a dangerous phenomenon which puts women and their rights in a very vulnerable situation. It somehow perpetuates their subordination to men. Often prostitution triggers human trafficking. Human trafficking victims are often found in street prostitution where they are forced to provide commercial sexual services by a controller or “pimp.” Pimps, either male or female force adults and minors to sell commercial sex on the streets by means of physical abuse, threats, lies, manipulation, and false promises. These pimps take advantage of the negative social stigma attached to Prostitution so that the victims can not reveal the ways in which they are being hurt and abused. Sex trafficking is an international, multibillion dollar business involving criminals who kidnap and enslave girls. Girls as young as ten-years of age are snatched from their countries and sold into prostitution far away from their native homes.
Everyone needs to become conscious of the presence of prostitutes and the type of life they lead. They also need to understand that this type of life cannot be entitled under a small word like “choice”. There can be a lot of reasons why girls and women become prostitutes or escorts. Some of them were drawn into prostitution when they were children. Now this is where human trafficking plays its role. Girls are abducted and also sold to pimps and brothels. Sometimes girls are kidnapped and sold overseas for a larger sum of money.
74% of women involved in prostitution cite poverty and the need to pay household expenses and support their children as a primary motive for entering prostitution. There are also some women who become prostitutes for earning a great deal of money in a limited time.
Most do not choose this profession but out of necessity, often after the breakup of a marriage or after being disowned and thrown out of their homes by their families. It is just a vicious cycle. A girl, who has been disowned by her own family just because she was a girl and not a boy, might end up on the streets as a prostitute or an escort. Who knows? And her child is also likely to get involved in such a profession and so on.
A survey completed in 1988 by the All Bengal Women’s Union interviewed a random sample of 160 sex workers in Calcutta: Of those, 23 claimed that they had come of their own accord, whereas the remaining 137 women claimed to have been introduced into the sex trade by agents and were forcefully made to sell sex.
From my perspective, the major concern about the men visiting prostitutes is not so much that they pay for sex but that they seem blind to the plight of these women. They convince themselves that prostitution is a choice and that none of the women they see are exploited. In some cases, they might be right. But a lot depends on where they go and who they see.
What everyone should be aware of is, prostitution is sexual violence and not just sex and also it is a human rights abuse and not a vocational choice. It can never be fixed but can only be abolished. The fact that legalization of prostitution will protect anyone in this profession is nothing but a cruel lie. According to me the only thing that can somehow make the life of these people a little better is a change in the attitude and the way people think about prostitutes. Because of the way we view their chosen profession, we don’t see prostitutes as human beings whose welfare is important. Because they work in an illegal profession, we deem their lives to be of little value. This has got to change. We must accept that the world’s oldest profession will continue to exist. It is just an inevitable social evil.