Prostitution
In the light of recent events in Britain, I thought a mature discussion of prostitution and the protection or otherwise of prostitutes themselves was in order. What has transpired around Ipswich is the urder of 5 women; 3 positively identified as people known to be sex workers, and 2 suspected to be women known to be sex workers. That's 5 bodies of prostitutes, if we assume that there are no more to be found and that the 2 who have not been positively IDed are who they are suspected to be. Those are honestly distressing figures. But pretty much forever, workers in the British sex industry (prostitution) have been less protected by law than other women, as though they don't matter:
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6178793.stm)Petra Timmermans believes that if social attitudes to prostitutes changed, there would be less risk of such crimes occurring.
"We decide that some people aren't worth our time and violent people know that," she says.
Prostitution is a fact of life, she argues, and in order to protect those women and men who engage in it, it should be given equal status to other occupations.
"We know, for instance, that there is exploitation in the textile industry but we don't scream 'Stop buying clothing' - we talk about labour rights and working conditions," Ms Timmermans says.
"We need to start talking in that way about prostitution."
So what should we do about it all? Holland has legalised and regulated prostitution; is that any safer, overall, for instance? What other "coping strategies" are there to protect women, or prevent them turning to this?
[Disclaimer/Note: I want mature responses to this topic, no flaming and so on please; and if it does start to descend to the level of the previous thread about these killings, moderators, please close it. Thank you.]
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Originally Posted by Carach
