If most Americans (those not involved in any aspect of the sex industry) think about prostitution, I would guess that we have two images of it — gleaned mostly from movies and cop shows.
The first is the “call girl” image, where lovely, apparently educated women choose to become prostitutes, almost as a career choice. This is “clean” prostitution, prostitution as a profession — where men always use condoms and women get tested for HIV as a matter of course. This is almost always portrayed as somehow empowering (and even fun) for women and the image is of high-class call girls getting paid a lot of money to have non-abusive, non-violent sex with wealthy, powerful but still “gentlemanly” (and usually attractive) men. This image seems to be the closest to the kind of prostitution that most people can feel comfortable with. This is the type that is viewed as “victimless” and “consensual”. This is the type that people think should be legalized, regulated, taxed.
Then there is the second image — call it the “hooker” image. Down-and-out (but still adult) women who perhaps came from an abusive childhood, who perhaps have a drug problem, who may have a pimp, but who still are adults making “choices”. In this view, the image is of not-so-attractive women having cheap sex in motel rooms or cars with traveling salesmen or suburban husbands. What do we (meaning, those not involved in this in any way) think of this? Maybe we try not to think of it at all, except to remember to avoid certain streets in certain parts of the city.
Horrible for women. But she also explores how using prostitutes changes men, making them more desensitized, more aggressive, more demanding. How can that be good?
And then there’s the new movie, The Whistleblower. It is the story of a cop from Nebraska who went to work as a UN peacekeeper in Bosnia and uncovered a sex trafficking ring. And a cover-up. A reporter for Foreign Policy, Colum Lynch, who reported on this story years ago, explains in his article:
What she gradually discovers is a community of U.S. cops and other international peacekeepers corrupted by the moral compromises they make in Bosnia. What’s worse, she learns, is that the U.N. diplomatic and peacekeeping corps are the brothels’ primary customers, and in some cases they are actually trafficking Eastern European women into Bosnia.
• Sex trafficking is 90% women and girls.
• Over 50,000 women are trafficked into the United States every year.
• Asian women are sold to North American brothels for $16,000 each.
• 2 million children are forced into prostitution every year. Half of them live in Asia.