Law and the media create the environment in which children grow up and pimps and paying pedocriminals seek out targets. Permissive attitudes towards men buying access to and profiting off the prostitution of adults impacts on children despite attempts at differentiating the two in law. On this matter it is irrelevant whether a country legalizes prostitution and attempts regulating or whether it takes the laissez-faire hands off approach of decriminalization – the impact on public attitudes is near identical.
It is difficult to argue that prostitution be viewed as an ordinary job for an 18-year-old, that the young woman can reasonably control and not be harmed by, but then argue that the same situation for a 16 or 17-year-old constitutes a horrific crime. Normalizing adult prostitution always runs the risk of aiding those who seek to pay and profit off of exploited children – whether that is an intentional or unintentional development. Any country or region currently following an approach that is accepting of adult prostitution, must take an honest close look at the ripple effects on minors.
Women in prostitution usually agree that minors cannot be “sex workers” (or “sellers”). Let’s be very clear that it is not individual women in the sex trade, but organizations like the NSWP (where many other interest groups are involved such as brothel owners, pimps, pro prostitution academics, HIV prevention orgs, etc.) saying that this is a fair or neutral position to take, while convincing some organizations and governments to heed their advice.
Either human rights apply to all people equally or only to the privileged or the less traumatized or the comparatively lucky. A middle-class woman deciding whether she wants to be a doctor, a lawyer or a writer is making a choice. A homeless 14-year-old deciding between going back to an abusive family or letting adult men penetrate her in exchange for a roof over her head is not exercising agency. This rhetoric is selling girls – especially poor girls and girls of color – short, telling them the tiny amounts of wiggle room they have in highly violent, highly coercive environments constitutes personal agency (or even “empowerment”). A framing one could never successfully sell to women and girls with actual choices. Human rights and children’s rights are not opt in/opt out. Human rights and children’s rights are not a matter of individual perspective.
I will not stand in front of a survivor of childhood exploitation and scream at them “admit that you’re a victim”, but I will fight anyone like hell who tries to make the law such that children who for a whole host of reasons – none of them being exceptional maturity – resign to exploitative situations and label them as “okay/fine/good” are abandoned to the men who rape them and/or make money off of their abuse. Feminists brought consent laws to the world so that men could no longer rape girls and boys with quite the impunity they used to have. These changes matter if only to assure survivors that they are not crazy and not alone. But – evidently – there is still more work to be done and its pro prostitution organizations who are among those we need to keep an eye on to prevent a pedo apologetics renaissance.
Elly Arrow 