Women Are Safer Without Legal Rights - by Andy K.

As we learn more about Eliot Spitzer's $4,300 splurge
on a two-hour date (not to mention his cumulative
$80,000 tab with the escort agency), the American
pundits are condemning the progressive sex worker
activists who want to decriminalize the world's oldest
profession. To quote R.L. Blader's essay over at
CounterPunch.com: "The 'need' for prostitution, is, at
its core, misogynistic" and "it degrades the status of
all women by affirming the pathology of associating
sex with property."

(Presumably adult gay men are perfectly capable of
negotiating sex for money because I'd be surprised if
Blader considers consensual gay prostitution to be yet
another form of misogyny. But maybe Blader would
disagree).

Buried in the prohibition debate is the upsetting
reality of being a sex worker in a society which
criminalizes sex work. Two economics professors at
the University of Chicago made this appalling
discovery: not only is it rare for a hooker to be
arrested by the Chicago police, but in fact it is more
common for Chicago prostitutes to be coerced into
providing "free services" (rape) to police officers.
The only thing worse than being raped by a pimp is to
be raped by a cop. If this isn't a compelling
feminist argument for legalization, I don't know what
is. The alternative is to engage in the bizarre
ideological fantasy that corrupt cops don't exist, and
that women are safer without legal rights.

Apparently the two go hand in hand: you can't have
rampant police rape without prohibition, and you can't
have prohibition without rampant police rape.