This post was inspired by the drive I took down my city's most trafficked street tonight. Within just 30 blocks, I counted between 15 and 20 young women selling themselves. They stood in the dark at the side of a 6-lane road, wearing high heels and miniskirts and fishnet dresses, their hems nearly at crotch level on a 50-degree Farenheight night. My city knows they're there. My city does nothing about it.
If a car stops with some man looking to buy them, there are no background checks. There are no STD checks. There is no safety.
And libfems always say "legalize it and it will be safer. legalize it and you take the market away from illegal enterprises." I used to be one of those people. Because it did make sense for a number of other industries, like pot.
But here's the thing about pot...
Its production can be ethically scaled.
When pot is legalized in a state, the farms that produce it explode in number and size. Despite the cost of new regulations, the sheer amount of skyrocketing supply causes prices to drop, those savings are passed onto the consumer, and the illegal seller is pushed out of business.
However (and I hate that this is a thing that needs to be said) women aren't plants. The "supply" of women can't be scaled. If prostitution is legalized, no matter how many women decide to enter the "profession", each working woman can only represent herself. There is no "increasing the supply" without increasing the number of women who must now earn an equal amount to survive. Therefore, the legalization of prostitution will never result in a decrease of price, men will continue to seek cheaper alternatives, and the illegal sellers will never be pushed out of business.
And it won't be the middle-class women who revert to illegal work, the stereotypical college student looking to pay tuition. It will be the poorest, most desperate of women. The same exact women who, as I type, are either still standing on the side of that 6-lane road or actively selling their bodies in some motel room right beside it.
If all women had their basic needs met, I bet you none of them would voluntarily go into prostitution (except maybe as a trauma response). The whole “they chose their career and we should support that” crowd doesn’t seem to understand the desperation that drives women to selling their bodies for survival.