In this essay, I will argue that a person has a right to sell his or her body for sex and that this right is violated by societies in which prostitution is illegal. I will first present what seems to be a powerful case against the legalisation of prostitution and then attempt to show that it rests on false assumptions. As the majority of prostitutes are female and, as any discussion of male and child prostitution necessarily involves the extraneous issues of the rights of homosexuals and children, my focus will be on adult heterosexual intercourse between a female prostitute and a male client.

A major case against prostitution can be based on the assertion that the industry violates more human rights than it asserts - specifically, that prostitution should continue to be abhorred and illegal as it contravenes the sexual and economic rights of persons, particularly women. According to this argument, prostitution is sexual slavery as, by selling their bodies for sex, prostitutes give up all power over their bodies to their clientele, who temporarily 'own' them. Thus, the industry degrades its workers to the level of sex object; this is inhumane and violates the right of

Firstly, I believe the above argument against prostitution to be mistaken in its treatment of prostitution as a single entity. In fact, prostitutes can be divided into three categories: those who 'work the streets'; those who work in brothels, saunas, massage-parlours, etc.; and those who visit their clients. The relevant statistics relating to physical and substance abuse show that not all classes of prostitutes face the same level of problems as that put forward above. As the Prostitution in The United States factsheet points out, "substance addiction... [is] rare among women who work of the street" and, "according to one massage parlour owner, over 90% of abuse against some prostitutes takes place within domestic relationships", rather than at work. Further, if the above case against prostitution is correct, and its practitioners suffer low self-esteem as a consequence of their work, the statistic that only 42% of brothel workers have contemplated suicide compared with 61% of!

Kenneth Cauthen, Legalizing Prostitution, URL=http://www.frontiernet.com/~kenc/pros.htm

Yvonne Abraham with Sarah McNaught, Prostitution Theory 101, URL=http:www.bostonphoenix.com/archive/features/97/10/23/PROSTITUTION_

all people to be treated as sexual equals. Further, heterosexual female prostitutes are dependent for their income upon their male clients; in this part of the sex industry, women are economically subjugated to masculine control and this violates their right to economic independence from men. As an article by the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women claims, prostitution "assumes that all women can be!

The above argument implies that prostitutes should commonly suffer abuse at the hands of their customers, who would regard them as sexual objects rather than as persons whose rights were to be respected. Indeed, the level of violence perpetrated against prostitutes by pimps and clientele does seem unusually high: the factsheet Prostitution in the United States asserts that, "a study of 130 street workers... who engaged in prostitution... found that 80% had been physically assaulted" . Another implication of the argument is that women who become prostitutes do so from a position of personal disempowerment and, more, that they will continue to hold themselves in low self-esteem after having become sex workers: after all, empowerment a

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Approximate Word count = 1582
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)