Legalize prostitution misc10 essays

Legalize prostitution misc10 essays Prostitution: Prostitution might appear to be an odd topic for historical inquiry. As "the world's oldest profession," concerned with buying and selling something as "natural" and "unchanging" as sex, it might seem to have no history. However, prostitution is subject to historical change and is shaped by the society in which it exists. In the United States, over the last couple hundred years, the nature of prostitution and the experiences of people working as prostitutes have varied a great deal. The character of women's economic options has affected them by economic depression, by wars, by changing popular attitudes and, in particular, by the law and the ways in which the police, the courts and the prisons have administered the law. Organized political resistance has also played a role. Women working as prostitutes have developed strategies to survive and resist increasing social control. At the same time, the unique cultures of prostitutes are also formed by factors not imme diately related to their work. For example, prostitution is more prevalent in working class communities and families. The historical record of prostitution, however, points us towards examining issues of social control, religion, profits, disease and legal regulations. It is funny how prostitution is the world's oldest profession, and yet it is still only legal in one of the fifty United States of America. Prostitution could be a guaranteed moneymaker for the Internal Revenue Service; instead, it remains a seedy underside of society. It seems obvious to me that prostitution should be legalized, although statistics regarding the rates of disease and death from such an industry are difficult to verify it is common sense that the cost to society is high. Consider the necessary evils of pimps, or procurers, these are men (and occasionally women) who traffic in the flesh of others, as tax free as the Catholic Church I might add. And prostitutes themselves...