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  • - I've worked with teenage girls who

  • are pressured into prostitution by their

  • boyfriends who acted as their pimps

  • and have also worked with sex workers who

  • are basically boss ladies running their own business.

  • And that is just the very tip of the iceberg

  • on how complex the issue of prostitution is.

  • (funky music)

  • Hi babes, I'm coming at you from Jamaica.

  • I'm also using a different camera than I normally use

  • so sorry if the audio and video is not

  • the same as it usually is.

  • My question for you is, should prostitution be a crime?

  • That's a big, complicated question that is currently

  • being debated around the world because

  • Amnesty International put forth this proposal

  • to say "Hey, countries should decriminalize sex work."

  • Basically what this means is that sex workers,

  • aka prostitutes, won't be thrown in jail for it

  • and they will have legal rights protecting them.

  • I wanna unpack the issue a little bit

  • because it has been so controversial.

  • I'm not gonna pretend to be an expert, I'm not.

  • But I do have some thoughts.

  • Prostitution has been criminalized around the world,

  • Mostly because people think that's

  • a naughty thing that people should not do,

  • but also because they're worried

  • about the spread of disease.

  • Theory is that hey, if we criminalize it,

  • the sex trade will just disappear, right?

  • Wrong.

  • The sex trade is very much alive and thriving.

  • Amnesty did a bunch of studies looking at prostitution

  • all around the world and basically came to the conclusion

  • that look, criminalizing it is failing.

  • It's not working, guys.

  • It's creating more stigma and more discrimination against

  • sex workers which is making it really dangerous for them.

  • In the U.S. and U.K. police raids have pushed sex workers

  • underground into more unsafe areas.

  • They've made it harder for sex workers to negotiate

  • condom use, what their rules are, to turn down a client.

  • Police often use condoms as evidence of the crime

  • so nobody wants to use condoms.

  • And because it is a crime, sex workers are very reluctant

  • to report abuses against them.

  • When they are reported,

  • police don't always investigate those abuses.

  • In fact, the police themselves are sometimes the abuser.

  • In various parts of the world police have used

  • a sex worker's lack of rights to extort money out of them,

  • to extort sexual favors.

  • I mean, after all, the sex workers are the criminals, right?

  • And that's the ugly side of criminalization.

  • It empowers abusers by limiting a sex worker's rights,

  • making them more vulnerable.

  • So Amnesty's like "Hey, decriminalization could be a better

  • "direction to go with this issue."

  • Then a bunch of scholars and feminists and celebrities

  • wrote a letter that roundly rejected it.

  • Like, hell no Amnesty.

  • They say that decriminalizing sex work, wholesale,

  • only helps abusive pimps and johns because they

  • can now call it business.

  • Instead we should criminalize people who are buying sex

  • and provide lots of services and exit strategies

  • to sex workers, usually women,

  • who are trying to get out of the sex trade.

  • There's nothing wrong with services and exit strategies.

  • The problem is that the letter sort of implies that

  • sex workers are the same thing as trafficking victims.

  • Those are two different issues.

  • Really need to recognize the difference between sex work,

  • which is consensual sex trade,

  • and trafficking, which is not consensual.

  • It is coercive, it is forced.

  • Inflating those two only creates more stigmas,

  • it only makes things more dangerous.

  • Now of course this is a tricky point, right?

  • It's not always easy to tell who's being coerced

  • and who's entering into it freely.

  • In Amnesty's proposal they wrote,

  • "We recognize that intersectional discrimination

  • "and oppression can play a role in an individual's

  • "decision to engage or remain in sex work.

  • "Systems of oppression deny people power

  • "and lead to poverty and deprivation of opportunity."

  • Women, people of color, and trangendered folks

  • are over represented in sex work for a reason.

  • The problem is that we just re-marginalize people who have

  • come to sex work when we deny them legal protections.

  • All right, you still with me?

  • You still following me here?

  • Let's talk about punishing just the pimps and the johns.

  • Could be good in theory but it does make the patronizing

  • assumption that we need to save sex workers

  • that aren't being coerced.

  • And perhaps more to the point,

  • there's no strong evidence that this actually works.

  • Sweden and Norway have this policy

  • and it's often seen as a success because street

  • prostitution dropped off.

  • However, the data started in 1999,

  • right as the internet became a thing

  • and actually just a lot of sex work, sex trade went online.

  • Reports by experts in Sweden say that

  • however well intentioned, this law has actually made it

  • more dangerous for sex workers.

  • It's pushed their transactions into the shadows

  • in order to protect their clients,

  • where it can be harder to tell

  • if it's a safe or unsafe situation.

  • Amnesty also noted in their report that Sweden's policy

  • hasn't made clients any less abusive

  • and that it may not work in less developed countries.

  • There might be some way to modify Sweden's model

  • to make it a little bit stronger

  • but it's definitely not there yet.

  • New Zealand, as another example,

  • decriminalized sex work in 2003.

  • Since enacting that law sex workers in New Zealand

  • report that they're better able to negotiate

  • condom usage, to enforce their rules,

  • to turn down clients, to talk to health care workers.

  • They sign contracts, they get paid weekly,

  • they have typical labor protections that everyone else has.

  • The U.N. also says that decriminalizing sex work globally

  • would reduce HIV infections by anywhere between

  • 33% to 46% in the next 10 years.

  • That's a huge deal if we really are concerned

  • about reducing disease.

  • The retort to this is that decriminalization

  • increases the demand to buy sex

  • and also increases sex trafficking.

  • But I actually couldn't find any hard data

  • that backs this up.

  • So I'm going to leave that

  • as a big 'ol question mark for now.

  • There's so much to think about here

  • and this is such a hugely important issue.

  • These are human rights we're talking about,

  • these are women's rights we're talking about.

  • We really need to be careful,

  • we need to listen to what sex workers are saying,

  • we need to look at the data and really come up

  • with a complex, humanistic policies

  • that will really address the core of these issues.

  • I look forward to your thoughts in the comments down below.

  • I'll probably hit you up from another country next time.

  • Maybe not, maybe I'll be home.

  • Peace be with everyone

  • Except your mom, oh. ♫

  • - [ Voiceover] What?

- I've worked with teenage girls who

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B1 中級 美國腔

賣淫=犯罪? (PROSTITUTION = CRIME?)

  • 151 6
    Lynn Chen 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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