Politics January 6, 2017
You may know Amsterdam for its elegant canals, stunning architecture and infamous red light district. However, Amsterdam also entered the history books in 2000 for being in the first European country to legalize prostitution. Of course, this legislation didn’t pass without its fair share of qualifiers. The law only applied to Dutch citizens, as the government wanted to exclude illegal immigrants and therefore prevent human trafficking.
Why should you care now? Because, ten years later, Dina Siegel conducted a research study about prostitution in the Netherlands…and her findings show that legalizing prostitution hasn’t, as many hoped, succeeded in giving women “rights to stop the wrongs.”
In fact, if other countries follow in Netherland’s footsteps, it won’t just be prostitutes who suffer the consequences. Here’s five reasons – including an in-depth analysis of Siegel’s work and others – that show why legalizing prostitution will be the demise of feminism itself.
The main aim of the legalization game was to protect adult, voluntary prostitutes who were Dutch citizens and carried a permit. In return, the Netherlands received income taxes as prostitution would be viewed as any other profession. But legislators overlooked one small (okay, very big) problem when they excluded illegal immigrants from the law: non-European prostitutes were now banned from working in legal environments, according to Siegel. As a result, illegal immigrants are pushed to either leave Netherlands (for another European country with less “beneficial” prostitution laws) or engage in the illegal prostitution circuit, where they are more vulnerable to criminal activity.
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However, even European prostitutes aren’t sold on the idea of “legal brothels.” In fact, Netherlands’ legalization has also not stopped the more dangerous practice of “street prostitution.” Just ask yourself: Do you prefer being monitored while you work or do you prefer being an independent businesswoman? When it comes to legalized prostitution, many women have decided that the latter option – free of brothel managers or health checks – sounds more appealing, even if it is also more dangerous.
Furthermore, because the police are so busy inspecting legal brothels, they are left with “no capacity to play a major monitoring and investigative role with regard to punishable forms of [illegal] prostitution,” according to the Dutch government.
While feminism has often agreed that gender inequality is a core problem in prostitution, research has concluded that class inequality is equally important. As Netherlands has shown, “helping” one set of women (the Europeans) by legalizing prostitution has been at the price of non-European illegal immigrants. If prostitution is legalized, dangerous class inequalities are hidden from public view – and feminist discussion.
In a perfect world, the legalization of prostitution would immediately stop the practice of sex trafficking…but Siegel’s findings prove that we are, indeed, still stuck in reality. Seven years after the law passed, a Turkish gang was discovered running a prostitution ring of around 100 women from East Europe and the Netherlands. As Siegel comments: “It is remarkable, in this case, that such a large-scale human trafficking activity took place in the licensed window prostitution.”
the cost has dropped to $90 for a slave, today.
A photo posted by Sex Trafficking Awareness (@sextrafficking.awareness) on
While Siegel may be surprised, other experts aren’t. Embrace Dignity.org reports that increases in sex trafficking have been reported by eight Dutch victim support organizations. Netherland’s legalization has also not decreased the number of victims reported from other countries. Even a Dutch government report admitted that “pimps [i.e., traffickers] are still a very common phenomena.”
Regardless of feminists’ struggle to agree on prostitution, most agree that sex trafficking is a form of “violence against women” that must be stopped.
If prostitution is considered a real “career,” then prostitutes can be considered businesswomen – right? Wrong. Siegel discovered that the legalization of prostitution has not decreased the stigma associated with the profession. Besides the emotional impact of being considered “immoral” or “dirty,” prostitutes often experience practical backlash, such as banks refusing to give them mortgages.
Another problem with this stigma is that it limits women’s ability to change careers if they want to leave prostitution. After all, what do you put on a resume that will get you hired if you’ve been working as a prostitute for the last ten years?
As Finn Mackay at Feminist Current explains, feminism is fighting against the stigmatizing of prostitutes as much as it is fighting for women’s rights. “Men who choose to buy access to women in prostitution are stigmatising [sic] people in prostitution by commodifying another human being,” writes Mackay. As a result, legalizing prostitution supports the stigmatization of prostitution as well.
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One could argue that the main goal of legalization is to help the women involved in prostitution. If so, legalization is definitely earning a solid D+. While Siegel doesn’t address this issue in her analysis, the Dutch government reported in 2007 that “the prostitutes’ emotional well-being is now lower than in 2001 on all measured aspects, and the use of sedatives has increased.”
Considering the common health risks that prostitutes face, these stats aren’t that surprising. Studies show:
At its most basic level, feminism is “an organized effort to give women the same economic, social and political rights as men,” according to the Cambridge Dictionary. But how can a woman gain – or enjoy – these rights when she can’t even survive?
There isn’t one study that shows legalized prostitution creates some positive ripple effect. Not one. Stop comparing it to weed.
— Jay Platonica (@KevKlassix) December 9, 2016
@StateofGlobe in countries where prostitution is legalized the violence against sex workers still rampant. Big money business are risky
— Outsider (@OutsiderQuest) December 18, 2016
One of the biggest cruxes of feminism is “choice.” Women can choose to be a stay-at-home mom or choose to work in an office; because they “chose” both options, both options can be considered feminist. But do women actually have a choice when entering prostitution?
If we’re being honest: not really. Sex work emerges due to patriarchal societies with limited opportunities for women. Instead of prostitution being one of many career options, women must sell their bodies to survive. Perhaps then, the “answer to poor jobs, low pay and harsh working conditions for women is not to consign them to a lifetime of abuse, but to fight for all women to have adequate education for decent jobs,” as human rights lawyer Dianne Post argues.
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As Siegel discovered, there is often a dichotomy in the media when portraying prostitutes: they are either “naive girls, forced into prostitution,” or “fallen women, who choose prostitution as occupation and therefore deserve all evils.” But when your only choices are to work as a prostitute or to not work (and therefore not have any money) at all, does this really seem like a sincere decision at all?
Seventeen years ago, Netherlands made history by becoming the first European country to legalize prostitution. At that time, legislators were full of hope. Legalizing prostitution would end sexual slavery, improve prostitutes’ reputations – and bring in some extra tax money. What could go wrong?
Human trafficking is a $150 bn industry. People on my facebook feed who think we should legalize prostitution. #cognitivedissonancemuch
— our rome is falling (@jejunebug) December 3, 2016
As Siegel has examined in her study, however, legalizing prostitution hasn’t delivered on its idillic promises. Prostitutes are still looked down upon, and often still participated in illegal activities. Prostitutes’ mental health is suffering, and classism is even more apparent now that illegal immigrants within prostitution have been denied legal protection.
Netherland’s experiment, to put it nicely, has gone awry – and if other countries follow Netherland’s example, feminism will be legalized prostitution’s next victim.
