Flesh Trade
Sahana Rao
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
103 Comments
About the guest
Sujatha is blessed with natural flow of writing. The topics she takes on can range from a microbe to a galaxy; such is her versatility. Following her for the past 6 months, I have known that she is good with the language, (so no turn-offs) and has the talent to project the thoughts, the ideas, and the observations that occur daily amazingly.(so guaranteed 'good-read')
About the Topic
Should the Sex-trade be legal?
Sex is legal, Trade is legal, why is sex-trade illegal? A topic to ponder, let us hereby know the opinion of the guest of honour. :)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes it should be.
I am not aware of the socio-political history of prostitution. But I do know that prostitution has existed since eternity and will continue to exist for as long as human civilization does. So legal or illegal, it will remain; it is here to stay.I also know that many of them are in this due to poverty or other unfortunate circumstances like rape/abduction/abuse/cheated by husband/lover/boyfriend or sold by father/husband or brother. There are countless women involved in it who run their families with the money earned & are in most cases the sole bread winners of the household.
Even if you say you can rehabilitate them, it’s an idealistic solution which is very hard to be implemented. Where will these women get jobs? And how many can you give jobs for? When skilled, educated workforce is still largely unemployed in India
When that is the case, and with little or no education to speak of, how does the government or the civil society plan to reintegrate them into the mainstream? And if that were the case, why hasn’t it been done in all these years. The truth is once they are caught in this web, there is no escape for these women.
I don’t mean to say that prostitution should be encouraged as a means of livelihood. All I am saying is, it has existed forever & will continue to exist till the last living man on the face of this planet. For those who are already in it for reasons that involved some form of betrayal from a trusted friend or family member, and have nowhere else to go, if they are faced with the choice of death or life as a prostitute, then what will she do?
They are ostracized by society and verbally abused and treated as if they were not human at all. For the women if the sigma goes, then they can at least continue to live their life in peace. Otherwise, not only is there no escape for them from their existence but also they have to bear the brunt of being labeled immoral & called names. Prostitutes are very vulnerable to repeated rapes & physical abuse. Who would sympathize with a prostitute who has been raped? The police would laugh & so would the lawyer. People would laugh too & think of it as a joke. It is not. They are easy targets for physical violence because of the nature of their work. For them it is just another work, something that gets them money to pay their bills & brings food onto the table. But since it is illegal, they have no rights whatsoever; no voice and no opinion.
When I started this post, all I wanted to get across was that maybe it’s time this particular segment of society had a means to get their voices heard too. If we make it legal, at the very least, these women can free themselves from the harassment & hafta vasooli of the policemen & the extortion by the criminals or the local goons. Being made legal is only a small respite for them from blood-suckers present within our social framework. It’s their livelihood now whether they chose it of their own free will (which is highly unlikely) or was thrust upon them by fate. Maybe, just maybe, at least that would stop, eventually, slowly, in due course, in time, sooner or later, some day, one day!
