How can prostitution be illegal when both sex and selling are perfectly legal.

It is perfectly legal to go to a nightclub for the sole purpose of meeting someone to ‘hook up’ with. Most Friday and Saturday nights people are having sex with other people whose names they have not even bothered to learn.

Consensual sex is legal. But as soon as one party offers cash to another in exchange for sex and that money is voluntarily accepted, it is considered prostitution, and that is illegal. This is hypocritical, illogical, and wasteful.

It is interesting that one person can, in effect, legally recompense another with a nice house, jewelry, vacations, expensive cars, fancy parties, and tickets to sports and entertainment events in order to have that person as a dating partner or spouse.

Women sell their bodies for financial gain in legalized fashions on a daily basis. Pornography is legal, and so is exotic dancing.

It is common to have sexual relationships with richer partners so as to benefit from their wealth, whether this is through seeking out wealthy life partners or through the less formal but increasingly prevalent phenomenon known as sugar-dating.

It is also common for people to remain in unhappy relationships because they do not want to lose financial stability or spend money on a divorce.

It is easy for people to pretend that the women involved are not actually selling their bodies directly. It is easy to pretend that the pornography actors are just people having consensual sex that the viewing public just happens to be privy to observing.

It is easy to pretend that exotic dancers are not actually selling their bodies because they are not directly engaging in the act of sex.

It is easy to pretend that people who enter into or remain in sexual relationships with wealthy partners could be there for reasons other than financial gain or security.

People are allowed to enter professions that might be unsafe. People are allowed to enter professions where their body is seen as a tool of the trade.

People are allowed to enter professions that seem morally questionable. The only time that is not the case is when a woman is having sex as her profession.

Prostitution is an incredibly dangerous profession for the women involved; sexual assault, forced drug addiction, physical abuse, and death are common in the industry.

Name one industry that has been characterized by more violence when it was legal than when it was illegal. Violence goes hand-in-hand with illegal industries.

Because there is no legal way to enforce contracts, and because people engaged in illegal activity are understandably reluctant to report other crimes that took place during their malfeasance.

If there is something to be afraid of regarding people entering sex work – beyond the fact that it is a very dangerous profession – is that it tends to render women voiceless. Society easily dismisses what they have to say.

The underlying reason that people are uncomfortable listening to sex workers about legalizing prostitution has nothing to do with concern for the health and safety of women.

The underlying reason people disagree is that prostitution is viewed as amoral because it involves women selling their bodies for financial gain.

It is uncomfortable to believe that women should be allowed to have the control over their bodies that would permit them to engage in prostitution voluntarily; they cannot allow themselves to believe that women would choose such a profession.

Telling women what they can and cannot do with their bodies does not come from a place of morality: that comes from a place of control.

People do not want to accept the reality that, for the most part, sex workers are just ordinary women who are doing a job they may like or dislike to various degrees for ordinary reasons (to pay their rent, or support their kids, or to save up money for future goals.)

When we decriminalize sex work, sex workers lives get better. It makes it possible for them to go to the police when dealing with unruly clients, rather than being reluctant to do so because it is illegal. It allows them labor rights, clean healthy workplaces.