Protective Profession

Despite the manner in which genteel society views the oldest profession in the world, it exists quite obviously because there is a need for its services. We can look down our noses at the thought that anyone, male or female, would sell their bodies in service to others, but the conditions that cause the profession to exist are part of human nature and until and unless we are prepared to undergo a wholesale alteration in our profoundly physical needs altering that which nature has endowed us with, the profession is destined to remain with us evermore.

We don't really have to like the profession whereby one human being prostitutes him/herself to the bodily needs of another. Prostitution has always been shunted aside, shut out of view of 'decent' people whose instincts and predilections and social instincts mitigate against their taking part in that age-old ritual of exchanging sex for favour. But society has never been able to completely expunge its need or its presence. For all manner of reasons. The least of which is that the most 'decent' and 'upstanding' members of society often surreptitiously resort to the use of prostitutes.

Because we hold those in the profession of dealing sex for money in such low esteem, feel them to be living evidence of the most degraded practises in human society, we fail to recognize the humanity of those who practise the avails of prostitution. We find them beneath contempt, unworthy of any kind of social consideration. Or the protection of the law and society at large normally granted most other citizens. And that attitude is really beneath contempt, for these are people no less worthy than the rest of us of human regard.

These women - since it is mostly females who practise prostitution - ignored and shunned by society, live out their careers and their lives in the shadows of the norm; they represent the demi-monde, the dark underworld of society. Laws exist to punish and restrict and restrain their activities, but not to protect them. A humane and humanly-generous society would recognize the necessity to help these women, to recognize the social legitimacy of their profession, as some enlightened countries do.

The women could be registered as legitimate businesses, pay taxes and be permitted to regulate themselves, set themselves up in safe areas in accredited buildings, with regular medical check-ups to ensure their health and that of their paying customers. They should have the same rights of prosecution of their business as any other members of our society. They should be permitted to reap the same benefits which accrue to others within a fair and equitable society. The full strength of the law and justice would prevail for them as it does for all other members of society. Their lives would not be as casually forfeit and unlamented as they are now, where, as the underbelly of society they are prey to a form of deliberate violence not suffered by any other class of professionals.

Their need to operate in a climate of discretion and fear, an underground service of shame leaves them vulnerable to the worst physical abuses that sociopathic men can visit upon helpless women. In our society countless women working in the sex trade go missing, are found dead, and little concern is expressed by society at large and our policing agencies in general. Women are economically disadvantaged in most societies, and ours is no different. Affording women who wish to practise this dangerous profession a modicum of protection under the law would only make ours a better society.

We owe this at the very least to these women. If they prefer to continue their profession we should be able to guarantee them the same access to fair and equitable treatment under the law as those who commit to any other living professions.