What is a progressive response to prostitution?
Proposition K promotes the sex industry under the cynical guise of helping women avoid the stigma of arrest. The real beneficiaries of this ballot initiative are johns, pimps, and traffickers. Should we arrest women in prostitution? No. Almost all women in prostitution are there as a last resort, they don’t “choose” the paid rapes of prostitution the way someone chooses a career as an x-ray technician. 95% of those in prostitution urgently want to escape it. Let’s offer women and men and children in prostitution real choices. They tell us that they need stable housing, social services, medical treatment, and job training. That’s what they should receive – not decriminalization. Should we arrest the pimps, johns, procurers and traffickers who use women in prostitution and profit from selling them? Yes. These are the perpetrators of sexual exploitation and abuse who should be arrested, not the women themselves.
