Prostitution

I’ve often wondered what drives women into prostitution? Is it always by choice or are they forced into it? The whole idea of paying for sex seems so undignified. Something so intimate, in my opinion, should not be up for sale.

It is thought that those who are prostitutes are driven to do so because of their childhoods. Recent research does support this idea. Dr. Melissa Farley and Dr. Howard Barkin reported that out of 130 prostitutes surveyed fifty-five percent reported that they had been sexually abused as a child by three perpetrators or more. Ninety-four percent reported that a caregiver had physically abused them until they were bruised or injured. This gives us a good idea that most prostitutes have had an unstable childhood. Their childhoods have caused them to enter a profession where they repeat the abuse from the childhood in their adult lives. Of those interviewed eighty-two percent said they had been physically assaulted since they entered prostitution and sixty-eight percent had been raped. Which makes you wonder why they would stay in the profession if it causes them so much pain.

Eighty-eight percent expressed a desire to leave the profession, but complained they need help. They needed training and education. They also needed medical attention because most of them had health problems from prostitution. When you face so many problems it sometimes seems easier just to stay in the situation you are in instead of trying to escape it. Sometimes the reason women cannot get out of prostitution is because they “belong” to a pimp who makes all their decisions for them. These pimps decide where they go and when. They decide when they work and then they take most of the money they earn and leave them with practically nothing. Pimps often put up a front by buying their prostitutes expensive gifts or making empty promises. If and when a prostitute wants to leave however, they must leave with nothing, and sometimes they even have to pay for their freedom. It sounds like a slave/owner relationship because it is very similar. An article by Evelina Giobbe compares a pimp with a batterer. They have very similar qualities. Pimps, like batterers, use physical and mental abuse to keep the women in submission and totally dependent on them. They make the women feel inadequate about themselves so they will think that they need the pimp to survive in life and that without him she would parish.

So where do these pimps find their workers? They look for troubled youth. Girls who are from troubled families and are desperate for attention. They look for someone who did not have a stable family life because of drug abuse, divorce, or abuse. Girls from these type of situations are easy to approach and are surprisingly naпve and gullible. They are brainwashed by the promises of a good life. They are promised money and nice things; things they did not have while they are growing up. Once they get into the business they are shocked to find out it isn’t quite the fantasy they thought it was going to be. Their lives no longer belong to themselves. They belong to the pimps, and customers.

Prostitution is not just for women. Men are also involved and the experiences are