Graffiti 86

I've never visited a prostitute and have no plans to. But I believe that a person has a right to do with their body whatever they want. It would seem that addiction and poverty drive some men and women into prostitution and others choose it voluntarily. Better health care and government based social programs could prevent those driven to it and legalization and regulation would assist those who choose it. I don't understand the stigma and demonizing associated with the profession. People deserve our respect in consideration no matter their profession or position.

“We're all prostitutes if you think about it. The whole capitalist system is built on meretriciousness. You sell your body or you sell your mind, and the Cartesian mind/body thing is a fallacy anyway, your mind is just your brain, so it amounts to the same thing really.” -M. Thomas Gammarino

"If nobody wants to sell sex, it is a crime to force anyone to do so. But when men or women do want to sell their bodies, they should have that full right without encountering punishment or discrimination. If the client behaves decently, the relationship between the sex buyer and the sex seller must be considered a purely private transaction." -Nils Johan Ringdal

"Prostitution will always lead into a moral quagmire in democratic societies with capitalist economies; it invades the terrain of intimate sexual relations yet beckons for regulation. A society's response to prostitution goes to the core of how it chooses between the rights of some persons and the protection of others." -Barbara Meil Hobson

"Punishing the prostitute promotes the rape of all women. When prostitution is a crime, the message conveyed is that women who are sexual are bad, and therefore legitimate victims of sexual assault. Sex becomes a weapon to be used by men." -Margo St. James